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The end of the cold war showed a clear dividing-line in the number of UN peacekeeping operations around the world. When the bipolar world of the West and East ended around 1990 it triggered a chain of intra-state conflicts in many areas around the world, most of these lately on the African continent. Recent studies suggest that the UN peacekeeping operations are not in line with the organizations own principles and guidelines, not the least in the Security Council’s latest mandates in Africa. There are those who say that Africa has been a laboratory for peacekeeping operations the latest two decades.

Recommendations from the Brahimi Report, Capstone Doctrine and New Horizon are supposed to be implemented when the UN’s Security Council develop clear, credible, achievable and impartial mandates for the military component to carry through. This study shows to what extent these recommendations are implemented in recent peacekeeping operations in African conflicts. Furthermore, the results of the study indicate that some of the later UN peacekeeping operations are not according to the organizations traditional guidelines and principles of peacekeeping.