You can do so because the first principle of UN peacekeeping is consent. You have to have the consent of the host state and the major parties in the conflict. The second is impartiality, and the third is minimum use of force in defence and defence of mandate.
We can better strengthen this partnership with African countries by really viewing it as a partnership. Peacekeeping forces are not there as an imposition. They're there to work with the local forces. It's part of a transition process so that as the peacekeeping forces are reduced, the local forces take on more capacity.
The problem is that when some countries, like Mali, become dictatorships, they don't want oversight. The leaders don't want the oversight the UN provides. When you have all those people on the ground, you have a huge amount of clout. The UN has all that clout from having peacekeepers deployed in northern Mali, middle Mali and southern Mali. The leaders resent the fact that the UN puts pressure on them.
I think it's really important to have peacekeeping and to view it as a partnership, but it does get really difficult when the leaders themselves want to commit human rights violations, because the UN has a human rights due diligence policy.
That's probably too long of an answer.