More than 60 years have past since the United Nations deployed the first peacekeeping operation in 1948 in the Middle East. Forty-four years later, the concept of "peacebuilding" was first put forward by UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1992. On December 20, 2005, UN General Assembly and Security Council authorized to establish UN Peacebuilding Commission, aiming to find out the best channel to solve international conflicts through efforts in aspects such as politics, security, humanitarianism and development.

The establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission, to some extent, indicates the transfer of the world peace efforts from "peacekeeping" to "peacebuilding." Some scholars believe that the world peace efforts can be divided into three generations: The first generation, namely, the traditional peacekeeping operation, is mostly participated by military personnel, aiming mainly to supervise truces; the second generation, also called multi-dimensional peacekeeping operation, consists of servicemen, police and civil personnel. Besides military operations, they also maintain public order, launch humanitarian assistance and assist refugees; the third generation is also known as integrated peacekeeping, or peacebuilding operation. The members are also servicemen, police and civil personnel. But civil personnel with professional capabilities play greater roles, focusing on helping related countries in their economic development and institutional reconstruction.

It is time for the world community to change its efforts from peacekeeping to peacebuilding, and there are reasons for this:

1. The environment for the world peace operation is becoming more complicated. Besides military operations, the efforts of diplomatic mediations and humanitarian interventions also keep increasing.

2. The sequence of governments of sovereign states in international relations and their roles has changed from "government" to "governance." In the traditional peacekeeping operations, the government of a sovereign state is the sole actor that serves as a leader; however, in the peacebuilding operations, the government of a sovereign state and many other actors such as international organizations, NGOs and civil groups are all stakeholders. These actors should work in coordination.

3. The focus of the international security also shifted from "national security" to "civilian security," namely, shifting from ensuring a truce between countries to preventing civilians' rights from being infringed upon.

4. The world community is more confident and ambitious with peace operations. The traditional peace operation stresses more on realizing a truce, which is the basic condition of "passive peace," while the goal of peacebuilding is to realize "positive peace."