International Peacekeeping

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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 (2023) UN Peacekeeping at 75: Achievements, Challenges, and
Prospects, International Peacekeeping, 30:4, 415-476, DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2023.2263178

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2023.2263178

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INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING
2023, VOL. 30, NO. 4, 415–476
https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2023.2263178

UN Peacekeeping at 75: Achievements, Challenges,

and Prospects
Allard Duursmaa, Corinne Baraa, Nina Wilénb,c, Sara Hellmüllera,
John Karlsrudd, Kseniya Oksamytnae†, Janek Brukera, Susanna Campbellf,
g†
Salvator Cusimano , Marco Donatig , Han Dorussen h
, Dirk Druet i
,
i a j,k‡ l⁋
Valentin Geier , Marine
†
Epiney , Valentin
†
Geier , Linnéa Gelot ,
Dennis Gyllensporrel , Annick Hienschg , Lisa Hultmanm, Charles T. Huntn,o,
Rajkumar Cheney Krishnang, Patryk I. Labudap, Sascha Langenbacha,
Annika Hilding Norbergq, Alexandra Novosseloffr, Daniel Orieseks, Emily
Paddon Rhoadst, Francesco Rea, Jenna Russou, Melanie Sauterv,
Hannah Smidtw, Ueli Staegerx and Andreas Wengera
a
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; bUniversity of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; cEgmont Royal
Institute for International Relations, Brussels, Belgium; dNorwegian Institute of International
Affairs, Oslo, Norway; eCity, University of London, London, UK; fAmerican University,
Washington, D.C., USA; gUnited Nations, New York City, USA; hUniversity of Essex, Colchester,
UK; iMcGill University, Montreal, Canada; jInstitut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals,
Barcelona, Spain; kUniversity of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany; lSwedish Defence University,
Stockholm, Sweden; mUppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; nRMIT University, Melbourne,
Australia; oUnited Nations University Centre for Policy Research, Tokyo, Japan; pUniversity of
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; qGeneva Centre for Security Policy, Geneva, Switzerland;
r
Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2), Paris, France; sSwiss Armed Forces, Switzerland;
t
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, USA; uInternational Peace Institute, New York City, USA;
v
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; wUniversity of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; xUniversity
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

CONTACT Allard Duursma [email protected]

†
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).
© 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.
416 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 417

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.
418 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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
staff supporting 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
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 419

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 staff and 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 staff and 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
Cusimano8 & 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.
420 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 421

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.
422 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 423

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 staff to 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.
424 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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 staff in 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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 425

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.
426 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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
Gyllensporre45, Marco Donati46 & 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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 427

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.
428 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 429

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-building support to host govern-
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.
430 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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 staff in 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
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 431

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.
432 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

capabilities, such as, for instance, air assets, uncrewed aerial systems,
reconnaissance units, and explosive ordnance removal teams, remain per-
sistent gaps that need to be filled.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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 433

The Primacy of Politics

Allard Duursma, Sara Hellmüller, Janek Bruker, Susanna Campbell,
Marco Donati92, Valentin Geier, Dennis Gyllensporre93, 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 peace95

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.
434 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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
strategy98 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).
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 435

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 violence108 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.
436 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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 staff have 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 staff are effective in prevent-
ing and ending armed violence in local conflicts115, 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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 437

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 staff in 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.
438 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

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.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 439

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 staff can 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 staff are 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.
440 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

contexts132, we continue to have limited systematic knowledge on how it may

affect local political processes. With the UN increasingly taking steps to
improve the climate-sensitivity of its peacekeeping operations133, including
through ‘climate-informed mediation’,134 this topic has immediate relevance
for peacekeepers in the field. Future research could also address how local-
level peace processes may be affected by climate change impacts such as
increasing climate variability or more frequent natural disasters.
Overall, the primacy of politics in UN peacekeeping operations is essential
to achieve lasting peace. Military force can at best reduce the virulence of the
conflict, but it cannot address the underlying issues that gave rise to the
conflict in the first place. By emphasizing political solutions and supporting
political processes, the UN can help to build the foundations for sustainable
peace at all levels.

Early Warning
Dirk Druet, Sascha Langenbach, Andreas Wenger, Francesco Re,
Melanie Sauter, Rajkumar Cheney Krishnan135, Daniel Oriesek136,
Allard Duursma & John Karlsrud
UN peacekeepers need to have adequate information and situational aware-
ness to anticipate armed clashes between conflict parties and threats to civi-
lians.137 With this in mind, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the former Under-
Secretary-General for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, describes
peacekeeping in his memoir as ‘a never-ending exercise in risk management
and decision-making in an environment of uncertainty’.138 The need for ade-
quate information and situational awareness has also been recognized in
several prominent UN reports. For instance, the final report of the High-
Level Implementation Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) recommended
in 2015 that new technologies introduced in the field should aim to
improve early warning.139 Similarly, the 2020 Protection of Civilians Hand-
book of the UN notes that efficient and proactive decision-making on
132
Koubi, Climate Change and Conflict. Annual Review of Political Science, 2019, 343–360.
133
Scartozzi, Climate-Sensitive Programming in International Security: An Analysis of UN Peacekeeping
Operations and Special Political Missions, 2022, 488–521.
134
UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, The Implications of Climate Change for Mediation
and Peace Processes, 2022.
135
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
136
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the Swiss Armed Forces.
137
Duursma et al., Predictive Peacekeeping: Strengthening Predictive Analysis in UN Peace Operations, 2019,
1–19.
138
Guéhenno, The Fog of Peace: A Memoir of International Peacekeeping in the 21st Century, 2015.
139
United Nations, Uniting Our Strengths for Peace, Politics, Partnerships and the Peoplem 2015, 3.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 441

