Challenges Facing UN for Democratization of Ethnic-Religious Communities(Case study: UN action in Africa following the Cold War)
Subject Areas : Politics
1 - Razi University
2 - Razi University
Keywords: United Nations, ethnic-religious conflicts, democratic rule, democratic political institutions, institution building,
Abstract :
The United Nations is the most important international organization which has been founded to protect peace and security especially in international arena. The UN considers protection of peace and democratization as an effective mechanism to reduce and limit conflicts, especially in ethnic-religious communities. Following the Cold War, ethic-religious conflicts in Africa have become more intense. Since national governments have been unable to control such conflicts and the conflicts pose a threat to international security, international community has taken action to manage these conflicts. As such, the UN has embarked on democratization of African countries in the form of the second generation of peacekeeping operations. However, despite such efforts, the aforesaid conflicts have not been reduced, but continued unabated. Inefficiency of the UN model for management of conflicts is an important problem. The present research aims to find reasons behind the failure of the UN conflict management model; that is, democratization as a solution for ethnic-religious conflicts in Africa following the Cold War. The present article takes advantage of the theory of institutionalism for the analysis of transition to democracy before discussing reasons behind the failure of the UN action on democratization, failure of democratic rule, and continuation of conflicts in Africa.
