Cambodia after UNTAC: The ambivalent legacy of a United Nations peace‐keeping operation

Abstract

The 50th anniversary of the United Nations was seized upon as an opportunity for extensive review of the world body's various peace‐keeping operations, not least the UNTAC experiment in Cambodia. Much of this reflective analysis has been celebratory and self‐congratulatory in character, tending to treat UN intervention as a normative function whose validity may be taken for granted and which only requires a few running repairs and some fine‐tuning. This article suggests, however, that undertakings like UNTAC remain highly problematic. It is argued here that Cambodia had to be pulled into line in order to satisfy certain international imperatives. Neighbouring states conspired in a process which continues to have deleterious effects on the ground. Indeed, while a great deal has been written on the objectives and immediate achievements of the peace effort, much more needs to be known about its grassroots impact and longterm results. UNTAC's legacy was a muted success at best. Cambodia has been struggling since the much‐vaunted, UN‐sponsored election partly because of (rather than despite) foreign impositions. Recent developments reveal lessons still to be learned and pitfalls which must be avoided in the future. The thrust of this article is that the specific needs of the Khmer people have been largely ignored.