protection of civilians requires the systematic use of early warning, peace-

keeping-intelligence, information acquisition, and assessment tools.140
In spite of the clear need for early warning and situational awareness in
UN peacekeeping, this has traditionally been lacking in peacekeeping oper-
ations. In an assessment of how UNPROFOR could not prevent the Srebre-
nica massacre, Deputy Force Commander Major-General Barry Ashton
emphasized that operations ‘were frequently impaired by a lack of credible
and dedicated intelligence means’.141 UNAMIR Force Commander Lieute-
nant-General Roméo Dallaire writes in his memoir on the Rwandan geno-
cide in 1994 that he had ‘no means of intelligence on Rwanda’ and further
notes that he and his staff ‘always seemed to be reacting to, rather than antici-
pating, what was going to happen’.142
It is only since relatively recently that the UN peacekeeping operations
have designated information analysis units. Specifically, in 2005-2006, the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations made significant strides in estab-
lishing information-gathering and analysis structures by introducing the
Joint Operations Centre (JOC) and Joint Mission Analysis Centre
(JMAC).143 These entities are responsible for gathering and analyzing infor-
mation to guide the leadership of peacekeeping missions. The JOC serves as a
centralized hub for information at the mission’s headquarters, facilitating
situational awareness through integrated reporting on current operations
and day-to-day situation reporting. On the other hand, JMACs act as a stra-
tegic planning body, primarily supporting senior management in analyzing
the security landscape and political context.144
In addition, the UN Civil Affairs section has innovated early warning in
peacekeeping. Civil Affairs Officers serve as the primary interface between
the mission and local communities, building relationships with a wide
range of actors, including local government officials, traditional leaders,
civil society organizations, media, and IDPs. Following mishaps that had
hindered protection responses because of the failure to tap into local knowl-
edge, the UN mission in the DRC in 2010 introduced the category of Com-
munity Liaison Assistants (CLAs), who are civil affairs national staff working
alongside the UN military forces to better engage with local communities,
build trust and improve situational awareness with the aims of improving
early warning. Since then, CLAs have been collecting information on

140
United Nations, The Protection of Civilians in United Nations Peacekeeping, 23.
141
Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995: The Role of the Intelligence and Security Services,
2003, 11.
142
Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, 90, 104.
143
UN DPKO, Policy Directive: Joint Operations Centres and Joint Mission Analysis Centres, 2006.
144
Shetler-Jones, Intelligence in Integrated UN Peacekeeping Missions: The Joint Mission Analysis Centre,
2008; Norheim-Martinsen and Ravndal, Towards Intelligence-Driven Peace Operations? The Evolution
of UN and EU Intelligence Structures, 2011; Duursma, Counting Deaths While Keeping Peace: An Assess-
ment of the JMAC’s Field Information and Analysis Capacity in Darfur, 2017, 823-847.
442 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

threats to civilians in several UN peacekeeping missions, contributing to pre-

venting and mitigating these threats to civilians through a whole-of-mission
approach.145 CLAs also manage Community Alert Networks (CANs) in
several missions through providing telephones and credit to key contacts
and widely distributing emergency telephone numbers. In some instances,
with the help of Quick Impact Project (QIP) funding, radio networks have
been established to support the CANs.146
UN peacekeeping operations have also made progress in terms of coordi-
nating between different sections and units within a mission. Realizing that
effective early action in UN peace operations relies on coordination among
various mission components, the JOC has been tasked with integrating situa-
tional awareness and coordinating Protection of Civilians (POC) efforts
through established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). However, as
the JOC primarily focuses on immediate threats, a complementary role is
played by the Strategic Planning Unit (SPU). The SPU’s responsibilities
encompass policy framework development, strategic planning, advising
mission leadership, monitoring reform implementation, budget coordi-
nation, and outcome measurement.147 Although SPUs serve a vital strategic
function, they are typically understaffed, even in major UN missions. A case
study in MINUSMA illustrates the positive impact of investing more
resources and personnel into the SPU. In 2018, MINUSMA expanded its
SPU, facilitating collaboration among POC advisers, military, police, and
other mission personnel. This holistic planning approach proved invaluable
when MINUSMA responded to escalating violence against civilians in
central Mali in 2019. The SPU spearheaded the campaign, coordinating mili-
tary operations to enhance security, civil engagement with community
members, and cooperation with development and humanitarian actors.
This integrated planning approach helped MINUSMA protect civilians
more effectively, breaking down silos in analysis and planning, linking
threat analysis with operational decisions, and aligning field office activities
with the mission’s overall strategic objectives.148
Different sections and units within a peacekeeping operation also collab-
orate on conducting patrols. For instance, in line with the whole-of-mission
approach, Joint Projection Teams (JPTs) were introduced in MONUC in the
Democratic Republic of Congo in early 2009. JPTs are typically deployed
temporarily to assess local dynamics and develop localized protection
plans. These teams comprise sections and units related to civilian protection,

145
UNDPKO, Civil Affairs Handbook, 144; Brockmeier and Rotmann, Civil Affairs and Local Conflict Man-
agement in Peace Operations, 2016, 34.
146
Kullenberg, Community Liaison Assistants: A Bridge between Peacekeepers and Local Populations, 46.
147
United Nations. Protection of Civilians in United Nations Peacekeeping Handbookm 2020, 7.
148
Spink, Strengthened Planning in UN Peacekeeping Operations: How MINUSMA Is Reinforcing Its Strategic
Planning Unit, 2019, 3.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 443

such as Civil Affairs, Political Affairs, Human Rights, Child Protection,

Public Information, and UNPOL, with Civil Affairs taking on the role of
coordination.149 In specific instances, like MONUC in the DRC, JPTs con-
centrated their efforts on filling gaps in field-level data collection and analy-
sis, thus contributing to early warning and situational awareness.150 In short,
early warning has traditionally been lacking in UN peacekeeping operations,
but this capacity has steadily improved since the early 2000s as a result of,
among others, the creation of designated information collections and analy-
sis units, the hiring of local staff, and greater coordination and cooperation
among different units and sections within peacekeeping operations.
One area in which the UN could still make progress is tapping into data for
early warning. With the increasing availability of conflict data and the advance-
ment of technology, peacekeeping operations could leverage data analytics to
detect patterns and anomalies and even try to predict conflict events ahead
of time.151 To explore the latter possibility, the UN Operations and Crisis
Centre (UNOCC) in New York and the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at
ETH Zurich entered into a joint research collaboration in December 2021.
The aim of the collaboration is to combine conflict-event records from the
UN’s internal Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE) database
with state-of-the-art methods from machine learning. Since SAGE was not
designed with machine learning in mind, and since event-prediction for
conflict zones remains a nascent field of research, both parties decided to
begin with a pilot project, in order to map opportunities and challenges.
Another type of data-driven early warning method that could be explored
is to use remote sensing based on publicly available and freely accessible sat-
ellite imagery. Utilizing satellite images offers several advantages. Firstly,
these images are independent of political dynamics within the country,
ensuring unbiased information. Secondly, satellite images can cover an
entire country. Some communities may be too dangerous for CLAs to
operate in or may not wish to engage with peacekeepers. Moreover, national
military or police presence may be lacking in certain areas. Furthermore,
peacekeeping missions often struggle with staffing issues, including long
absences due to rest and recuperation periods and lengthy recruitment pro-
cesses.152 Additionally, satellite images are regularly updated, providing a
consistent stream of data for analysis.

