The book provides an up to date and authoritative account of how the UN is re[1]thinking its obligations to protect civilians during conflicts. Based on hundreds of interviews with senior UN officials and humanitarian protection staff in headquarters and in the field and a review of the UN´s ´grey literature´. It also draws on the author´s own experience of working on human rights and protection in some of the world´s most violent conflicts. It is written not about what the UN ought to do – or how it could have behaved differently in an abstract or theoretically ideal world – but what the UN is actually doing to fulfil the fundamental purposes set forth in its Charter. 

This book is based on the author's experience of working for more than two decades in over thirty conflict and post-conflict zones. It is written for those involved in UN peacekeeping and the protection of civilians. It is intended to be accessible to non-lawyers working in the field who may need to know the applicable legal standards relating to issues such as the use of force and arrest and detention powers on the one hand and the delivery of life-saving assistance according to humanitarian principles on the other. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of peacekeeping, international law and international relations on the practical dilemmas facing those trying to operationalise the various conceptions of 'protection' during humanitarian crises in recent years.

This book is based on the author's experience of working for more than two decades in over thirty conflict and post-conflict zones. It is written for those involved in UN peacekeeping and the protection of civilians. It is intended to be accessible to non-lawyers working in the field who may need to know the applicable legal standards relating to issues such as the use of force and arrest and detention powers on the one hand and the delivery of life-saving assistance according to humanitarian principles on the other. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of peacekeeping, international law and international relations on the practical dilemmas facing those trying to operationalise the various conceptions of 'protection' during humanitarian crises in recent years.

The idea that we should 'do something' to help those suffering in far-off places is the main impulse driving those who care about human rights. Yet from Kosovo to Iraq, military interventions have gone disastrously wrong. "The Thin Blue Line" describes how in the last twenty years humanitarianism has emerged as a multibillion-dollar industry that has played a leading role in defining humanitarian crises, and shaping the foreign policy of Western governments and the United Nations. Drawing on his own experience of working in over a dozen conflict and post-conflict zones, Foley shows how the growing influence of international law has been used to override the sovereignty of the poorest countries in the world.