To fully understand the UN’s meaning of “civil affairs” it is first important to appreciate that most of the missions created between 1989 and 1992, especially, were qualitatively different from those which had preceded. It is not just that most were a lot bigger … they were to fulfil many roles additional to the archetypal ones of the 1947-1988 period. The task of the UN became, not merely to observe, but actively, itself, to bring about peace […] In a rapid sequence of major operations – principally in Namibia, Central America and Cambodia – the UN was required not only to make peace, but to conduct nationwide processes of reconstruction and national reconciliation.