149
UNDPKO, Civil Affairs Handbook, 144.
150
Holt et al., Protecting Civilians in the Context of UN Peacekeeping Operations: Successes, Setbacks and
Remaining Challenges, 196.
151
Duursma and Karlsrud, Predictive Peacekeeping: Strengthening Predictive Analysis in UN Peace Oper-
ations, 2019; Duursma, Mapping Data-Driven Tools and Systems for Early Warning, Situational Aware-
ness, and Early Action 2021; Sauter et al., Spatio-Temporal Incident Mapping: A Data-Driven Tool to
Advance the Protection of Civilians during Force Operations.
152
Sauter et al., Spatio-Temporal Incident Mapping: A Data-Driven Tool to Advance the Protection of Civi-
lians during Force Operations.
444 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

For instance, satellite imagery can be employed to measure changes in

vegetation, which serves as an indicator of regions affected by drought.
This information is crucial as climate change and droughts are often con-
sidered threat multipliers impacting conflict dynamics. Particularly in the
case of communal violence, which frequently involves territorial disputes
over arable land or water sources, understanding and forecasting the severity
of drought in a region becomes highly relevant. Considering that many
peacekeeping missions are deployed in areas where communal violence pre-
vails, integrating remote sensing and satellite imagery into the early warning
system can potentially enhance the effectiveness of peacekeeping efforts.153
With the UN Secretary-General’s Data Strategy,154 there is now a push
within the UN towards data-driven early warning. This has led to some con-
cerns about the potential risks of an emphasis on technological applications
to early warning, understood as applications that can process data in real
time and send alerts, acting as a kind of panic button when bad things are
imminent. Such a data-driven approach can be contrasted with an approach
based on a human intelligence, involving a more sustained effort to detect
early symptoms of relations breaking down and political dynamics shifting
that would allow to put in place preventive strategies. Broadly defined,
human intelligence refers to information collected through personal inter-
actions, interviews, and observations. The introduction of CLAs and
CANs in some UN peacekeeping operations is a good example of the UN
trying to make use of human intelligence. The positive impact of CLAs on
early warning and situational awareness demonstrate that it is essential for
peacekeeping operations to gather information from local communities
and stakeholders to understand the local context, tensions, and underlying
drivers of conflicts and to protect civilians.155
Another important reason why data-driven early warning should be seen
as an additional tool and not replace human intelligence efforts is that an
over-reliance on near-real time situational awareness risks failing to
capture the reality that day-to-day violence and other security incidents
are increasingly challenging peacekeeping missions at a higher level.156
Trends in the weakening of host-state consent, the deployment of the
Wagner Group in CAR and Mali, and the persistent failure of the UN to
address the economic drivers of violence today present a political context
in which belligerents use force – or the threat of force – selectively to

153
Sauter et al., Go where you are needed: Improving early warning systems in UN peacekeeping through
remote sensing data.
154
UN Secretary-General, Data Strategy of the Secretary-General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere with
Insight, Impact and Integrity, https://www.un.org/en/content/datastrategy/index.shtml.
155
Duursma, Mapping Data-Driven Tools and Systems for Early Warning, Situational Awareness, and Early
Action; Sauter, Melanie, Sebastian Frowein, and Marcello Cassanelli. 2020, pp. 17-21.
156
Druet, Commodities, Commanders and Corruption: Political Economy in the Evolving Tradecraft of Intel-
ligence and Analysis in UN Peace Operations, 2023.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 445

constrain the ability of peacekeeping missions to address the most pressing

threats to the achievement of PoC mandate, the maintenance of safety and
security for peacekeepers, and the viability of peacekeeping enterprise
more generally.157
Some of the most salient recent examples of these trends have occurred in
CAR and Mali, where combined-host state and Wagner Group forces have
systematically denied missions’ access to mining sites and other economic
flash points of violence and have prevented them from investigating
alleged atrocities against civilian that, in turn, have exacerbated ethnic ten-
sions and escalated intercommunal violence. The inability of missions to
access these sites and their unwillingness to confront host state and
Wagner forces has undermined their capacity to respond tactically by
placing hard and unambiguous limits on where peacekeeping missions are
able to go and the types of threats they are able to deter or defeat. They
have fundamentally constrained missions’ abilities to reduce key drivers of
violence.158
In this changing context, early warning of discrete events is no less necess-
ary but is less and less sufficient as a frame through which to focus the UN’s
efforts to improve mission responses to violence. This is important because,
to date, the majority of surveillance, analysis and information management
efforts have been geared toward tactical and operational decision-making.
This focus has heavily influenced the acquisition of new tools and technol-
ogies and has taken up a significant fraction of the UN’s limited institutional
capacity to deliver the complex organization transformations required to
deploy new tools and approaches.
For peacekeeping’s early warning agenda and infrastructure to meet
today’s challenges, information gathering and analysis tools must adapt
increasingly strong links between discrete, day-to-day events and the UN’s
strategic positioning within the political and threat environment. This
requires a reconfiguration of the relationship between tactical situational
awareness and strategic analysis, including at the cross-border and geopoli-
tical levels. By using both human intelligence and data, peacekeeping oper-
ations can potentially build a more complete picture of the situation on the
ground and anticipate potential threats before they escalate. Early warning
systems that leverage both human intelligence and data-driven approaches
can potentially provide peacekeeping operations with a more accurate and
timely understanding of the local context and help them take proactive
measures to prevent violence and protect civilians. Such an approach

