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https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=finp20
International Peacekeeping
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/finp20
UN Peacekeeping at 75: Achievements, Challenges,
and Prospects
Allard Duursma, Corinne Bara, Nina Wilén, Sara Hellmüller, John Karlsrud,
Kseniya Oksamytna, Janek Bruker, Susanna Campbell, Salvator Cusimano,
Marco Donati, Han Dorussen, Dirk Druet, Valentin Geier, Marine Epiney,
Valentin Geier, Linnéa Gelot, Dennis Gyllensporre, Annick Hiensch, Lisa
Hultman, Charles T. Hunt, Rajkumar Cheney Krishnan, Patryk I. Labuda,
Sascha Langenbach, Annika Hilding Norberg, Alexandra Novosseloff, Daniel
Oriesek, Emily Paddon Rhoads, Francesco Re, Jenna Russo, Melanie Sauter,
Hannah Smidt, Ueli Staeger & Andreas Wenger
To cite this article: Allard Duursma, Corinne Bara, Nina Wilén, Sara Hellmüller, John Karlsrud,
Kseniya Oksamytna, Janek Bruker, Susanna Campbell, Salvator Cusimano, Marco Donati, Han
Dorussen, Dirk Druet, Valentin Geier, Marine Epiney, Valentin Geier, Linnéa Gelot, Dennis
Gyllensporre, Annick Hiensch, Lisa Hultman, Charles T. Hunt, Rajkumar Cheney Krishnan,
Patryk I. Labuda, Sascha Langenbach, Annika Hilding Norberg, Alexandra Novosseloff, Daniel
Oriesek, Emily Paddon Rhoads, Francesco Re, Jenna Russo, Melanie Sauter, Hannah Smidt, Ueli
Staeger & Andreas Wenger (11 Oct 2023): UN Peacekeeping at 75: Achievements, Challenges,
and Prospects, International Peacekeeping, DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2023.2263178
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2023.2263178
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 11 Oct 2023.
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UN Peacekeeping at 75: Achievements, Challenges,
and Prospects
Allard Duursma
a
, Corinne Bara
a
, Nina Wilén
b,c
, Sara Hellmüller
a
,
John Karlsrud
d
, Kseniya Oksamytna
e
, Janek Bruker
a
, Susanna Campbell
f
,
Salvator Cusimano
g
†
, Marco Donati
g
†
, Han Dorussen
h
, Dirk Druet
i
,
Valentin Geier
i
, Marine Epiney
a
, Valentin Geier
j,k
‡
, Linnéa Gelot
l
⁋
,
Dennis Gyllensporre
l
†
, Annick Hiensch
g
†
, Lisa Hultman
m
, Charles T. Hunt
n,o
,
Rajkumar Cheney Krishnan
g
, Patryk I. Labuda
p
, Sascha Langenbach
a
,
Annika Hilding Norberg
q
, Alexandra Novosseloff
r
, Daniel Oriesek
s
, Emily
Paddon Rhoads
t
, Francesco Re
a
, Jenna Russo
u
, Melanie Sauter
v
,
Hannah Smidt
w
, Ueli Staeger
x
and Andreas Wenger
a
a
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;
b
University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium;
c
Egmont Royal
Institute for International Relations, Brussels, Belgium;
d
Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs, Oslo, Norway;
e
City, University of London, London, UK;
f
American University,
Washington, D.C., USA;
g
United Nations, New York City, USA;
h
University of Essex, Colchester,
UK;
i
McGill University, Montreal, Canada;
j
Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals,
Barcelona, Spain;
k
University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany;
l
Swedish Defence University,
Stockholm, Sweden;
m
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;
n
RMIT University, Melbourne,
Australia;
o
United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, Tokyo, Japan;
p
University of
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;
q
Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Geneva, Switzerland;
r
Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2), Paris, France;
s
Swiss Armed Forces, Switzerland;
t
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, USA;
u
International Peace Institute, New York City, USA;
v
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;
w
University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland;
x
University
of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
ABSTRACT
This year marks the 75th anniversary of what the UN itself understands to be its
first peacekeeping operation. It is therefore an appropriate time to reflect on the
track record of UN peacekeeping in its efforts to try to maintain and realize
peace and security. Moreover, this milestone invites us to ponder what lies
ahead in the realm of peacekeeping. For this reason, this forum article brings
together both academics and UN officials to assess the achievements and
challenges of UN peacekeeping over the past 75 years. Through a dialogue
among peacekeeping scholars and practitioners, we hope to identify current
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDer-
ivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distri-
bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the
Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
CONTACT Allard Duursma allard.duursma@sipo.gess.ethz.ch
†
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
‡
This research was supported by a fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
⁋
This research was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Grant 8019-00105B).
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2023.2263178
trends and developments in UN peacekeeping, as well as explore priorities for
the future to improve the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations in terms of
achieving their mandate objectives, such as maintaining peace, protecting
civilians, promoting human rights, and facilitating reconciliation. This forum
article is structured into six thematic sections, each shedding light on various
aspects of UN peacekeeping: (1) foundational principles of UN peacekeeping
- namely, consent, impartiality, and the (non-)use of force; (2) protection of
civilians; (3) the primacy of politics; (4) early warning; (5) cooperation with
regional organizations; and (6) the changing geopolitical landscape in which
UN peacekeeping operates.
KEYWORDS United Nations; peacekeeping; consent; impartiality; use of force; protection of civilians;
primacy of politics; mediation; early warning; partnership peacekeeping; geopolitical; future
Introduction
Allard Duursma, Corinne Bara & Nina Wilén
In May 1948, the United Nations Security Council appointed Swedish Count
Folke Bernadotte as the United Nations (UN) mediator in Palestine. In
response to a request by Bernadotte, United Nations Secretary-General
Trygve Lie sent 50 members of the United Nations guard force to assist
the mediator in supervising the truce.
1
This mission would become known
as the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), which is
recognized by the UN as the start of UN peacekeeping.
2
This year therefore marks the 75th anniversary of what the UN itself
understands to be its first peacekeeping operation. It is therefore an appro-
priate time to reflect on the track record of UN peacekeeping in its efforts to
try to maintain and realize peace and security. Moreover, this milestone
invites us to ponder what lies ahead in the realm of peacekeeping. For this
reason, this forum article brings together both academics and UN officials
to assess the achievements and challenges of UN peacekeeping over the
1
United Nations, Fifty U.N. Guards to go to Palestine, 17 June 1948, UN Doc PAL/189.
2
United Nations Peacekeeping. “Our History.”https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history. Of course,
what constitutes a peacekeeping mission depends on the definition used. Fortna considers observer
missions such as UNTSO as peacekeeping, along with what she refers to as traditional peacekeeping,
multidimensional peacekeeping, and peace enforcement. Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? Inter-
national Intervention and the Duration of Peace after Civil War, 2004, 270. Others dismiss purely observer
missions as being peacekeeping and therefore often refer to the United Nations Emergency Force
(UNEF), deployed to secure an end to the Suez Crisis of 1956, as the first UN peacekeeping mission.
And even among those that consider observer missions as peacekeeping, there is some disagreement
about what is the first UN peacekeeping mission. Some point to earlier UN missions that also included
military observers in the Balkans, Indonesia, and Kashmir. For instance, the United Nations Special
Committee on the Balkans (UNSCOB) was established in November 1947 to perform good offices
and to help settle disputes.
2A. DUURSMA ET AL.
past 75 years.
3
Through a dialogue among peacekeeping scholars and prac-
titioners, we hope to identify current trends and developments in UN peace-
keeping, as well as explore priorities for the future to improve the
effectiveness of peacekeeping operations in terms of achieving their
mandate objectives, such as maintaining peace, protecting civilians, promot-
ing human rights, and facilitating reconciliation.
According to Michael Pugh, the editor of International Peacekeeping
between 1994 and 2013, UN peacekeeping originated largely as a ‘vision-
less response to international crisis management’.
4
Nevertheless, it is clear
that UN peacekeeping has matured into a frequently used instrument for
the maintenance of international peace and security, incorporating a wide
variety of strategies and tools to address the challenges of contemporary
armed conflicts. Indeed, UN peacekeeping embodies the organization’s com-
mitment to international peace, security, and cooperation.
As a testament to its significance, since its first peacekeeping mission in
1948, the UN has deployed more than two million peacekeepers from 125
countries to 71 missions to more than 40 states.
5
The UN has projected
more military power - deployed more troops –globally than any other
actor except the United States during the twenty-first century, making peace-
keeping as a practice central for understanding past and current inter-
national security dynamics.
