Latin American involvement in international peacekeeping

This Latin American support effort has accelerated in the past few years as the UN has taken a more activist and interventionist stance in the peacekeeping field (with some key individuals calling for the UN to be prepared to do peace-enforcement as well as peace-keeping).

Since it is reasonable to assume that such calls for troop contributions for UN peacekeeping missions will continue and even increase in the future, this role will probably be of growing significance.

Over the years the Latin American support of UN peacekeeping and peace-observing missions has ranked after the principal troop contributors (the Scandinavian countries, Ireland, New Zealand, India and Canada), and well above that of most of the UN membership.

The Argentine effort also reflects the fact that UN peacekeeping is now part of their formal role statement (Canada takes a similar approach).

An important influence is Spain, which, like Argentina, has made a difficult transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, and whose military institutions have also assumed a major role in UN peacekeeping in recent years, most notably in Central America.