The historical stage that came after the end of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union (1947-1991), contrary to forecasts of the long - awaited peace and the transition to broad international cooperation, unexpectedly turned out to be a stage of a sharply increased number of regional conflicts that required the active participation of the UN in their settlement. The number of peacekeeping operations has dramatically increased: if there were 43 of them during the more than 40-year period of East-West confrontation, then only in the 1990s there were more than 100 armed conflicts, 36 of which required the rapid intervention of international peacekeepers [The United Nations..., 2000, p. 3]. Conflicts were accompanied by numerous civilian casualties, increased brutality and violence in interpersonal relationships, which has become a matter of serious concern to the public and politicians in many countries. Under these circumstances, UN peacekeeping activities are particularly in demand as a complex and multidirectional work that includes a wide range of tasks, from the protection of civilians and the disarmament of belligerents to the formation of new political, economic, legal and social structures. NEW UN APPROACHES TO POST-COLD WAR PEACEKEEPING During the confrontation between the United States of America and the Soviet Union in 1945-1991, UN peacekeepers played an important stabilizing role in the system of international relations - their activities helped prevent direct intervention of superpowers in regional conflicts, and prevented them from escalating to the scale of a major war. From this point of view, successful UN peacekeeping missions during the Cold War can be recognized as operations in the Congo (1960-1964), in Kashmir (1965 - 1966), on the Golan Heights in Syria (1974), in the Suez Canal zone and on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt (1967), in New Guinea (1962-1963) and in Yemen (1963-1964). The success of peacekeeping missi ... Read more