United Nations Operations in Somalia II

While U.S. and allied forces maintained the peace in Somalia, U.S. leaders were working hard to push the United Nations into establishing a new mission in Somalia to take over most of the responsibility of running the relief effort, while allowing the United States to reduce the size of its committed forces and handle only limited aspects of security and logistics. On March 26, 1993, the United Nations passed Resolution 814, which considerably broadened its mandate to intervene in another country’s affairs. The U.N. was now intervening militarily in a peacemaking role under Chapter VII of its charter. The more frequently used Chapter VI addressed only the deployment of peacekeeping troops to reinforce a previously agreed-upon settlement between warring parties. But Chapter VII dealt with peace enforcement and not merely peacekeeping. The resolution underlined the charters of the first UNOSOM mission and Operation Restore Hope and that of the new mission UNOSOM II.