The move is clearly needed, but it will benefit no one and could damage the credibility of U.N. peacekeeping efforts elsewhere if the troops continue to be ineffectual.
But with criticism of operations in Congo mounting, and a sex abuse scandal dominating stories about the mission in Central African Republic, UN peacekeeping faces a crisis of credibility.
Jolie said on Thursday: "We all know that the credibility of UN peacekeeping has been sadly undermined by the actions of a few intolerable cases of women and children being sexually exploited by the very people in charge of protecting them".
Asked about the falling credibility of the international peacekeeping effort, Mr. Adeniji said that "people tend to exaggerate mistakes and to minimize credit".
Last month, the United Nations published a damning independent investigation that said poor enforcement of policies in place to deter and report abuse meant that "the credibility of the UN and peacekeeping operations are in jeopardy".
There is no question, for instance, that the genocide in Rwanda, which was made possible in part by the refusal of the US and other Security Council members to order UN peacekeeping forces to intervene, badly damaged the credibility of the international legal regime.
Not least, there is a pattern of ill-defined and ineffective peacekeeping missions that have undermined the U.N.'s credibility in the past, from Somalia and Rwanda to Bosnia.
Diplomats are nearly unanimous in praising his steady hand over the last year, in opening the United Nations to strong criticism of peacekeeping operations for the sake of salvaging its credibility, in moving into new activities to defend human rights and in working in tandem with a global economic and technological revolution.
Academics have since suggested that the credibility of UNAMSIL and future UN peacekeeping operations would have been at stake had the mission in Sierra Leone been allowed to fail.
Robert Wright ("The Peace That's Within Our Grasp," Op-Ed, Sept. 12) warns that a policy of United Nations peacekeeping in civil wars could undermine the organization's credibility and weaken its role internationally.