6
Moreover, over the past 75 years, the UN has adapted peacekeeping to a
changing external environment by modifying mandates, adapting its appli-
cation of doctrine in a flexible and responsive manner, inventing new con-
cepts and developing different processes to remain a relevant actor. Some
of these changes have evolved into new trends, while others have encoun-
tered resistance and been further modified or even abandoned. The aim of
this article is –in part –to explore these changes and continuities to
better understand UN peacekeeping today. Partly, the aim is to reflect on
the future of UN peacekeeping at a particularly difficult time for multilater-
alism, in the midst of renewed great power competition.
7
This forum article is organized in six thematic sections followed by a con-
clusion. The first section focuses on the three core principles of UN peace-
keeping –consent, impartiality and the (non-)use of force –reflecting on
3
This forum article is based on a workshop organized by the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH
Zurich and International Peacekeeping in Zurich on 12–13 June 2023. Some workshop participants
could not be listed as authors due work-related restrictions to publish.
4
Pugh, Security Studies: An Introduction, 2008, 293.
5
United Nations Peacekeeping, “International Day Of Peacekeepers,”https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/
international-day-of-peacekeepers-2023
6
Williams, How Peacekeepers Fight: Assessing Combat Effectiveness in United Nations Peace Operations,
2023, 32-65.
7
See also: Lyon et al., The 75th Anniversary of UN Peacekeeping: Introduction to a Special Issue of Global
Governance, 2023, 109-117.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 3
how the application of these principles has changed over time in peacekeep-
ing operations and on the implications of these changes.
The second section focuses on the rise of the ‘protection of civilians’norm
in contemporary UN peacekeeping operations. Following the early debates
on this norm in the context of the operations in the former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda, the UN mission in Sierra Leone in 1999 was mandated by
the UN Security Council to protect civilians under imminent threat of phys-
ical violence within its capabilities and areas of deployment. This became the
model for the language on protection of civilians in many subsequent man-
dates. This section discusses how successful UN peacekeeping operations
have been in implementing their protection of civilians responsibilities,
but also reflects on historical experiences and current challenges.
In the third section, we discuss activities associated with ‘the primacy of
politics’in peacekeeping operations, a phrase that was popularized by the
2015 High-level Independent Panel of Peace Operations (HIPPO). At the
core of UN peacekeeping has always been the idea that peacekeeping oper-
ations are deployed to support political processes. We reflect on how the
notion of ‘the primacy of politics’shapes the activities of contemporary
UN peacekeeping operations. We not only focus on national-level peace
negotiations and political processes involving government actors and
armed opposition groups, but also highlight peacekeepers’assistance to pol-
itical processes at the local level, as for example evident in UN peacekeeping
staffsupporting the resolution of communal conflicts.
We zoom in on the early warning capacity of UN peacekeeping operations
in the fourth section. Early warning has traditionally been lacking in UN
peacekeeping operations, but this capacity has steadily improved since the
early 2000s. This section is concerned with how successful UN peacekeeping
operations are in establishing effective early warning systems, as well as how
UN peacekeeping operations translate early warning into early action. We
also reflect on how an early warning system of the future may look like.
The fifth section is devoted to cooperation between the UN, regional
organizations and ad-hoc coalitions of states in the context of peace oper-
ations. We discuss the meaning and substance of partnership peacekeeping
and how it may develop in the future. We also review evidence on
whether UN peacekeeping operations are more effective when they work
together with other other organizations and reflect on current challenges
and opportunities for partnership peacekeeping, with a focus on the particu-
larly important relationship of the UN with the European Union and the
African Union.
Finally, we focus on the geopolitical context in which UN peacekeeping
operations take place and discuss the future of UN peacekeeping in the
sixth section. While the nature of UN peacekeeping has remained the
same –essentially being about external actors helping to manage armed
4A. DUURSMA ET AL.
conflict –the circumstances and character of UN peacekeeping changed con-
siderably with the end of the Cold War. Recently, the geopolitical context in
which peacekeeping takes place has drastically changed once more due to
global power shifts. This makes it important to reflect on the implications
for UN peacekeeping and on how the change in geopolitical context may
again change the character of UN peacekeeping.
The conclusion provides a summary and lists some of the most important
future challenges for UN peacekeeping staffand some questions for future
research. Indeed, it is our hope that this forum article will help shed light
on the most pressing challenges for UN peacekeeping staffand pave the
ground for future research on peacekeeping.
Consent, Impartiality and the (non-)use of Force
Emily Paddon Rhoads, John Karlsrud, Patryk I. Labuda, Salvator
Cusimano
8
& Allard Duursma
The principles of consent, impartiality and the (non-)use of force formed
the bedrock of peacekeeping operations,
9
but the application of these
principles has evolved over time in response to changing political, norma-
tive, and security contexts. Impartiality has long been regarded as the
‘lifeblood’of peacekeeping and the ‘heart and soul’of the Secretariat.
10
As a core norm of peacekeeping, it prescribes that UN officials should
be unbiased and informed when making decisions or acting. It is also
‘a claim to authority, premised not only on a lack of bias, but, critically,
on what UN officials are supposed to represent and further in the absence
of particular interests’.
11
Impartiality has become more challenging as conflicts have become more
complex and multi-faceted and the mandates of peacekeeping operations
expanded. While peacekeepers were traditionally limited to using force only in
self-defense,
12
peacekeepers took on a more proactive role following the end of
the Cold War, including through the use of force to defend the mandate and
deter spoilers who seek to derail peace processes.
13
Following the early 1990s pre-
cedents and from 1999 onwards, UN peacekeeping missions were also
8
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
9
UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and
Guidelines (“The Capstone Doctrine”),”https://doi.org/10.1080/13533310802396475.
10
Paddon Rhoads, Putting Human Rights up Front: Implications for Impartiality and the Politics of UN Peace-
keeping, 2019, 282.
11
Paddon Rhoads, E. (2016). Taking sides in peacekeeping: impartiality and the future of the United Nations,
2016, 25.
12
The United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) was a notable exception.
13
Fortna, Does peacekeeping work? Shaping belligerents’choices after civil war, 2008, 269-292.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 5
consistently mandated to use force to protect civilians.
14
Beginning in 2000, there
was a shift from a ‘passive’to an ‘assertive’conception of impartiality that
attempted to ground peacekeepers’authority in a more expansive set of values
that privileged the promotion and protection of human rights, seen in the protec-
tion of civilians (PoC) mandates.
15
As the Brahimi Report, published in 2000,
explained:
where one party to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating
its terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can in
the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to compli-
city with evil.
16
Related to the more expansive set of values that privilege the promotion and
protection of human rights in peacekeeping operations, there has been a
growing emphasis on state-building and stabilization. This has resulted in
ambitious mandates that lack the necessary means as well as the political
will of the UN Security Council (UNSC), host governments and troop-con-
tributing countries (TCCs), given rising geopolitical tensions, budget con-
straints, and contestation of underlying values.
17
Taking sides is not without risks for UN peacekeeping. Mandates author-
izing use of force against armed groups have in recent years led to concerns
about blurring the lines between peacekeeping and peace enforcement, and
the potential for peacekeepers to become parties to the conflict.
18
In short,
traditional notions of impartiality have been challenged by goals of stabiliz-
ation, support to state institutions, and PoC in contexts where both non-state
actors and elements of the state pose a threat to civilians. At the same time,
measures implemented to mitigate risks associated with such goals have also
led to charges of bias or interference, such as from host states in response to
the application of the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy.
19
As missions have been deployed in more hostile environments, there has
been an expansion in the use of offensive force.
20
Influenced by the evolving
NATO doctrine on stabilization, and a general trend towards counter-insur-
gency and counter-terrorism, a number of multidimensional UN peacekeeping
operations have, for the last two decades, been labeled as stabilization missions,
although there has been little clarity on what this means in theory or practice, as
14
Hultman, UN peace operations and protection of civilians: Cheap talk or norm implementation?, 2013, 59–
73; Bourgeois and Labuda, When May UN Peacekeepers Use Lethal Force to Protect Civilians? Reconciling
Threats to Civilians, Imminence, and the Right to Life, 2023, 1-65.
15
Paddon Rhoads 2016.
16
United Nations, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, A/55/305. S/2000/809.
17
Williams 2020; Paddon Rhoads and Welsh 2019.
18
Russo 2022.
19
Hirschmann, Cooperating with evil? Accountability in peace operations and the evolution of the United
Nations Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, 2020, 22–40.
20
Howard and Dayal, The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping, 2018, 71–103; Williams, How Peacekeepers
Fight: Assessing Combat Effectiveness in United Nations Peace Operations, 2023, 32-65.
6A. DUURSMA ET AL.
the 2015 Independent High-level Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) noted in
its report.
21
The UN has yet to define the concept of stabilization.
While there has been a trend towards stabilization and robustness in some
missions in the past two decades,
22
it is important to highlight that in prac-
tice, the use of deadly force, particularly in a proactive or preventive manner,
remains a relatively rare occurrence.
