Preventive diplomacy in international law and its implementation on the territories of former Yugoslavia

The term preventive diplomacy was first used in the United Nations in the late fifties when Secretary General Dag Hammarskj ld 'invented' it to describe the remaining function that the United Nations could apply in the bipolar system of international relations. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali included it in the Agenda for Peace in 1992 putting it in the same rank with peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building concepts, thus giving preventive diplomacy a high political priority. In this paper the author deals with the following questions: the impact of the Cold War on the emergence of preventive diplomacy, meaning of preventive diplomacy, international documents and institutions related to preventive diplomacy and the attempts to implement preventive diplomacy in the former Yugoslavia.