This current report is part of a series of Friedrich-Eber-Stiftung (FES) research on the security in the Eastern Mediterranean region and aims to put the UN presence in Cyprus into perspective, to show that the type of UN settings deployed in Cyprus is not unique. The UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) belongs to older Cold War peace operations that currently constitute half of the 12 current peacekeeping operations: the operations in Kashmir (UNMOGIP, April 1948), in Jerusalem (UNTSO, May 1948) - observations missions that were precursors to the peacekeeping concept of the mid-1950s (see section 2.1) - in Cyprus (UNFICYP, 1964), in the Golan (UNDOF, 1974), and in South Lebanon (UNIFIL, 1978). The mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO) created in 1991 was added to that list as the nature of its mandate and of its conflict environment is similar to those previous missions. Most of these missions are deployed in the wider Eastern Mediterranean/Middle East/North Eastern Africa region (except the one in Kashmir), where major powers of the Security Council are involved.

The current report is looking at the common features of these older missions in the context of a return to cold war "minimalism" within the Security Council, and to explain what this means for future trends in peacekeeping.