23
In fact, peacekeeping operations seem
more regularly subjected to scrutiny for failing to use force, by civilians, host
states, conflict parties, and the UNSC, which often call upon peacekeepers to
deploy force more readily.
Furthermore, no additional multidimensional UN peacekeeping oper-
ations have been deployed since 2014, and a growing number of observers
argue that the future of peacekeeping may lie in lighter, non-coercive oper-
ations, such as Special Political Missions (SPMs). By the same token, the
current Secretary-General’s vision articulated in the New Agenda for Peace
places more emphasis on robust regional operations and UN support to
these rather than deploying UN peacekeeping operations as such.
24
Yet, as
the example of SPMs or ad hoc coalitions have shown,
25
either eliminating
the use of force as in SPMs or unleashing supposed constraints on it as in
regional operations have done little to resolve the dilemmas facing inter-
national interventions in these contexts.
According to peacekeeping doctrine, the main parties to a conflict should
consent to peacekeeping. However, we can observe a long-term shift from
the consent of all the main parties in Cold War missions deployed to
inter-state wars to a focus on consent of the host state within post-1990s
missions deployed in intra-state wars. Peacekeeping operations should
obtain initial consent from the main relevant parties, but as in intra-state
conflicts only the host state’s consent is legally required, the UN is typically
mainly concerned with the consent of the host state. The main parties to the
conflict should demonstrate a willingness to resolve their differences through
political processes rather than through armed confrontation, as well as
acceptance of the role and functions of peacekeepers in facilitating this
process.
26
As a crucial partner in peacekeeping, it is widely recognized that
obtaining and retaining host state consent can significantly impact
21
United Nations, Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, Politics, Partnerships and the People, 2015; see also
Karlsrud, United Nations Stabilization Operations: Chapter Seven and a Half, 2019, 494-508.
22
Karlsrud, The UN at War: Examining the Consequences of Peace Enforcement Mandates for the UN Peace-
keeping Operations in the CAR, the DRC and Mali, 2015, 40-54; Karlsrud, From Liberal Peacebuilding to
Stabilization and Counterterrorism, 2019,1-21.
23
Bode and Karlsrud, Implementation in practice: The use of force to protect civilians in United Nations
peacekeeping, 2018, 458-485.
24
United Nations, Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 9: A New Agenda for Peace. 2023.
25
Reykers et al., Ad hoc coalitions in global governance: short-notice, task- and time-specific cooperationm
2023, 727-745.
26
Duursma et al., The Impact of Host-State Consent on the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping,Civil
Wars, 2023.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 7
whether peacekeepers successfully carry out their core duties.
27
Indeed, the
Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative of the UN Secretary-General in
2018 emerged in part from the recognition that large, multidimensional
operations faced waning host state consent, explaining the emphasis on pol-
itical processes and host country and community relations in the subsequent
Declaration of Shared Commitments and A4P + .
28
The UN’s dependence on host state consent for the deployment and con-
tinued presence of peacekeepers creates a number of dilemmas.
29
In particu-
lar, UN officials have often been reluctant to call out government abuses and
status of forces agreement (SoFA) violations for fear of straining relations
and further limiting access.
30
These dynamics have constrained the UN oper-
ationally and negatively impacted the mission’s perceived legitimacy and
ability to act as an impartial political arbiter.
31
Some argue that the UN’s
uncritical support to the state undercuts long-term efforts to build peace
and potentially implicates the UN in the permanency of illiberal regimes,
32
essentially becoming regime-support operations.
33
The importance attached to host state consent does not mean that the
consent of non-state armed groups and other stakeholders are irrelevant.
The acceptance of the presence of peacekeepers on the ground by all
parties to a conflict helps peacekeepers to implement the mandate and it
helps the peacekeeping leadership to fulfill its political role.
34
Without enjoy-
ing consent by armed groups, peacekeepers are likely to be obstructed from
implementing their mandate in areas controlled by non-state actors.
35
While
27
Johnstone, Managing consent in contemporary peacekeeping operations, 2011, 168–182; Sebastián and
Gorur, U.N. peacekeeping & host-state consent: how missions navigate relationships with governments.
Washington, 2018; Stimson Center and Duursma, Pinioning the peacekeepers: sovereignty, host-state
resistance against peacekeeping operations, and violence against civilians, 2021, 670–695; Passmore
et al., Consent in peacekeeping, 2022, 46–59.
28
United Nations Peacekeeping, Action for Peacekeeping+, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/action-
peacekeeping.
29
Labuda, With or Against the State? Reconciling the Protection of Civilians and Host State Support in UN
Peacekeeping, 2020.
30
On the risks inherent in confronting host governments, see Oksamytna et al., Theorizing Decision-
Making in International Bureaucracies: UN Peacekeeping Operations and Responses to Norm Violations,
2023.
31
Paddon Rhoads 2016; Russo, The Protection of Civilians and the Primacy of Politics: Complementarities
and Friction in South Sudan, Journal of International Peacekeeping, 2022, 1-32; Day and Hunt 2022;
Duursma, Pinioning the peacekeepers: sovereignty, host-state resistance against peacekeeping oper-
ations, and violence against civilians, 2021.
32
Von Billerbeck and Tansey, Enabling autocracy? Peacebuilding and post-conflict authoritarianism in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, 2019, 698–722; Day et al., Assessing the Effectiveness of the UN Mission in
South Sudan (UNMISS); De Coning, How Not to Do UN Peacekeeping: Avoid the Stabilization Dilemma
with Principled and Adaptive Mandating and Leadership, 2023, 152-167.
33
Bellamy and Williams, Trends in Peace Operations, 1947-2013, 2015; In Koops et al., The Oxford Hand-
book of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations; 14; See also Attree and Street, Redefining a UN peace
doctrine to avoid regime protection operations, 2020.
34
Duursma et al. 2023.
35
Duursma, Obstruction and intimidation of peacekeepers: How armed actors undermine civilian protection
efforts, 2019, 234–248.
8A. DUURSMA ET AL.
consent may be established formally at national level, peacekeepers are still
confronted with obstructions at the local level, including the violations on
the freedom of movement of UN personnel.
In addition to the different actors who give consent to peacekeeping, one
can identify a spectrum of acquiescence to the UN’s presence and mandate.
Although consent is often viewed in binary terms and is seen as a static
given –either it exists or it does not –it is actually dynamic and evolving
over time, and should be understood as a spectrum of possibilities within
a single mission, and according to the different actors involved. For instance,
Sebastián and Gorur propose a tri-partite model of strong, weak, and com-
promised consent, that goes beyond a binary understanding of consent, and
recognize that the same peacekeeping mission may fall under each of the
three ideal types at different times.
36
It becomes challenging for peacekeeping staffto conduct their activities in
a context in which consent is lacking.
37
Duursma et al. show, however, that
some protection of civilians activities, such as local peacebuilding efforts,
might still be possible in a context of compromised host-state consent.
38
Recognizing that peacekeeping missions cannot function without meaning-
ful consent, there is also growing attention within the UN on ‘UN tran-
sitions’
39
, suggesting a recognition that the mitigation of risks associated
with mission closures may be the most viable option in the face of contem-
porary consent challenges.
Peacekeeping missions face growing challenges relating to the global and
regional geopolitical landscape. In some missions, bilateral partners, regional
operations and even private military companies have displaced the UN as the
primary security provider, raising new challenges for the three core peace-
keeping principles. Growing disagreement among the UN Security Council
permanent members, as well as increased assertiveness from host govern-
ments –illustrated by Mali’s withdrawal of consent in June 2023 –have
placed great strain on the UN.
As UN peacekeeping operations have been deployed to increasingly
fraught situations, the principles of peacekeeping have come under pressure,
36
Sebastián and Gorur, U.N. peacekeeping & host-state consent: how missions navigate relationships with
governments, 2019. Similarly, several studies have reflected on how host-state consent can be
“devious”in the sense that government actors on paper consent to a mission, but in practice under-
mine it. See: Piccolino and Karlsrud, Withering consent, but mutual dependency: UN peace operations
and African assertiveness, 2019, 447–471; Duursma 2021.
37
Sebastián and Gorur, U.N. peacekeeping & host-state consent: how missions navigate relationships with
governments, 2018; Labuda, With or Against the State? Reconciling the Protection of Civilians and Host
State Support in UN Peacekeeping, 2020; Duursma et al. 2023.
38
Duursma et al. 2023.
39
UN Security Council, Transitions in United Nations peace operations: Report of the Secretary-General,
New York, S/2022/522; Kissling and Smidt, (UN-)protected Elections –Left for Good? Withdrawal of
United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and its Effects on Violence during Electoral Periods in
War-Affected Countries, 2023, 165-197.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 9
and frequently been broken. The three peacekeeping principles are clearly
interconnected in that (non-)adherence to one impacts respect for the
other principles. As host state consent has increased in importance, the
other two principles have been put under pressure, as witnessed with
MINUSMA in Mali.
