JOHANNESBURG (guardian.co.uk) -- The United Nations attack on Ivory Coast's presidential palace and military barracks marks a new chapter in the organization’s often chequered history in Africa.

Most notorious was its impotence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people died. The UN security council failed to reinforce the small peacekeeping force in the east African country.
Kofi Annan, head of UN peacekeeping forces at the time, admitted later: “The international community failed Rwanda and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret.”
Between 1948 and 2007, about 40% of the UN's peacekeeping and observer missions took place in Africa. In 2009, about 70% of its personnel were deployed on the continent. The current missions are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur in Sudan, southern Sudan, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Western Sahara.
After the massacres in Rwanda and then Bosnia, the UN added the protection of civilians as a priority for each mission. But the question of how far it is willing – and able – to go to intervene remains delicate and politically charged.
The UN runs the world's biggest peacekeeping mission in Congo at an annual cost of $1.35bn (£865m) but it is constantly overstretched in the vast country. It has been accused of supporting Congolese army units responsible for grave atrocities.
Last year there were claims that peacekeepers ignored appeals for protection just days before more than 240 villagers were raped by rebels. There have been similar charges in the past, blamed on lack of equipment, manpower and intelligence capacity. UN peacekeepers in Darfur have been accused of failing to stop violence that resulted in civilian deaths.
Major General Patrick Cammaert, a Dutch marine and UN peacekeeping veteran, told the New York Times in 2009: “They can't start a war against a host government like a well-organized Sudanese campaign. That goes beyond protecting civilians; it is on a magnitude that a UN mission cannot deal with.”
Photo: UN peacekeepers patrol the streets in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. ( Jane Hahn/AP)