Australian military involvement in peacekeeping

Australian military involvement in peacekeeping operations has been diverse, and included participation in both United Nations sponsored missions, as well as those as part of ad hoc coalitions.

[2] From the mid-1990s, Australia has been involved in a series of high-profile operations, deploying significantly large units of combat troops in support of a number of missions including those in Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia and later in East Timor.

[3][4] Australian involvement in international peacekeeping began in 1947 when a small contingent, consisting of just four officers—two Army, one Navy and one Air Force—were deployed to the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) in September of that year, being deployed as military observers under the auspices of the United Nations Good Offices Commission, during the Indonesian National Revolution.

In 1989, however, this changed when Australia committed a sizeable engineer force to Namibia; after this, throughout the 1990s Australia made further contributions to peacekeeping operations in various places around the world including the Middle East, Cambodia, Somalia and Rwanda, and in many cases—for example in Somalia where an infantry battalion group was deployed—these deployments have consisted of sizeable numbers of combat troops.

[8] In addition, smaller scale commitments were made to missions in Africa, including to places like Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Darfur.