The United Nations and Peacekeeping

Your Challenge:

Your challenge is to find out how Peacekeepers create peace in the countries they are sent to.

Follow this Process:

1. Watch this video ‘Explainer-What is UN Peacekeeping’

2. Discuss This video says the Peacekeepers ‘Protect civilians, contain conflicts and help build sustainable peace.’ With a partner, discuss how you think the Peacekeepers would achieve these things when they are sent to a country to help.

3. Research Watching this video: ‘UN Peacekeeping Is’ and using this website link
and your own research find out how the Peacekeepers create peace in different countries.

4. Record information from the video on how the Peacekeepers maintain peace and from the web link look at the information on protecting civilians, disarmament and demobilisation and reintegration that you can click into to find out more information.

5. Summarise Have a class discussion to summarise your findings on the tasks the Peacekeepers have. On a whiteboard write the sections:

1. Protecting Civilians

2. Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration

3. Restoring the Rule of Law

Ask the students to give examples from their research of how the Peacekeepers achieve these goals.

6. Take action In groups of three create a PowerPoint Presentation on the ways the Peacekeepers achieve Peace.

1. One person should be in charge of the slides for each section (same sections as above).

2. Once you have finished, present your PowerPoint to other groups or back to the class.

7. Capture and share As a class write down on a word document a report on what you have learned about the United Nations Peacekeepers through this process. What would you like to learn more about?

Educator Notes

To make it more accessible:

• Instead of the individual research part go straight to the summary part and ask the students to list information from the videos on how the Peacekeepers achieve peace without giving them the three sections on the whiteboard.
  
• Instead of creating the PowerPoints in groups get the students to create a poster of a diagram or visual representation of how the Peacekeepers achieve peace. They can use symbols, etc. Ask them to explain their diagrams to other groups once they have finished.
  

To make it more Challenging:

• Ask the students to use past and current examples of Peacekeeping operations in their research and PowerPoints including dates.
  
• Using these examples ask them to explain how the Peacekeepers were successful or unsuccessful in these examples, what did they try to achieve in these countries?

Links:

Video: Explainer-What is UN Peacekeeping

Additional videos:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FeEZM4mKaM

• UN Peacekeeping Is
  

• http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/peacekeeping.shtml