Future Research
An important avenue for future research is how the deployment of parallel
regional operations, ad hoc coalitions and/or private security actors
influence perceptions of the impartiality of UN peacekeeping missions.
For instance, some regional operations have been deployed to engage in
counter-terrorism activities, and the UN is increasingly asked to provide
logistical and other types of support to such operations. Such regional mis-
sions raise the question of whether UN peacekeeping operations can truly
maintain their impartiality –or the perception of it required to continue
operating credibly –in theaters where parallel regional operations are
deployed, given the need to coordinate or meet demands to support such
operations. For instance, UN peacekeeping staffin Mali have shared infor-
mation on the locations of Jihadist armed groups with the French military,
which some argued made the UN a party to the conflict.
40
More generally,
some have argued that a growing ‘regionalization’of peace operations, ad
hoc coalitions, and closer host state relations with non-western states and
private military actors such as the Wagner Group further marginalizes exist-
ing UN missions because it reduces the UN’s political leverage, increases
opportunities for institutional exploitation, and invests legitimacy in a com-
parative advantages assumption without following up about the intended
and unintended consequences from ‘delegation’for the actors involved.
41
Over time, a more nuanced conceptualization of consent has emerged
within academia and the UN, encompassing not only formal legal authoriz-
ation by the host state for deployment of a peacekeeping operation but also
the consent of communities and conflict parties. Future research should
study differing levels of consent through time and in different peacekeeping
missions and vis-à-vis different mandated tasks. This type of research can
contribute to a better understanding of how to forestall or confront obstacles
40
Duursma, Information Processing Challenges in Peacekeeping Operations: A Case Study on Peacekeeping
Information Collection Efforts in Mali,2018, 446-468.
41
Gelot, Legitimacy, peace operations and global-regional security: The African Union-United Nations part-
nership in Darfur, 2012; Spandler, UNAMID and the Legitimation of Global-Regional Peacekeeping
Cooperation: Partnership and Friction in UN-AU Relations,2020, 187-203; Karlsrud and Reykers. Ad
hoc coalitions and institutional exploitation in international security: towards a typology, 2020,1518-
1536; Karlsrud, ’Pragmatic Peacekeeping’in Practice: Exit Liberal Peacekeeping, Enter UN Support Mis-
sions?, 2023,258-272; Karlsrud, ‘UN Peacekeeping Operations in a Multipolar Era’, 2023, 219-229.
10 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
to mandate implementation and possibly how to be effective in navigating
the political landscape.
Several studies have now examined how insufficient consent can under-
mine mandate implementation, but there is still little research on the
factors contributing to weak or deteriorating consent. Traditionally,
consent can be seen as deteriorating around contested political events like
elections and if peacekeepers implement protection of civilian activities
and human rights reporting. More recently, however, populations have
become critical of mission effectiveness, often arguing –alongside their
host governments –for more robust action against non-state actors. Some
UN peacekeeping missions struggle with perceptions of ineffectiveness,
which may be linked to the rise of the protection of civilians as a peacekeep-
ing objective and unmet expectations from civilians as to how much the UN
should do to protect them from threats. Given these new challenges, more
granular research would be needed on what causes problems with host gov-
ernments, how consent is distributed among the general population,
42
vari-
ations in consent at the local level reflecting the A4P + call for ‘[c]lear and
open dialogue with host countries, both government and communities’,
43
as well as policy recommendations on how to maintain consent and
enhance peacekeeping effectiveness. What kinds of mandates and peacekeep-
ing activities increase or decrease consent? What strategies can be used to
reach local populations and manage host-state perceptions of peacekeeping?
How does the use of force, short of deadly force (e.g. simple presence, obser-
vation posts, escorts, patrols, etc.) contribute to the impact of PKOs ident-
ified in the literature? How do present challenges to the principles of
peacekeeping differ from those facing past PKOs? What is the impact of
regional participation in political processes where PKOs are deployed on
the extent of challenges related to consent, impartiality, and use of force?
How does the co-deployment of regional and ad hoc coalitions with a coun-
terterrorism mandate affect UN peacekeepers?
Going forward it is likely that we see less multidimensional peacekeeping
and more SPMs and UN support missions to counter-terrorism operations
and multinational forces.
44
Will the principles of peacekeeping be applicable
to these missions, or is there a need to develop new doctrinal guidance? What
are the operational, doctrinal and moral consequences of UN support to e.g.
the Somali National Army or a multinational force in Haiti? How will such
operations impact on the rest of the Whole-of-UN system, both in-country
as well as a more long-term in terms of the legitimacy of the UN? These are
42
Dayal, A Crisis of Consent in UN Peace Operations,https://theglobalobservatory.org/2022/08/a-crisis-of-
consent-in-un-peace-operations/.
43
United Nations, A4P+: Priorities for 2021-23, 2023, 7.
44
Karlsrud, UN Peacekeeping Operations in a Multipolar Era, 2023.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 11
just some of the pressing questions that need further exploration, and which
will impact on the future of UN peacekeeping.
Protection of Civilians
Kseniya Oksamytna, Lisa Hultman, Charlie Hunt, Dennis
Gyllensporre
45
, Marco Donati
46
& Allard Duursma
During the Cold War, UN peacekeeping operations rarely took direct action
to protect civilians. An exception was the UN Operation in the Congo
(ONUC, 1960–1964). ONUC Force Commander communicated to his
troops that ‘where feasible, every protection was to be afforded to
unarmed groups subjected by any armed party to acts of violence likely to
lead to loss of life’.
47
The UN Security Council gave the first explicit
mandate to protect civilians to the UN mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR,
1993–1996), but only after UNAMIR was almost withdrawn amid the geno-
cide. When the Council belatedly reinforced the mission, UNAMIR was
instructed to ‘[c]ontribute to the security and protection of displaced
persons, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda’.
48
However, few capable
and rapidly deployable troops were provided by member states, and the
reinforced mandate made little difference in reality. A year before those
events, the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR, 1992–1995) received an
ambiguous mandate to ‘deter attacks against the safe areas’–a designation
the UN had given to besieged Bosnian Muslim towns. Yet the lack of
clarity on whether ‘safe areas’were to be defended by force contributed to
the Srebrenica tragedy. After those failures, the moral imperative for the
UN to protect civilians was stressed in a series of lessons-learned reports,
such as the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations
During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (1999) and the Secretary-General’s
report The Fall of Srebrenica (1999),
49
even though the UN Secretariat
initially harbored doubts about the feasibility of the PoC task for
peacekeepers.
50
The first mission to receive the now-familiar instruction to protect,
without prejudice to the host government’s primary responsibility, civilians
45
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
46
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
47
ONUC, Operations Directive no. 8, February 1961, reproduced in: Findlay, The Use of Force in UN Peace
Operations, 414.
48
UN Security Council, Resolution 965 (1994), 2.
49
Oksamytna, Advocacy and Change in International Organizations: Communication, Protection, and
Reconstruction in UN Peacekeeping, 2023.
50
Paddon Rhoads et al., Decorating the “Christmas Tree: The UN Security Council and the Secretariat’s Rec-
ommendations on Peacekeeping Operations, 2021, 226–50.
12 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
under imminent threat of physical violence in its area of deployment was the
UN mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
51
The UNSC also explicitly men-
tioned that it was acting under Chapter VII of the Charter when granting this
authorization.
52
This mandate was preceded by the first thematic resolution
on protection of civilians, Resolution 1265 (1999), which expressed the
Council’s readiness to address the negative impact of war on civilians.
Hence, the key distinction between UNAMSIL and its predecessors like
ONUC, which protected civilians through a creative interpretation of the
permission to use force in self-defense, and UNAMIR, which was mandated
merely to contribute to protection of civilians, was that UNAMSIL had the
first mandate to allow explicitly the proactive use of force to protect civilians
under imminent threat of physical violence. This, however, did not mean
that the mission was effective at providing protection immediately as it inter-
preted the phrase ‘within its capabilities’conservatively, and it also took
months for it to deploy throughout the entire country.
53
Yet, it was a
crucial step in establishing this task as an integral element of peacekeeping
practice.
The application of PoC has evolved and the ambitions have been cali-
brated.
54
Today, nearly all major UN peacekeeping missions have a
mandate to protect civilians.
55
This highlights how important civilian protec-
tion is to the UN. Indeed, former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described
it as the ‘defining purpose of the UN in the twenty-first century’.
