Peacemakers or Troublemakers: The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia from a Critical Perspective (original) (raw)

This paper presents an alternative narrative of the Cambodian peace process and the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) based on Arturo Escobar’s theory of development, which defines development as a colonial discourse and practice, which sought to impose supposedly superior Western values, science and technology on the non-Western world. In the same way, the peace process and UNTAC can be described as a mission civilisatrice that underestimated the West’s role in causing the conflict in the first place while the attempt at conflict resolution is marked by an overestimation of the West’s ability as well as insufficient self-criticism and attention to the actual political, economic and social conditions in Cambodia.