157
Druet, Wagner Group Poses Fundamental Challenges for the Protection of Civilians by UN Peacekeeping
Operations, 2023; International Crisis Group, What Future for UN Peacekeeping in Africa after Mali Shut-
ters Its Mission?, 2023.
158
International Crisis Group, What Future for UN Peacekeeping in Africa after Mali Shutters Its Mission?,
2023.
446 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

ensures that data-driven approaches are not used in isolation and that
human intelligence and political analysis remain crucial components of
early warning systems.
An example of a peacekeeping mission where staff used both data and
human intelligence is KFOR. Peacekeeping staff within KFOR have in the
past used weather forecasts for the next 1–2 weeks, to predict the emergence
of water scarcity. Since water scarcity often acted as a conflict trigger in
Kosovo, this predictive approach empowered the mission to proactively
identify hot-spots, validate them through patrols and key leader engagement,
and ideally take preemptive measures, such as dispatching water tankers,
before conflicts erupt among affected populations in specific areas.159
Finally, obtaining relevant early warning and enhancing situational
awareness is important, but it is equally, if not more, important to translate
this information into early action. As a former senior UN diplomat pointed
out in this regard, early warning is not an end in itself: ‘Early warning
without early and effective action would only serve to reinforce stereotypes
of UN fecklessness, of its penchant for words over deeds’.160 There have tra-
ditionally been two major challenges in terms of translating early warning
into early action. First of all, the relevant units and sections within a peace-
keeping mission need to be aware of the early warning. An internal report on
peacekeeping operations across the UN found that early warning is a crucial
factor in determining the speed of protection responses, but early warnings
do not always reach the relevant peacekeeping staff.161 Secondly, an effective
response to early warning requires coordination between the different parts
of a peacekeeping mission.
The turn to a whole-of-mission approach has contributed to greater
coordination. Moreover, UN peacekeeping operations have been imple-
menting policies to link early warning to rapid responses in recent years.
An important step forward was taken by MINUSMA in June 2020, when
it adopted its new standard operating procedures for early warning and
rapid response, as well as introduced a new tool for the coordination of
POC-related responses, referred to as the Early Warning Tracking Form.
This form prescribes an adequate mission response to plausible physical
threats to civilians. The form not only helps to rapidly verify and disseminate
early warning information, it also helps to monitor whether a rapid response
is undertaken. When an early warning is issued, each of the relevant

159
Practical experience by Dr. Daniel F. Oriesek, Col (GS) Swiss Armed Forces, Former Chief of Operations
and Assessment JRD-North, Kosovo.
160
Statement by Luck, Informal Interactive Dialogue on Early Warning Assessment and the Responsibility
to Protect, United Nations General Assembly, 9 August 2010.
161
Office of Internal Oversight Services, Inspection of the Performance of Missions’ Operational Responses
to Protection of Civilians, 2018
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 447

components of a peacekeeping mission need to record the actions they have

taken.162
In conclusion, the need for early warning and situational awareness in UN
peacekeeping is paramount, as underscored by various reports and practical
experiences. Despite historical deficiencies in this regard, significant progress
has been made over the years. The establishment of information analysis
units like the JOC and JMAC, as well as the incorporation of CLAs and
CANs, have enhanced early warning capabilities. To advance even further,
the UN could explore data-driven approaches, such as utilizing satellite
imagery and machine-learning methods based on peacekeeping data, to esti-
mate where and when armed violence is likely to take place in order to
inform peacekeeping activities to respond and reduce violence.163
However, it is essential to strike a balance between data-driven approaches
and human intelligence efforts, considering the evolving nature of conflicts
and the strategic positioning of peacekeeping missions. Ultimately, the aim
is not just to gather information but to translate it into early and effective
action, a challenge that requires awareness within mission units and coordi-
nation. The adoption of new procedures and tools, like the Early Warning
Tracking Form, represents steps in the right direction, contributing to
early warning leading to timely and appropriate responses.

Partnership Peacekeeping
Corinne Bara, Linnéa Gelot, Annick Hiensch164, Alexandra
Novosseloff, Ueli Staeger, Nina Wilén
The UN has never been the only peacekeeping actor. Throughout the history
of UN peacekeeping, regional organizations, coalitions of states, and even
individual states have deployed ‘impartial’ forces to conflicts worldwide.165
With almost 77,000 uniformed personnel as of May 2023, the UN still has
more peacekeepers on the ground than all other organizations together,
but the upcoming withdrawal of the large UN missions from Mali
(MINUSMA) the DRC (MONUSCO) may soon change that situation.166
162
Smith, Early Warning and Rapid Response: Reinforcing MINUSMA’s Ability to Protect Civilians, 2023;
Duursma and Karlsrud, Narrowing the Warning–Response Gap: Technology, Coordination, and the Pro-
tection of Civilians in UN Peace Operations; Hirblinger et al., Forum: Making Peace with Un-Certainty:
Reflections on the Role of Digital Technology in Peace Processes beyond the Data Hype, International
Studies Perspectives, 2023.
163
Duursma and Karlsrud, Predictive Peacekeeping.
164
The views expressed in this forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of all authors or the views
of the United Nations.
165
UN-non-UN partnerships began to be delineated in the mid-1990s, Boutros-Ghali, Beyond Peacekeep-
ing, 1992, 113-122; Knight, Towards a Subsidiarity Model for Peacemaking and Preventive Diplomacy:
Making Chapter VIII of the UN Charter Operational, 1996, 31–52.
166
United Nations, Contribution of Uniformed Personnel to UN by Mission and Personnel Type, 2023; Pfeifer,
Multilateral peace operations in 2022: Developments and trends, 2023.
448 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