56
And while
such cases are still rare, the UN Secretariat has sought to hold peacekeeping
leaders to account if peacekeepers under their command fail to protect civi-
lians, as demonstrated by the dismissal of UNMISS Force Commander,
Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki over ineffective response to the 2016 vio-
lence in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
57
While the protection of civilians is an incredibly challenging task –using
force to protect civilians from armed actors while maintaining impartiality –
UN peacekeeping has been successful in protecting civilians under certain
conditions. Multiple studies, using different methodological approaches
and focusing on different qualities of peacekeeping, have found that
51
On imminent threats, see Bourgeois et al., When May UN Peacekeepers Use Lethal Force to Protect
Civilians? Reconciling Threats to Civilians, Imminence, and the Right to Life, 2023, 1-65.
52
On Chapter VII authorization as a signal of UNSC’s political resolve, see Myths and Realities: Research
Report : Security Council Report,https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/research-reports/lookup-c-
glkwlemtisg-b-4202671.php.
53
Oksamytna (2023).
54
For example, in 2008, the UNSC called for MONUSCO to ensure POC (UNSCR 1856).
55
Hultman, UN peace operations and protection of civilians: Cheap talk or norm implementation?, 2013, 59–
73; Bellamy and Hunt, 2015; United Nations, The Protection of Civilians in United Nations Peacekeep-
ing: Handbook, 2020.
56
United Nations, Responsibility to Protect: Ban urges action to make UN-backed tool ‘a living reality’,
January 18, 2012.
57
Lundgren et al., ‘Politics or Performance? Leadership Accountability in UN Peacekeeping’, 2022,32–60.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 13
peacekeeping is effective in reducing violence against civilians. Some of the
positive findings concern the number,
58
diversity,
59
and quality of military
and police personnel.
60
Theoretically, this suggests that a greater capacity
to patrol and demonstrate presence and resolve, as well as the training and
tasks of the personnel, are important for the successful protection of civi-
lians.
61
While we have learned that larger deployments of peacekeepers con-
tribute to protecting civilians, we know less about the mechanisms behind
this.
62
One of the reasons is that most of the studies referred to above
tend to focus on the presence –and to a lesser extent the activities –of
armed military peacekeepers in particular, although there is a growing inter-
est in the contribution of other components to PoC.
For example, UN police (UNPOL) components have played important
roles in implementing PoC mandates. The first report of the UN Sec-
retary-General on PoC in 1999 recognized this, stating that protecting vul-
nerable populations required ‘civilian police activities’as well as those of
the military.
63
Indeed, the famous passage in the 2000 Brahimi Report on
PoC obligations of peacekeepers explicitly emphasized that police as well
as military peacekeepers are expected to act, noting: ‘[United Nations] peace-
keepers –troops or police –who witness violence against civilians should be
presumed to be authorized to stop it, within their means, in support of basic
United Nations principles’.
64
With PoC becoming more central to the design and focus of peace oper-
ations, UNPOL have been required to take on many new and additional tasks
to protect civilians. Developments such as providing internal security at ‘PoC
sites’in South Sudan, addressing election-related violence in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Mali, and operating under quasi-executive
authority in the Central African Republic have raised expectations and
created demand for protection activities that were hitherto unprecedented
for police peacekeepers.
65
Yet, the responses of UNPOL to PoC imperatives
have received little attention in the peacekeeping literature. This is a striking
gap in research since police –both Formed Police Units and Individual
Police Officers –make unique contributions to the implementation of PoC
58
Hultman, Kathman and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Hultman,
Kathman, and Shannon, Peacekeeping in the Midst of War; Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the
Killing During the ‘Peace’””.
59
Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue”; Bove, Ruffa and Ruggeri, Composing Peace.
60
Haass and Ansorg, “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection?”
61
Fjelde, Hultman and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence”; Phayal and Prins, “Deploying to Protect”;
Kjeksrud, Using Force to Protect Civilians.
62
For an exception, see Bove et al., Composing Peace.
63
UN 1999: para. 59
64
UN, 2000: para. 62
65
Hunt, Rhetoric versus reality in the rise of policing in UN peace operations: ‘More blue, less green’?, 2019,
609-27; Hunt, Protection through Policing: The Protective Role of UN Police in Peace Operations; Hunt, ’To
Serve and Protect’: The Changing Roles of Police in the Protection of Civilians in UN Peace Operations,
2022.
14 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
mandates. In the future, there is a need to systematically evaluate the effec-
tiveness of the role of UNPOL in POC and to take stock of what works and
what does not when police peacekeepers are required to contribute to PoC in
peacekeeping.
Civilian components also play crucial roles in preventing or mitigating
violence against civilians through dialogue and engagement, whether this
is through the good offices work of Heads of Field Offices and Political
Affairs or engagement with local authorities and communities by Civil
Affairs teams. Civil Affairs units also support community self-protection
mechanisms, such as the Community Alert Networks, that by boosting
early warning mechanisms contribute directly to the protection of civi-
lians from imminent threats. Strategic Communication sections also con-
tribute to preventing violence against civilians by promoting messages of
peace.
66
Moreover, civilian components contribute to a protective
environment by supporting institutional reforms. For instance, Security
Sector Reform units coordinate capacity-buildingsupporttohostgovern-
ment’s military and police forces, which bear the primary responsibility
for protection of civilians. Justice and Correction officials also contribute
to the strengthening the capacity of the host state to address violence
through the judicial system and fighting impunity, which also contributes
to a protective environment. Human Rights units provide detailed report-
ing to UN headquarters in New York and Geneva, enabling UN member
states to put pressure on the host government if it engages in violence
against civilians –a type of violence that military and police peacekeepers
struggle to address.
Overall, everybody in a peacekeeping operation, including the civilian
staff, military, and the police, plays a role in protecting civilians. Dedicated
personnel, including Protection of Civilians Advisors, support the
implementation of this mandate and ensure that PoC concerns are appropri-
ately mainstreamed and prioritized within the mission. Protection of Civi-
lians Advisors perform advisory, coordination, monitoring, and reporting
roles. Specifically, the Senior Protection of Civilians Advisor is responsible
for working with mission components to develop and regularly update
PoC threat assessments, establishing PoC coordination structures, and sup-
porting the development of a mission-wide PoC strategy.
In spite of the crucial role of civilian components in peacekeeping mis-
sions, there is relatively little research that looks at civilian peacekeepers in
a systematic and cross-mission manner.
67
Recent exceptions include
66
Oksamytna, Policy Entrepreneurship by International Bureaucracies: The Evolution of Public Information in
UN Peacekeeping,2018, 79-104; Di Salvatore et al., Can Information Campaigns Enhance Civilians’Pro-
tection in Civil Wars, 2023.
67
For an exception, see Duursma and Smidt, Peacekeepers Without Helmets: How Violence Shapes Local
Peacebuilding by Civilian Peacekeepers, 2023.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 15
studies that demonstrate that civilian peacekeeping staff(as well as UN
police) play a crucial role in contributing to the rule of law,
68
and that the
number of civilian personnel has a more significant positive influence on
democratization in the host country than the number of uniformed person-
nel in missions that have a mandate to support democracy.
69
Other studies
demonstrate that the involvement of UN civilian staffin local peace process
makes the recurrence of communal rioting and armed clashes less likely,
70
and increases the likelihood that local ceasefires are concluded.
71
Recent
studies have also investigated the effect of peacekeepers’non-military activi-
ties on reducing violence and promoting peace.
72
This is an important devel-
opment, considering that research has shown that peacekeepers rarely use
force,
73
and Howard suggests that the power of peacekeeping works best
through non-coercive mechanisms.
74
To the credit of the UN, peacekeeping missions have developed mission-
wide strategies for the implementation of PoC mandates linking the work of
military, police, and civilian components. Indeed, the UN defines PoC
broadly as a wide set of ‘integrated and coordinated activities by all civilian
and uniformed mission components to prevent, deter or respond to threats
of physical violence against civilians, within the mission’s capabilities and
areas of deployment, through the use of all necessary means, up to and
including deadly force’.
75
The UN’s operational concept for protection of
civilians, initially elaborated in 2010 and updated in the 2020 PoC
Handbook, has three tiers: protection through dialogue and engagement,
provision of physical protection, and establishment of a protective
environment.
Challenges
Against the backdrop of an overwhelming amount of evidence that UN
peacekeepers help to reduce violence against civilians, it is nevertheless
also important to ask what the limitations of POC are. First, as already
68
Blair, Peacekeeping, Policing, and the Rule of Law after Civil War.
69
Blair et atl., “UN Peacekeeping and Democratization in Conflict-Affected Countries”,2023.
70
Smidt, United Nations Peacekeeping Locally: Enabling Conflict Resolution, Reducing Communal Violencem
2020, 2-3.
71
Duursma, Making disorder more manageable: The short-term effectiveness of local mediation in Darfur,
2021, 554–567; Duursma, Peacekeeping, Mediation, and the Conclusion of Local Ceasefires in Non-State
Conflicts, 2022
72
Campbell and Di Salvatore, Keeping or Building Peace? UN Peace Operations beyond the Security Dilem-
mam 2023; Smidt, Mitigating election violence locally: UN peacekeepers’election-education campaigns in
Côte d’Ivoire, 2023, 199–216.
