Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to present the evolution of the UN’s peace continuum. The focus is on the conceptual construction and evolution of the continuum of crisis management that moves between peacekeeping and peacebuilding – a continuum that expands and contracts depending on the crises that are occurring and their various contexts, and one that remains an implementation challenge for the UN system as a whole, and its partners. The evolution of UN concepts from peacekeeping to sustaining peace shows that the silence of weapons is not synonymous with peace, certainly not with sustainable peace in any case. Therefore, it is a question of including military intervention in a more global approach and limiting the duration of military intervention, for the continuum makes it possible to deal with the other aspects of the situation. These developments have taken place in the context of the UN’s own evolving doctrines and its development of tools of crisis management in a continuum that has been unclear at times, but that the current secretary-general’s reforms try to reinvigorate.