Peacekeeping and peacemaking: Some lessons from Cyprus

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the UN Force in Cyprus and its modus operandi prior to the 1974 Cyprus War and since. It shows that besides keeping the peace, UNFICYP was mandated to help bring about ‘a return to normal conditions’ on the island. UNFICYP's activities did improve daily life considerably prior to 1974 but political peacemaking lagged behind. The 1974 Turkish invasion worsened the political situation and complicated UNFICYP's tasks. After 1974, UN peacemaking explicitly divorced the internal aspects of the problem from the international ones because its mediation activities ignored a key component of the problem, namely Turkey's military role in the island. As a result, the post‐1974 UN peacemaking efforts were fundamentally flawed. Consequently the UN failed to address the underlying causes of the conflict while freezing a status quo on the island which contains the roots of renewed violence and conflict that affects international peace and stability.