This development was foreshadowed in a 2015 statement by then-Secretary

General Ban Ki-moon that we have ‘entered an era of partnership peacekeep-
ing’.167 Since these words, the UN has not deployed a single new military
peacekeeping operation, compared to more than ten such missions by
other organizations.
This trend may continue for the foreseeable future, not only because a
divided Security Council has stifled the UN’s role as primary guarantor of
peace and security, but also because concomitant security pressures on the
European continent make the idea of each region being responsible for its
own peacekeeping more attractive. For research on peacekeeping to
remain relevant, it needs to adapt to these new realities. Peacekeeping scho-
lars, especially those employing quantitative methods, have for long priori-
tized UN missions due to the availability of detailed data on personnel,
troop contributing countries, and mandates.168 The body of quantitative
research on the characteristics and the effectiveness of missions by other
peacekeeping actors is still scattered, though new datasets have recently
opened up avenues for mixed methods and comparative approaches in the
study of these missions.169
The new research agenda on UN peacekeeping partnerships will be aided
by more conceptual clarity regarding the term partnership peacekeeping. At
current, it is used – also by the UN – to denote a wide range of collaboration
arrangements, of which the three most common forms are: support
packages, where the UN supports a regional operation with technical,
financial, or logistical assistance; sequential operations, whereby the UN
and a partner deploy after one another; and parallel operations, the contem-
poraneous deployment of a UN mission and a non-UN partner in the same
theater. Even these parallel operations take on many forms.170 Sometimes the
partner mission is large, while the UN has only a small political mission, as in
Iraq or Afghanistan. At other times a large UN mission is supported by a
small partner operation, as is often the case for EU missions. Yet another
manifestation are military partner missions that bolster the UN response
in critical situations, such as Operation Artemis and EUFOR in the DRC
in 2003 and 2006. Finally, Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR)
are examples where both the UN and other organizations or states
(France) were present with large missions at the same time.

167
UN Security Council, Partnering for peace: moving towards partnership peacekeeping, 2015, 17.
168
For a recent review of findings, see Walter et al., The Extraordinary Relationship between Peacekeeping
and Peace, 2021, 1705-1722.
169
Bara and Hultman, Just Different Hats? Comparing UN and Non-UN Peacekeeping, 2020, 341-368;
Kroeker, Where do Peacekeepers go? Unpacking the Determinants of UNSC-Authorized Peace Operation
Deployments, 2023.
170
Novosseloff and Sharland, Partners and Competitors: Forces Operating in Parallel to UN Peace Oper-
ations, 2019.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 449

Such parallel deployments are common, affecting about a third of all

months during which the UN is deployed to active conflicts.171 While they
are arguably the most immediate way of partnering in peacekeeping,
actual coordination between the partners is often minimal. Individual mis-
sions have different mandates and objectives, and there is a lack of under-
standing of the operational constraints of the partner organization and
relatedly, little information sharing. A major UN concern is that host com-
munities are occasionally unable to distinguish between the UN and parallel
forces.172 Actions by a partner mission can undermine the legitimacy of the
UN, with downstream effects on the security of its peacekeepers. This is a
moral dilemma for the UN: it needs to delegate counterterrorism and
peace enforcement tasks to regional organizations and ad-hoc coalitions of
states but is wary of potential adverse effects on its credibility.173
Despite these challenges of parallel operations, a recent study finds that
this form of partnership peacekeeping works well to reduce battlefield vio-
lence.174 It shows, for instance, that while the UN is effective alone, UN
troops with parallel non-UN forces can reduce battlefield violence more
effectively, that is, with fewer blue helmets. The authors also find that
non-UN missions need a UN partner to curb battle violence at all, which
the authors explain with the UN’s multidimensional engagement, which
may offset the negative effects of an all-too militarized approach to violence
reduction that is common in many of the larger non-UN missions. While
more research is needed to validate the authors’ findings and extend them
to other effectiveness criteria beyond battle violence, the findings – together
with the entire body of research on the effectiveness of UN missions – imply
that regional and coalition peacekeeping can support the UN, but not replace
it. In other words, we should not expect non-UN missions to be able to make
up for an absence of UN multidimensional peacekeeping.
This, of course, prompts the question of what partnership peacekeeping
will even come to mean should the current trend towards fewer UN and
more regional and ad-hoc missions continue. As already indicated, the
term partnership peacekeeping was never limited to situations in which
UN and non-UN forces are deployed together, but it surely has to mean
more than just delegating peacekeeping to others. Instead, the Secretary-
General’s report on partnering for peace from 2015 states clearly that
partnership peacekeeping requires a minimum of cooperation and

171
Schumann and Bara, A New Era: Power in Partnership Peacekeeping, 2023, 8.
172
Novosseloff and Sharland, Partners and Competitors.
173
The “New Agenda for Peace” explicitly recommends that “where peace enforcement is required, [the
UNSC should] authorize a multinational force, or enforcement action by regional and subregional
organizations.” United Nations, Our Common Agenda Policy Brief: A New Agenda for Peace, https://
dppa.un.org/en/a-new-agenda-for-peace.
174
Schumann and Bara, A New Era: Power in Partnership Peacekeeping, 2023.
450 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

harmonization.175 But the same developments that make it difficult to get

authorization for new UN missions have also made the effective manage-
ment of partnerships with regional actors harder. Since the end of the
Cold War, the large majority of peace operations by organizations other
than the UN have been authorized or at least recognized (‘judged comp-
lementary to the UN’s goals by the Security Council’) by the UN.176 Will
this continue to be true in a more fragmented geopolitical landscape, or
will we see more regional and ad-hoc coalitions not only going it alone,
but also without the UNSC’s blessing?
The utility of a Security Council resolution to guide peacekeeping partner-
ships should not be underestimated, particularly when multiple organiz-
ations respond to a crisis. In Kosovo, for instance, Resolution 1244 (1999)
was crucial in coordinating various entities and activities.177 It put Kosovo
under UN administration through the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK),
and authorized the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR). It also became the foun-
dation for the OSCE mission focusing on democracy and human rights, and
later the EU Rule of Law Mission (EULEX). Essentially, Resolution 1244
acted as a blueprint for the collaboration between multiple organizations
who contributed security, civil administration, humanitarian assistance,
institution-building and economic reconstruction. If the type of mixed
sequential and parallel multi-actor peacekeeping that we have seen in Mali
(UN, ECOWAS, EU, France, Group of 5 Sahel Joint Force) or the Central
African Republic (UN, AU, ECCAS, EU, France) is becoming the norm,
research should explore the UNSC’s role in coordinating these efforts,
whether or not the UN has blue helmets on the ground or not.178
In the future, we may see a further proliferation of regional actors who
offer peacekeeping. In the New Agenda for Peace, launched in July 2023,
UN Secretary-General António Guterres not only emphasizes the need for
strong peacekeeping partnerships with existing organizations, but also
offers support for building and rebuilding regional frameworks where
there are not yet any.179 An important discussion and also avenue for
further research in this context concerns the competitive advantages of
different actors. Different organizations and states have unique peacekeeping
strengths, organizational cultures and normative frameworks, and may be
better at certain mandates and tasks than others. This specialization
prompts questions about which partners the UN should collaborate with