73
Bode and Karlsrud Implementation in practice: The use of force to protect civilians in United Nations
peacekeeping, 2019, 458–485. See also: Bellamy, et al., Using Force to Protect Civilians in UN Peace-
keeping, 2021,143-70.
74
Howard, Power in Peacekeeping, 100.
75
UN Handbook on POC, 2020: 3
16 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
stated in the previous section on the principles of peacekeeping, the effective-
ness of POC is dependent on host state consent.
76
Research also indicates
that the UN is more prone to respond to violence by rebel groups than by
government actors,
77
thereby prioritizing maintaining government consent
over protection from all types of threats.
78
Second, some of the current large missions face severe challenges in the
form of violence against peacekeepers, where armed actors accuse the UN
of bias or interference.
79
Resistance can also take the form of obstruction
and intimidation, which also undermines the mission’s ability to protect civi-
lians effectively.
80
Sometimes, peacekeepers are threatened and prevented
from accessing certain areas by the local population, possibly due to disinfor-
mation against the UN.
81
To cater for physical protection of civilians in high
risk environments, appropriate capabilities, training, and political support
from UNSC are needed to also ensure the safety of the peacekeepers. It is
also important to account for the unintended effects of peacekeepers’pres-
ence as there are secondary risks to the population as retaliatory attacks
can occur to punish cooperation between civilians and the UN personnel,
82
an increase in criminal violence,
83
or issues of sexual exploitation and
abuse.
84
Third, another persistent challenge is that peacekeeping operations
often lack the resources and capacity to effectively protect civilians in
conflict zones. To successfully prevent attacks against civilians the peace-
keepers need to have the ability to rapidly deploy to the affected area, both
in terms of deployment to the host country and the deployment to the
area experiencing violence within the host state.
85
However key enabling
76
Duursma, Pinioning the peacekeepers: sovereignty, host-state resistance against peacekeeping operations,
and violence against civilians, 2021, 670–695; Duursmae et al., The Impact of Host-State Consent on the
Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping, 2023.
77
Fjelde et al., Protection Through Presence: UN Peacekeeping and the Costs of Targeting Civilians. Inter-
national Organization, 2019, 1-29.
78
On this and other possible negative unintended consequences of the PoC mandate, see: Day and Hunt,
Distractions, Distortions and Dilemmas: The Externalities of Protecting Civilians in United Nations Peace-
keeping, 97-116.
79
Salverda, Blue helmets as targets: A quantitative analysis of rebel violence against peacekeepers, 1989–
2003, 2013, 707–720; Lindberg Bromley, Introducing the peacemakers at risk dataset, Sub-Saharan
Africa 1989–2009, 2018, 122–131.
80
Duursma, Obstruction and intimidation of peacekeepers: how armed actors undermine civilian protection
efforts, 2019, 234–248.
81
On disinformation against peacekeepers, see Oksamytna, Public Information and Strategic Communi-
cations, in Handbook of Peacekeeping and International Relations, 148–62; Trithart, Disinformation
against UN Peacekeeping Operations, 2022.
82
Hunt, All necessary means to what ends? the unintended consequences of the ‘robust turn’in UN peace
operations, 2017, 108-31.
83
Di Salvatore, “Peacekeepers against Criminal Violence”.
84
Lee and Bartels, “‘They Put a Few Coins in Your Hand”.
85
Ruggeri et al., On the Frontline Every Day? Subnational Deployment of United Nations Peacekeepers.
British Journal of Political Science, 2018, 1005-1025; Lundgren et al., Only as Fast as Its Troop Contribu-
tors: Incentives, Capabilities, and Constraints in the UN’s Peacekeeping Response, 2021, 671–86.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 17
capabilities, such as, for instance, air assets, uncrewed aerial systems,
reconnaissance units, and explosive ordnance removal teams, remain per-
sistentgapsthatneedtobefilled.
86
Furthermore, TCCs may differ in their
interpretation of the mandate or the rule of engagement and therefore
choose not to use force to protect civilians.
87
The sheer scope of the
PoC task in geographically large countries where host state security
forces lack the capacity to protect makes PoC highly challenging. There
are often inflated expectations of what peacekeepers can achieve, which
sometimes leads to protests demanding the withdrawal of peacekeeping
missions, paradoxically because they are not providing enough protection.
The UN has no capacity to put a ‘peacekeeper behind every tree’.
88
What
the UN can do, however, is to manage expectations better through its stra-
tegic communications stressing that PoC is the primary responsibility of
the host government.
89
Fourth, even if peacekeepers have the capacity to act, they might not
always be aware where violence against civilians is likely to take place.
While peacekeeping-intelligence plays a key role in protection of civilians,
90
the ability to anticipate attacks is still limited. Research on how new technol-
ogies, in particular artificial intelligence, can support the UN on various
aspects of PoC could provide important contributions to future peacekeep-
ing operations.
91
These issues are explored in greater detail in the section on
early warning.
In sum, in spite of PoC having become a core component of UN
peacekeeping mandates, there have been challenges in implementing
this task, including due to wavering host state consent, violence
against peacekeepers, a lack of capacity, and difficulties in maintaining
comprehensive situational awareness. Nevertheless, scholarly evidence
clearly suggests that UN peacekeeping missions contribute to the protec-
tion of civilians.
86
The gaps are recorded in the Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System (PCRS), https://pcrs.un.
org. For a discussion of how the UN used PCRS to facilitate rapid deployment and fill
capability gaps, see Coleman, Lundgren, and Oksamytna, “Slow Progress on UN Rapid
Deployment”.
87
Paddon Rhoads, 2016; Breakey and Dekker, Weak Links in the Chain of Authority: The Challenges of Inter-
vention Decisions to Protect Civilians, 2014, 307-323.
88
Bellamy et al., Twenty-First Century Un Peace Operations: Protection, Force and the Changing Security
Environment, 2015, 1277–98.
89
Donais and Tanguay, Doing less with less? Peacekeeping retrenchment and the UN’s protection of civilians
agenda, 2020, 65–82.
90
Duursma (2017)Counting Deaths While Keeping Peace: An Assessment of the JMAC’s Field Information
and Analysis Capacity in Darfur, International Peacekeeping, 823-847; Brûlé and Myriam, Finding the
UN way on Peacekeeping-Intelligence, 2020.
91
Sarfati, New Technologies and the Protection of Civilians in UN Peace Operations, 2023.
18 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
The Primacy of Politics
Allard Duursma, Sara Hellmüller, Janek Bruker, Susanna Campbell,
Marco Donati
92
, Valentin Geier, Dennis Gyllensporre
93
, Jenna Russo,
& Hannah Smidt
Supporting political solutions has always been a primary goal of UN peace-
keeping operations in that peacekeeping was originally conceptualized as
using military approaches as a means to achieve political ends. Howard
and Dayal aptly note that the founding fathers of UN peacekeeping in
1948 had the ‘strange but simple idea’to ‘use military troops not to fight
and win wars, but to help implement peace accords’.
94
While traditional peacekeeping operations rarely had active good offices
mandates, the principle of ‘the primacy of politics’has been reinvigorated
in recent years, not least against the background of increasingly robust man-
dates discussed in the previous section. ‘The primacy of politics’theme was
popularized by the publication of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace
Operations (HIPPO) report in 2015. It highlights the importance of peace-
keepers to support a political process:
Lasting peace is not achieved nor sustained by military and technical engage-
ments, but through political solutions. The primacy of politics should be the
hallmark of the approach of the United Nations to the resolution of conflict,
during mediation, the monitoring of ceasefires, assistance to the implemen-
tation of peace accords, the management of violent conflicts and longer-
term efforts at sustaining peace
95
The 2018 Action for Peacekeeping Declaration (A4P) similarly emphasizes
the need to pursue political solutions to armed conflicts, further committing
UN peacekeeping operations to ‘stronger engagement to advance political
solutions to conflict and to pursue complementary political objectives and
integrated strategies’.
96
In practical terms, this means that working
towards political solutions should guide the design and implementation of
other mandated tasks.
Yet, political primacy in peacekeeping can mean different things to
different people. As articulated by Russo and Mamiya, there are at least
three non-exclusive understandings of the primacy of politics within UN
peacekeeping.
97
First, in some contexts, it is contrasted with peacekeeping
approaches that drift towards peace enforcement and/or the militarization
92
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
93
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
94
Howard et al., The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping, 2018, 71.
95
United Nations, Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, Politics, Partnerships and the Peoplem, 2015.
96
United Nations, Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations, 2018.
97
Russo and Mamiya, The Primacy of Politics and the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping, 2022.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 19
of mission mandates while in other contexts, it is contrasted with mandates
that have too many tasks that do not fit together into a coherent political
strategy
98
and may therefore be less implementable.
