(PoC) in Melut town after IDPs voluntarily requested to return home. 2021 On 15 January 2021, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced Haysom's appointment as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Criticism and Alternative International Interventions As stated, the UNMISS is present in the country since its independence in 2011. However, as demonstrated throughout the mission's history, there were numerous incidents that point towards an inability of the peacekeeping forces to protect civilians. In general, scholars such as Weinstein question the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions, and it is not difficult to find a peacekeeping "fiasco" among the numerous peacekeeping missions undertaken within the history of the United Nations. While it is impossible to establish a counterfactual for the assessment and evaluation of peacekeeping missions and their effectiveness, – i.e. we do not know how the situation in South Sudan would look like, if the UN would not have deployed peacekeeping forces, – an article published in the New York Times has called for an alternative international intervention for South Sudan. Thereby, the alternatives for international interventions are numerous. The article mentions trusteeship as a potential solution to the violent chaos in South Sudan. This form of international intervention was prominently discussed by Fearon and Laitin. The authors thereby suggest a system of neo-trusteeship, in which peacekeeping efforts should be oriented towards state building under the coordination of a leading (outside) state. This state building should encompass the establishment of institutions that are necessary for increasing South Sudan's capability for collecting taxes, which could increase the governance capacity of the country. To avoid that South Sudan breaks into war again, according to Fearon and Laitin's neo-trusteeship approach, a continuous international monitoring and support system might be required. However, the New York Times article mentions that some South Sudanese would not tolerate such an international trusteeship and might see it as an intrusion into their hard-won independence. Furthermore, as pointed out by Weinstein, neo-trusteeship is a post-conflict international intervention. As South Sudan is still in the midst of a bloody conflict, Weinstein would suggest refraining from any kind of international intervention and leaving the South Sudanese to solve their conflict autonomously ("autonomous recovery"), usually through the victory of one of the conflict parties over the other. References External links United Nations Mission in South Sudan United Nations Mission in the Republic of South