175
UN Security Council, Partnering for peace: moving towards partnership peacekeeping, 2015, S/2015/229.
176
Bellamy and Williams, Trends in Peace Operations, 1947-2013, 20-21.
177
UN Security Council, Resolution 1244 (1999) / adopted by the Security Council at its 4011th meeting,
10 June 1999.
178
Welz, Multi-actor peace operations and inter-organizational relations: insights from the Central African
Republic, 2016, 568-591.
179
United Nations, Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 9: A New Agenda for Peace, https://dppa.un.org/en/a-
new-agenda-for-peace, accessed 4 September 2023.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 451

based on conflict needs and context, and the unique contribution each actor
brings to the table. Because if the UN’s effectiveness indeed stems from its
multidimensional engagement,180 there are two ways in which other actors
could make up for a dwindling number of such multidimensional UN mis-
sions in the future: The first is that non-UN missions become more like the
UN by expanding their toolbox of non-military peacekeeping measures.181
Alternatively, multiple regional organizations, coalitions and states together
provide a multidimensional response according to every organizations’
strengths and expertise.
In terms of existing peacekeeping partnerships, the cooperation between
the UN and the EU, and between the UN and the AU, have been among the
most significant processes, and have accordingly been at the centre of
research into partnership peacekeeping. The UN-EU partnership has over
time transitioned from relatively close operational cooperation to a more
political one. In the first decade after the emergence of the EU’s Common
Security and Defense Policy, cooperation with the UN helped the EU to
develop and test its crisis management instruments on the ground. The
EU served, for instance, as an exit strategy for the UN in Bosnia and in
Chad. It has also, at the request of the UN, undertaken short-term military
stabilization efforts in the DRC and CAR, which required deep and meaning-
ful cooperation and regular institutional dialogue. As the EU has moved
towards more niche activities, for instance in training and capacity building,
deep cooperation with the UN is more limited and less needed.182
The UN-AU partnership is vital since nearly half of all armed conflicts
since the AU’s founding in 2002 occurred in Africa, and almost all new
UN missions in the same time have been on the African continent.183
While the majority of the close to 40 African-led peace operations launched
since then have been led by the AU, an increasing number of missions are led
by the regional economic communities (like ECOWAS) and other ad hoc
coalitions (such as the G5 Sahel Joint Force and the Multinational Joint
Task Force fighting Boko Haram).184 This fragmentation entails both oppor-
tunities and challenges. Some see it as a sign that security practices in Africa
adapt precisely to the present conflict dynamics often times subsumed under
the category ‘violent extremism’. However, the increased preference of

180
Schumann and Bara, A New Era.
181
See also Akpasom, What Role for the Civilian and Police Dimensions in African Peace Operations?, 105–
19.
182
See Novosseloff, United Nations – European Union Cooperation in the Field of Peacekeeping: Challenges
and Prospects, 2012.
183
United Nations Peacekeeping, Where we Operate, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-we-
operate.
184
Olonisakin and Ero, The United Nations and Regional Security: Europe and Beyond; Döring, The changing
ASF geography: From the intervention experience in Mali to the African Capacity for Immediate Response
to Crises and the Nouakchott Process, 32-58; Maglia et al., ADHOCISM dataset: an introduction.
452 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

African states for hybrid security governance arrangements is also a chal-

lenge to the AU’s authority. We can expect institutional lines to be
redrawn and reinvigorated debates about what constitutes appropriate
‘African solutions’.185 This tumultuous period will undoubtedly impact the
partnership between the UN and the AU as the African diplomatic commu-
nity enacts African peace and security interests. Despite contestation, the
partnership has produced basic mutual understanding and recognition
among groupings of practitioners.
Research has yet to catch up with these changing power dynamics. A
promising avenue is to employ the prism of the so-called local turn in UN
peacekeeping research also to peacekeeping practices by regional actors.
This entails moving from assessing peacekeeping partnerships at the stra-
tegic level towards research into tactical level field politics. Studying local
agencies and experiences of non-UN mission effects reveals alternative
knowledge about partnership peacekeeping.186 Similarly to the scholarship
on UN missions, such work would help question external assumptions
about appropriate benchmarks for mission performance.187 The host popu-
lation’s resistance, for instance, tells us a lot about the limitations of neigh-
bourhood peacekeeping when there is a legacy of regional interference in a
specific territory.188 Alternatively, support among host populations for
specific operations provides insights about local protection norms and
how come strategies of protecting civilians that seem unconventional may
resonate with local populations.189
Another key issue in the UN-AU partnership is the financing of oper-
ations. The AU is entirely dependent on financial support from the EU,
UN trust fund arrangements as well as partner states, yet successfully separ-
ates mandating from resource mobilization.190 The option of financing AU
missions from UN-assessed contributions has been an ongoing discussion
between the UNSC and the AU for 15 years, and is back on the agenda in
2023.191 UNSC debates have revolved around burden-sharing, the Council’s
oversight, and AU operations’ adherence to accountability and compliance

185
Gelot, African conflict prevention and peace-making: From early warning to early action.
186
Witt and Khadiagala, Towards studying African interventions ‘from below’ – A short conclusion, 2018, 1.
187
Gelot, Deradicalization as Soft Counter-insurgency: Distorted Interactions Between Somali Traditional
Authorities and Intervening Organizations, 2020.
188
Fisher and Wilén, African Peacekeeping; Tchie, African-Led Peace Support Operations in a declining
period of new UN Peacekeeping Operations; Lyon et al., Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism
and International Organizations, 230-244.
189
Gelot and Khadka, Local Perceptions about Robust Protection of Civilians (PoC) in UNMISS and AMISOM
Joint brief series: The Performance of Peacekeeping.
190
Staeger, Resource Mobilization in Security Partnerships: Explaining Cooperation and Coercion in the EU’s
Partnership with the African Union.
191
Security Council Report, The Financing of AU Peace Support Operations: Prospects for Progress in the
Security Council?, https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-
CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/au_financing_2023.pdf.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 453

frameworks.192 Should a shared financing structure become institutionalized

between the two organizations, and actually lead to a net increase of money
available rather than merely a multilateralization of existing bilateral and EU
contributions, this would mean a significant development of partnership
peacekeeping.