99
Second, it can be
used to refer to the broader political approach, in which peacekeeping is
but one tool that is used to address a conflict. This second perspective
places more emphasis on the role of the UN Security Council in advancing
a political solution, with the peacekeeping operation acting in service of this
approach. Finally, at the mission level, the primacy of politics can refer to the
political work of an SRSG to advance some type of an agreement between the
conflict parties towards the cessation of hostilities and longer-term peace.
The primacy of politics is often reflected in mediation mandates of UN
peacekeeping operations. While other UN actors, regional and state actors
can offer their good offices, UN peacekeeping operations often also facilitate
political dialogue and attempt to resolve conflicts. Such mediation efforts can
help to bring parties to the negotiating table, find common ground, and build
trust.
100
This can lead to the conclusion of peace agreements that have the
potential to provide a basis for sustainable peace or support the implemen-
tation of a peace agreement. The importance of mediation mandates has
increased in recent years: While 33.3% of all peacekeeping operations had
mediation mandates in 1991-2000, it increased to 40% and 60% in 2001–
2010 and 2011–2020 respectively.
101
Further quantitative evidence suggests
that mediation in the context of peacekeeping operations positively contrib-
utes to lowering levels of violence, the conclusion of peace agreements, and
ending armed conflicts.
102
In addition to mediation efforts, UN peacekeeping operations can support
political processes in other ways. This can include providing funding and
technical assistance to strengthen the capacity of domestic institutions,
including promoting human rights and the rule of law, supporting the devel-
opment of democratic institutions, and facilitating the equitable distribution
of socio-economic goods.
103
In particular, Campbell and Di Salvatore show
98
Peacekeeping missions established in the early 1990s included an average of 5.8 tasks per mandate,
while operations established in the 2010s have had on average 20.8 tasks at the outset. Di Salvatore
et al., Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (PEMA) Dataset, 2022, 924–51. Available at: https://
peacemandates.com.
99
Blair et al., When Do UN Peacekeeping Operations Implement Their Mandates?, 2022, 664-680.
100
Hellmüller, Knowledge Production on Mediation: Practice-Oriented, but not Practice-Relevant, 2023,
1847–1866; Beardsley et al., Mediation Style and Crisis Outcomes. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2006,
58–86; Duursma, African Solutions to African Challenges: The Role of Legitimacy in Mediating Civil
Wars in Africa, 2020, 295-330.
101
These numbers include mediation at the local level. See Hellmüller and Tan, United Nations Peace
Mission Mandates (UNPMM) Dataset, 2021.
102
Beardsley et al., Mediation, Peacekeeping, and the Severity of Civil War; DeRouen and Chowdhury,
Mediation, Peacekeeping And Civil War Peace Agreements, 2018, 130-146; Clayton and Dorussen, The
effectiveness of mediation and peacekeeping for ending conflictm 2021; Duursma, Peacekeeping,
Mediation, and the Conclusion of Local Ceasefires in Non-State Conflicts, 2022.
103
Hellmüller et al., What is in a mandate? Introducing the United Nations Peace Mission Mandate
(UNPMM).
20 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
that peacekeeping operations support inclusive peace when operating under
predominantly peacebuilding mandates that enable them to help sustain host
governments’commitment to implementing inclusive policies. They argue
that the focus of peace processes on redistributing resources to marginalized
groups creates an inherent implementation problem: the same political actors
who are supposed to implement these redistributive reforms are also the
actors who are most likely to lose out from their implementation. Campbell
and Di Salvatore argue that UNPO peacebuilding capacity addresses this
implementation problem by mobilizing political support for the implemen-
tation of redistributive reforms and filling the government capacity gaps
necessary to implement these reforms.
104
Furthermore, several recent studies demonstrate that UN peacekeeping
operations can positively influence the quality of elections after war.
105
These findings are important because elections are a prominent feature of
war-to-peace transitions as they can confer legitimacy on post-war govern-
ments and allow citizens to have a say in public affairs.
106
Since the end of
the Cold War, elections have also become a ‘core business’of multidimen-
sional peacekeeping operations.
107
Most evidence suggests that peacekeepers
can help reduce electoral violence
108
and, under certain conditions, even
improve the quality of democracy.
109
Several mechanisms may explain this
result. First, the local deployment of blue-helmeted soldiers may protect
polling stations, election workers and candidates.
110
Second, civilian peace-
keepers can assist in the organizations of elections, thereby preventing delays
and manipulation and reducing electoral conflicts.
111
Finally, peacekeepers
assist electoral security through voter education, enabling voters to punish
104
Campbell and Di Salvatore, Keeping or Building Peace? UN Peace Operations beyond the Security
Dilemma, 2023.
105
Smidt, Keeping electoral peace: The impact of UN peacekeeping activities on election-related violence,
2021, 580-604; Fjelde and Smidt, Protecting the Vote? Peacekeeping presence and the risk of electoral
violence, 2022, 1113-1132.
106
Brancati et al., Time to Kill: The Impact of Election Timing on Postconflict Stability, 2022, 822-53;Flores
et al., The Effect of Elections on Postconflict Peace and Reconstruction, 2012, 558-70.
107
Smidt, Keeping electoral peace: The impact of UN peacekeeping activities on election-related violence,
2021, 580-604.
108
Smidt, Mitigating election violence locally: UN peacekeepers’election-education campaigns in Côte
d’Ivoire, 2020, 199-216; Smidt, Keeping electoral peace: The impact of UN peacekeeping activities on elec-
tion-related violence, 2021, 580-604; Fjelde and Smidt, Protecting the Vote? Peacekeeping presence and
the risk of electoral violence, 2022, 1113-1132.
109
Birger, Peacekeeping Operations and Transitions to Democracy, 2011, 47-71; in Fjelde et al., Building
Peace, Creating Conflict; Blairet al., UN Peacekeeping and Democratization in Conflict-Affected Countries,
1-19; For failure of democracy promotion by peacekeepers in DR Congo, see: von Billerbeck et al.,
Enabling autocracy? Peacebuilding and post-conflict authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, 2019, 698-722.
110
Fjelde and Smidt, Protecting the Vote? Peacekeeping presence and the risk of electoral violence, 2022,
1113-1132.
111
Lührmann, United Nations electoral assistance: More than a fig leaf?, 2019, 181-96; Smidt, Keeping elec-
toral peace: The impact of UN peacekeeping activities on election-related violence, 2021, 580-604.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 21
coercive electoral strategies; for instance, by not voting for candidates that
orchestrate or order violence.
112
Beyond the impact that peacekeeping operations may have on political
processes at the national level, peacekeepers are increasingly involved in
local level formal and informal political processes. There is, for instance, a
growing recognition that political solutions are equally important when it
comes to ending communal conflicts taking place on the local level. While
the UN has faced criticism for not responding to local conflicts,
113
several
reports indicate that UN peacekeeping personnel, at least in more recent
years, frequently provide support for conflict management at the sub-
national level. Specifically, in communal conflicts between different
groups, UN staffhave been working towards maintaining social cohesion
and preventing civilian casualties.
114
A body of academic literature is starting
to emerge that highlights that UN peacekeeping staffare effective in prevent-
ing and ending armed violence in local conflicts
115
, as well as contribute to
the conclusion of local ceasefires.
116
Indeed, at the Field Office level UN peacekeepers have been playing a
critical role in leveraging their knowledge and relations with local stake-
holders (including through the deployment of Community Liaison Assist-
ants) and their access to logistic and military assets helps to generate space
for dialogue between communities and parties in conflict. This has been par-
ticularly the case when addressing intercommunal conflicts, which are not
only intertwined with and manipulated by power dynamics at the
national/regional level, but also driven by competition for scarce resources
and fueled by identity narratives.
117
For instance, in South Sudan and
Central African Republic the peacekeeping missions were able to work
with herder and farmer communities to regulate the migration of cattle to
reduce incidents that have sparked in the past a lethal cycle of violence. In
many cases, these efforts were focused on revitalizing traditional agreements
112
Mvukiyehe and Samii, Promoting Democracy in Fragile States: Field Experimental Evidence from Liberia,
2017, 254-67; Smidt, Mitigating election violence locally: UN peacekeepers’election-education campaigns
in Côte d’Ivoire, 2020, 199-216.
113
For example, see: Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of Inter-
national Peacebuilding, 2010.
114
Brockmeier and Rotmann. Civil Affairs and Local Conflict Management in Peace Operations;O’Bryan and
Hellmüller, The Power of Perceptions: Localizing International Peacebuilding Approaches, 2013, 219-32;
O’Bryan, Rendtorff-Smith, and Donati, The Role of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in Addressing
Local Conflicts: A Study of Practice, 2017.
