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Peace
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making
: Involves diplomatic efforts to manage and resolve the conflict 

Peacekeeping
: Is cooperative. It's an operation involving military personnel, but without 
enforcement powers established by the United Nations to help maintain or restore 
international peace and security in areas of conflict. 

Peace enforcement:
Is coercive and usually come to play where a clear consent proves 
difficult, and breaches of peace and acts of aggression persist and action or intervention 

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becomes necessary-.chapter VII 

Peace-building:
Strives to stabilize post-conflict situations by creating or strengthening 
national institutions. 
Peacekeeping operations therefore, tend to be deployed either after or during an armed 
conflict and are usually multi-faceted-multidimensional-multicultural in 'nature. More so, 
peacekeeping's aim is to support robustly the transformation of war torn societies into societies 
capable of Sustaining stable peace (Bellamy and William 2010). Hence, it should be borne in mind 
that the neat distinction between traditional types of peacekeeping and peace enforcement have 
eroded "in practice.' (Ibid: 2'14) 
Furthermore, every peacekeeping operation differs in scope and practice, depending on the 
nature of the conflict(s) and the specific challenge(s) it presents. During the cold war era, UN 
peacekeeping was largely observed as an outcome of power politics. Its main function was to avert 
conflict escalating between the super-powers. It was also presumed by western power as a means 
of promoting the stability of friendly regimes and securing their economic interests in their former 
colonies. Therefore, peacekeeping was initially a creation of power politics and conflict 
containment (Mingst and Karns 2000). Peacekeeping, although not explicitly provided for in the 
United Nations Charter, to our mind, has evolved into one of the main Instruments used by UN to 
achieve its purpose of creation which is maintaining International Peace and Security and also, 
'encourage and promote conflict resolution between parties to any conflict. 
The rationale for every peacekeeping operation can be summed up as follows: Military, 
Political and Economical revival of the state(s) in conflict. 

The Military personnel control the cessation of violence, secure the environment, disarm 
and demobilize the combatants, oversee the withdrawal of foreign forces, create awareness 
on dangerous mine spots and mine clearance. 

Politically, through the civilian component, peacekeepers assist in the rehabilitation of 
existing political institutions, monitoring and verification of all aspects and stages of 
electoral process, education of the public about electoral processes and provision of help 
in the development of grass-roots democratic institutions, resettlement of displaced 
persons and reintegration of ex-combatants. 

Economically, peacekeepers assist conflict states in the area of fast-tracking their 

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development possibilities or processes. (Opcit) 
In support of the above rationale, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in the Blue Helmet (1996:9) 
submitted that, '...the UN is called upon not only to contain conflicts and alleviate the suffering 
they cause, but also to prevent the outbreak of war among Nations and to build towards enduring 
peace.