O Secretário-Geral das Nações Unidas e a 'Agenda para a Paz': história, desenvolvimento institucional e capacidade de agência

Abstract

As the main international organization responsible for maintaining international peace and security, the UN has a collective security system and the main expression of which is peacekeeping operations. In this work, we aim to understand what the role of the UN Secretary-General is within the institution and to discuss whether, at some point in history, the occupier of this position was able to influence the direction and shape the UN peacekeeping operations. Our analysis will be informed by historical institutionalism, we will observe the temporal processes and events that influenced the institutionalization of peacekeeping operations. In addition, we will discuss the Secretary-General’s agency capacity under the terms proposed by the theoretical movement called practical turn. The present work has three chapters, in addition to the introduction and final considerations. In the first chapter we present the theoretical foundation that guides this work, its application in the field of International Relations and the methodology used. In the second chapter, we develop the UN creation history and the organizational structure focused on conflict resolution, highlighting the role of the Secretary-General in institutional development and the history of peacekeeping operations from 1948 to 1991. In the third chapter we analyze how the end of the Cold War represented a moment of critical juncture in history when a ‘window of opportunity’ opened and allowed the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to implement the document ‘An Agenda for Peace’ (1992), which changed the development path of UN peacekeeping operations, giving rise to a new institutional legacy.