115
Blattman et al., How to Promote Order and Property Rights under Weak Rule of Law? An Experiment in
Changing Dispute Resolution Behavior through Community Education 2014, 100-120; Smidt, United
Nations Peacekeeping Locally: Enabling Conflict Resolution, Reducing Communal Violence, 2019, 344-
372; Duursma, Making Disorder More Manageable: The Short-Term Effectiveness of Local Mediation in
Darfur, 2021, 554-567; Duursma, Peacekeeping, Mediation, and the Conclusion of Local Ceasefires in
Non-State Conflicts, 2022.
116
Duursma, Peacekeeping, Mediation, and the Conclusion of Local Ceasefires in Non-State Conflicts, 2022.
117
United Nations, The Role of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in Addressing Local Conflicts,
2017.
22 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
and promoting a confidence building process that would allow them to work
anew rather than introducing foreign approaches.
118
Similarly, in Ituri, the
daily endeavour of Community Liaison Assistants reknitting basic levels of
trust amongst key local actors has allowed dialogue amongst the different
communities to resume and negotiate local political solutions.
119
The
enabling role played by peacekeepers in these instances relies on the same
principles of consent of the parties and impartiality that guide peacekeeping
in general, but also on the careful application of the principle of inclusivity,
since broad-based support is a must for local agreements more than for elite-
based deals in capitals. These efforts at the local level are tantamount to local
peacebuilding and do use some of its incentives such as small investments
through Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) or Programmatic Funding as well
as the coordinated intervention of other UN and non-UN actors. In this
regard, the increased engagement of the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) in
conflict-affected settings is helping to fill a gap between the peace and secur-
ity and development space. However, these local peace agreements remain
vulnerable to relapse if not carefully integrated into the broader effort to
also seek political solutions to the national and often regional conflict
dynamics.
120
As shown, the growing involvement of UN peacekeeping staffin local
conflicts is mostly due to the necessity to address inter-communal violence,
often closely intertwined with national conflict dynamics, that in many set-
tings became the leading cause of civilian casualties. In this regard it is the
protection of civilians imperative –as well as the actual presence at the sub-
national level –that has led peacekeepers to become increasingly engaged in
addressing local conflict dynamics. ‘Elevating’these efforts from reducing
violence at the local level to making peace locally linked up then with calls
to being more ‘people-centered’and the ‘turn towards the local’in peace-
building.
121
Yet, it is also, in some cases, a result of the UN being edged
out of national level processes. In some cases, where the UN does not have
a clear role to play at the national level, it adopts a strategy of ‘more peace
at any level’, as termed by the former SRSG of UNMISS.
122
While mediation
by the UN has become more difficult to implement at the national level in
recent years due to withering consent from host-states –as evident in
118
United Nations, Preventing, Mitigating and Resolving Transhumance-related Conflicts in UN Peacekeep-
ing, 2020.
119
Duursma, Non-state conflicts, peacekeeping, and the conclusion of local agreements, 2022,138-155;
Hellmüller, A Trans-Scalar Approach to Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: Insights from the Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo, 2021, 415-432.
120
Duursma, Non-state conflicts, peacekeeping, and the conclusion of local agreements, 2022,138-155.
121
Mac Ginty and Richmond, The Local Turn in Peace Building: a critical agenda for peace, 2013, 763-83.
122
Russo, Protecting Peace? Analyzing the Relationship Between the Protection of Civilians and Peace in UN
Peacekeeping Settings, 2022; Russo and Mamiya, The Primacy of Politics and the Protection of Civilians,
2022.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 23
South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo –some recent research
suggests that the UN can effectively support local peace processes even in
contexts where host-state consent is compromised.
123
The UN would then do well to consider how to structure local-level pol-
itical strategies that connect its field offices to one another and to the country
headquarters. The framing of these local-level engagements as PoC rather
than as political engagements limits these connections. There is not always
an understanding of how local level political processes –including actions
undertaken by UN field offices –connect with the national level, even
though in some contexts, they are inextricably linked. In this regard,
UNMISS in South Sudan has made a conscious effort to understand interlin-
kages between local and national dynamics and stakeholders, using its good
offices in the capital to reduce tensions at the local level. Yet, sometimes local
level political processes present opportunities for greater impact by UN
peacekeepers, as there is more room for individual agency, flexibility, inno-
vative solutions, and they are less bogged down by the ‘heavy’nature of
national level processes.
124
Future Research
The above indicates four interesting avenues for further research. First, it
points to a need for a better understanding of a broad conceptualization of
the ‘primacy of politics’. We observe that while UN peacekeeping operations
are increasingly tasked with mediation and good offices mandates, this has
become more difficult to implement in recent years due to withering
consent from host-states. In some contexts, like CAR or DR Congo, the
respective governments aim to limit the political role the UN missions
play.
125
In addition, non-state armed groups may not necessarily see the
UN as an honest broker if it has engaged in stabilization actions against
them.
126
Against this background of the UN’s declining formal role in pol-
itical processes at the national level, understanding its role at the local
level is important. Policy and academic research should seek to understand
how informal and local-level political engagement helps to create a condu-
cive environment for broader peace that may eventually ‘trickle up’to the
national level.
127
123
Duursma et al. 2023.
124
UN Mediation Support Unit, UN Support to Local Mediation: Challenges and Opportunities, 2022; Russo
and Mamiya, The Primacy of Politics and the Protection of Civilians, 2022.
125
Hellmüller and Keller, Mediation in Peacekeeping Contexts: Trends and Challenges for Mission Leader-
shipm 2023; Duursma et al. 2023.
126
Hellmüller and Keller, Mediation in Peacekeeping Contexts: Trends and Challenges for Mission Leader-
shipm 2023.
127
This can be challenging. See: Duursma, State Weakness, a Fragmented Patronage-Based System, and
Protracted Local Conflict in the Central African Republic,2022.
24 A. DUURSMA ET AL.
Another important question for future research is to what extent the effec-
tiveness of UN diplomacy in political processes benefits from the military
force within peacekeeping missions.
128
This question is particularly relevant
in light of an overall shift away from peacekeeping operations towards pol-
itical missions that can be observed in recent years. The last peacekeeping
operation, albeit with no military component, was deployed in 2017 to
Haiti (MINUJUSTH), as a small follow-up mission to earlier missions. At
the same time, the UN Security Council deployed five new political missions
(special political missions and special envoys) between 2017 and 2020 (e.g. to
Yemen, Burundi, Colombia, Myanmar, Mozambique). While sometimes
deployed side by side, such as in Cyprus or Lebanon, in countries where
this is not the case the question arises whether the UN will be able to play
a positive role in the political processes in these countries without being
able to draw on the military capacity that comes with the deployment of
UN peacekeeping operations.
Third, an important question is whether potential positive effects of
peacekeeping for political processes hold after their exit.
129
Recent analyses
suggest that peacekeepers’exit from subnational locations creates a security
vacuum and increases political violence generally. Yet, withdrawals have no
effect on electoral security locally.
130
What remains to be seen is whether the
positive effects of election assistance and democracy promotion hold in oper-
ating environments of UN peacekeeping operations, where armed conflict is
ongoing, disinformation campaigns target peacekeepers, and the consent of
the government and large parts of the population are uncertain. How elec-
tion assistance can be designed to work in these contexts is an important
avenue for future research.
Finally, another avenue for future research is how climate variability
affects communal conflicts and the role UN peacekeeping staffcan play in
promoting political solutions to mitigate the negative effects of climate varia-
bility. In many host countries, communities are highly vulnerable to climate
change impacts due to their livelihoods’reliance on renewable natural
resources like water and fertile land as well as the detrimental consequences
of armed conflict for local resilience.
131
While recent scholarship suggests
that climate variability can increase the risk of local violence in these
128
For instance, Duursma and Gamez find that UN civilian staffare more successful in initiating nego-
tiations in non-state conflicts when a higher number of military personnel is deployed. Duursma
and Gamez, Introducing the African Peace Processes (APP) dataset: Negotiations and mediation in inter-
state, intrastate and non-state conflicts in Africa, 2022; Smidt and Duursma, Peacekeepers Without
Helmets: How Violence Shapes Local Peacebuilding by Civilian Peacekeepers, 2023.
129
Gledhill, The Pieces Kept after Peace is Kept: Assessing the (Post-Exit) Legacies of Peace Operations, 2023,
1-11.
130
Kissling and Smidt, (UN-)protected Elections –Left for Good? Withdrawal of United Nations Peacekeeping
Operations and its Effects on Violence during Electoral Periods in War-Affected Countries, 2023, 165-197;
Blaire et al., UN Peacekeeping and Democratization in Conflict-Affected Countries, 1-19.
131
Buhaug and von Uexkull, Vicious Circles: Violence, Vulnerability, and Climate Change, 2021, 545–568.
INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 25
contexts
132
, we continue to have limited systematic knowledge on how it may
affect local political processes. With the UN increasingly taking steps