Un accountability for gross human rights violations perpetrated by its peace keeping troops

Abstract

The thesis provides accountability of the UN for gross human right violation perpetrated by its peace keeping troops.International organizations involved in multidimensional activities, including international peace and security matters. UN involved in peace keeping operation mission starting from 1948, while conducting the mission peace keeping personnel are involved in gross human right violation like sexual exploitation, using excessive force resulting in the death of civilians, and destruction of civilian property. The media report about those incidents most of the time and those violations, has lead a question who is responsible for such wrongdoing, and to which entity the conduct is attributable to. The main issue which is addressed by this paper is: What challenges are there in holding the UN accountable for violations of international law in peace operations and what will be the way out? In this regard the thesis added the main difficulties which hinder UN accountability like issue of broad immunity and how the threshold for attribution of conduct and the command and control system affect the possibility of holding the UN accountable. How and to which entity the conduct should be attributed to, how this is shown in practice and the threshold for the attribution of conduct will be evaluated. There remains uncertainty as regards to the content and application of the effective control test, and whether dual or multiple attribution of conduct is possible, and the thesis will explore options to address these difficulties. On issue of immunity the proper limit to the broad immunity protection, like right to access to court, access to remedy. In addition the possibility of waiving UN immunity if possible is discussed. Regarding the forum for prosecution both internal and external mechanisms accessed, like the possibility of establishing independent human right tribunal or world human right court.