Geo-political Context and the Future of Peacekeeping

Operations
Sara Hellmüller, Nina Wilén, Han Dorussen, Kseniya Oksamytna &
Annika Hilding Norberg
The structural environment in which peacekeeping takes place is changing.
We see increased great power competition reflected in a paralyzed UN Secur-
ity Council on certain matters, such as Ukraine or Syria.193 Meanwhile, the
previous 20-year decline of armed conflicts has reversed, pointing to a
greater-than-ever demand for multilateral conflict management; and yet,
since 2014, the UN Security Council has not mandated any new multidimen-
sional peacekeeping missions. Though the blockage does not concern all
matters and the Security Council has been able to renew mandates of existing
missions, increasingly these mandates are adopted without unanimity, thus
indicating an erosion of the Council’s political backing for these missions.
That said, it seems that the P5 are not generally opposed to peacekeeping
and acknowledge the important role of the UN in building peace.194 Peace-
keeping has also been particularly supported in situations of counter-terror-
ism and counter-insurgency in what can be seen as the lowest common
denominator of the great powers.195 However, the P5 oppose missions in
states they are allied to when they have what can be considered intrusive
mandates, meaning those including for instance the promotion of indepen-
dent media or civil society capacity building.196
We also see less emphasis on certain goals in peacekeeping mandates.197
China and Russia have for example tried to limit the inclusion of human
rights mandates in UN peacekeeping operations and the funding for
192
Amani Africa, Discussion on Financing AU Peace Support Operations in Africa, https://amaniafrica-et.
org/discussion-on-financing-au-peace-support-operations-in-africa/; Oksamytna and Wilén, Adoption,
adaptation or chance? Inter-organisational diffusion of the protection of civilians norm from the UN to
the African Union, 2022, 2357-2374.
193
Hellmüller, Peacemaking in a Shifting World Order: A Macro-Level Analysis of UN Mediation in Syria,
2022, 543-559.
194
Badache et al., Conflict-management or conflict-resolution: What role in peacebuilding for the United
Nations in a multipolar world order?, 2023, 547-571.
195
Karlsrud 2023.
196
Hellmüller et al., What is in a mandate? Introducing the United Nations Peace Mission Mandate
(UNPMM).
197
Karlsrud, For the Greater Good? “Good States” Turning UN Peacekeeping towards Counterterrorism, 2019,
65–83; Karlsrud, ‘Pragmatic Peacekeeping’ in Practice’.
454 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

human rights posts in peacekeeping operations (the latter with limited

success so far).198 This is reflected in their speeches in the UN Security
Council.199 While not actively speaking out against the inclusion of
human rights in mandates, China tries to rebalance priorities, for instance
by saying that ‘the international community has long tended to focus on
human rights, the rule of law and security sector reform, perhaps without
granting sufficient attention to economic and social development’.200 More
assertively, Russia says that ‘the inclusion in mandates of generic tasks,
such as human rights monitoring, sexual and gender issues, environmental
protection, development and other issues, may well prove to be an unreason-
able waste of resources’.201
These sharp divisions over human rights as well as gender and the
Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda put into question the pursuit
of the UN’s normative framework.
The divisions in the Security Council have led to an increase in non-unan-
imous resolutions including on important mandate renewals for peace oper-
ations, from less than 5% in 2011–33,3% in 2022. A steady reduction in the
number of PRSTs is also visible, from 24 in 2021–7 in 2022 – a 71% drop – 202
which most likely is linked to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A weakening of sanctions regimes is also being observed, with several absten-
tions on regimes for CAR, DRC, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan. As a
result, there has arguably been a steady reduction in the political space for
proactive, unified Security Council responses to new and emerging crises.
This shifting context also impacts the Council’s working methods, where
the challenged proactivity of the ‘P3’ to set the peace operations agenda
has led to a new dynamic of distributed burden-sharing with the E10
shaping mandates through co-penholderships and thematic issues.
These developments have gone hand in hand with increased skepticism by
some of the host-states towards peacekeeping operations, not least in light of
alternatives provided by bilateral support from UN member states – includ-
ing through the deployment of private security actors – or sub-regional
coalitions.203 The regionalization and privatization of stabilization and
peacekeeping tasks imply new dilemmas for the UN in terms of whether
and how to collaborate with these regional powers or coalitions, especially
those which have been established without Security Council involvement.
At the same time the deployment of private mercenaries in parallel to UN
peace operations clearly has had a negative impact on the UN’s capacity to
198
Coleman et al., How Africa and China may shape UN peacekeeping beyond the liberal international order,
2021, 1451–1468.
199
Badache et al., United Nations Security Council peace-related speeches (UNSCPeaS).
200
Badache et al., United Nations Security Council peace-related speeches (UNSCPeaS), 2013.
201
Badache et al., United Nations Security Council peace-related speeches (UNSCPeaS), 2019.
202
Security Council, Security Council Working Methods in Hard Times, 2 May 2023.
203
John Karlsrud, ‘Pragmatic Peacekeeping’ in Practice’.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 455

