Samenvatting

The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and the failures made, which led to the Srebrenica genocide. All limitations of the mandate and the lessons of Bosnia/Srebrenica were summed up and compared with subsequent peacekeeping missions in order to see whether the UN learned and applied the lessons from Bosnia and Srebrenica. The two missions which were chosen are the peacekeeping missions of Sierra Leone (1999-2002) and South Sudan (2011-present). Sierra Leone was chosen to see how the newly appointed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan changed the working methods of UN peacekeeping missions as he wanted peacekeeping missions to be more robust, whereas South Sudan was chosen to see if the failures of Bosnia and Srebrenica still have influences on peacekeeping missions 15-20 years after the debacle in 1995. It can be concluded that the lessons were barely applied to the missions of Sierra Leone and South Sudan and that UN peacekeeping missions are an illusion of safety for civilians since war crimes could not be prevented.