This chapter assesses post-UNTAC intervention by the UN and the impact it has had on human security in Cambodia. Overall, the UN has been a major global legitimate actor, but its operational effectiveness varies and has been most limited by the politico-security dynamics that unfolded after the UNTAC departure. Part of the problem with UN governance is that the post-Cold War global system tends to place too much emphasis on the force of international law and social-economic aspects in the process of peacebuilding that it has been less effective in terms of addressing and transforming security politics within Cambodia. UN agencies, programmes, and funds have proved unable to reform and transform the dominant state institutions like the three branches of government and the armed forces.
This paper provides a mid-term assessment of externally-led Security Sector Reform (SSR) during the United Nations (UN) led peacebuilding intervention in Timor-Leste. Despite initial difficulties, several core institutions, introduced by the UN, remain effective and were integrated into local practices. These initial security problems of the new-born Timor-Leste state, included the radical reconfiguration of the power balances within elites and an unfamiliarity with new approaches to security governance by the indigenous actors themselves. The lack of contextual knowledge and insensitivity to local political dynamics by external actors exacerbated these issues. Nonetheless, Timor-Leste has found ways to achieve some measure of political stability and physical security, both of which were always overarching goals of SSR.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.