fulfill its mandate. In Mali for instance, the government has obstructed MIN-
USMA’s mandate implementation to allow the Wagner group to operate
without any oversight.204 Similar developments are observed elsewhere,
such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the government’s dissatis-
faction with MONUSCO’s perceived lack of engagement with armed rebel
groups led to calls for deployment of ad hoc coalitions from the East
African Community (EAC) and the SADC (Southern African Development
Community).205 Yet, recent experiences with regional and sub-regional
stabilization and peace enforcement efforts also seem to demonstrate the
limits of such deployments in meeting the expectations of host governments
and local populations, or in reducing drivers of conflict.
Careful examination of the increasing deployment of parallel regional
operations and/or private security actors in PKO contexts may be a useful
reference point in debates over the future of UN peacekeeping operations.
Such actors have been deployed where PKOs are not authorized to undertake
certain tasks, as for instance engaging in counter-terrorism operations, or
where national authorities have spoken out against PKOs, such as in Mali.
Do such operations suggest that the future of peace operations is not with
impartial forces acting to uphold collective security, but with ones tailored
to the achievement of specific political/ military objectives?
While supporting political solutions is a stated goal of many peacekeeping
operations, we have seen a shift from peacekeeping operations towards
SPMs, as mentioned above. The fact that in instances of extreme levels of vio-
lence political missions and good office engagements rather than peacekeep-
ing missions are being deployed speaks to this trend. In Syria, for instance,
there was only a short-lived peacekeeping operation (UNSMIS), but a
Special Envoy office (OSES) has been appointed. In Yemen, there was no
peacekeeping operation, but a special political mission (UNMHA) and a
Special Envoy office (OSESGY). Several factors account for this change,
namely the fact that SPMs are less expensive and carry less weight and are
hence easier to agree on given the dynamics in the Security Council
described above. Moreover, some host states do not want to host peacekeep-
ing operations due to the stigma attached of them dealing with ‘basket case’
countries. Finally, the current Secretary-General is also more in favour of
having less rather than more peacekeeping operations deployed. The shift
towards SPMs may thus be a pragmatic attempt to adapt to the changes
and to what is feasible in the current geopolitical context.

204
Druet, Wagner Group Poses Fundamental Challenges for the Protection of Civilians by UN Peacekeeping
Operations, 2023.
205
Kennes and Wilén, Multilayered violence in the DRC: Is History Repeating Itself?
456 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

Future Research
The above indicates three interesting avenues for further research. First, and
especially considering the Malian government’s announcement that
MINUSMA should withdraw without delay in June 2023, scholars could
look more closely at the question of how belligerent consent to UN peace
missions is affected by geopolitics. Concepts like ‘forum-shopping’ could
be applied to examine when and how host states turn to which interlocutor
for the satisfaction of which interest. There has been much talk about the
increasing influence of Russia in several African countries.206 Researchers
could closely examine the nature and impact of this influence and what it
means for UN peacekeeping operations in terms of their positioning vis-à-
vis more bilateral approaches to security.
Second, scholars have started to inquire about the forms that peacekeep-
ing operations, but also political missions, may take in the future.207 While
some talk about a turn towards more traditional peacekeeping or the focus
on specific mandate tasks, the question remains open what type of peace pro-
motion we will see in the future and based on whose interests and values.
Further research into mandate negotiations, and particularly also the role
of the E10, may provide insights into the objectives of missions in the future.
Third, as the world is changing rapidly and belligerent consent becomes
more challenging, the UN has been engaged in reflections about its role
on the ground. While often having carved out a place at the local level or
through more technical engagements, the question of the added value as
seen from a local perspective remains unanswered. While scholars have
long brought these local views into the study of peace operations208, updating
research on what counts as legitimate interventions by the UN could provide
much needed guidance for localizing discussions about UN reforms that are
currently ongoing.

Conclusion
Nina Wilén, Corinne Bara & Allard Duursma
In this forum article we have aimed to provide both a broad overview of the
achievements and challenges of UN peacekeeping over the past 75 years and
to identify current trends and developments which influence and shape the
practice and future of peacekeeping. In doing this, we made the choice to
206
Duursma and Masuhr, Russia’s return to Africa in a historical and global context: Anti-imperialism,
patronage, and opportunism, 2022, 407-423.
207
Osland et al., UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and
bottom-up approaches, 2021. 197-221; Dunton et al., Pragmatic Peacekeeping in a Multipolar Era:
Liberal Norms, Practices, and the Future of UN Peace Operations, 215-234.
208
Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below: UN Missions and Local People.
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 457

focus on six different themes which both reflect on the core norms and prin-
ciples of what peacekeeping is, and what it has become on a theoretical level,
as well as on how these norms are translated into practice and transformed
over time. Understanding how peacekeeping and the geopolitical context are
mutually shaping each other was also part of these themes to better compre-
hend the current crisis of multilateralism and ponder the future of
peacekeeping.
Most fundamentally, an examination of the ‘holy trinity’ of UN peace-
keeping’s core principles: consent, impartiality and the non-use of force,
have demonstrated the dynamic and evolving aspect of consent, the shift
from a passive to an assertive conception of impartiality and a changing
interpretation of when, and against whom, the use of force is legitimate or
not. These changes have occurred as response to challenges, including
difficulties to counter non-state armed violence and ensure the safety of
peacekeepers themselves in areas where consent is partial, but have also
resulted in new challenges, such as a reluctance to call out and stop govern-
ment oppression and protect civilians.
Current challenges therefore concern both how to maintain the UN’s
legitimacy in states where consent is contested, and how to protect civilians
more effectively without using excessive force. Research has shown that more
efficient early warning capacities, including both human intelligence efforts
and data-driven approaches could improve peacekeepers’ efficiency in pre-
venting violence and protecting civilians. Avenues for research on these
matters include more detailed examination of when, where and how
consent is negotiated, what kinds of mandates increase or decrease
consent, and what types of peacekeeping activities that are most effective
for protecting civilians.
Protection of civilians (PoC) has arguably become a new core principle of
UN peacekeeping over the past two decades, yet historical examples in this
article show that this is not a new phenomenon but has been an aspect of
UN peacekeeping for decades. However, as consensual as the principle
seems to be in theory, its implementation in practice has underlined chal-
lenges and dilemmas. The heavily militarized approach to PoC has for
example provoked questions and criticism against so-called robust man-
dates, while examples of UN’s failure to protect civilians have gained more
attention than academic evidence demonstrating that peacekeeping is
effective in reducing violence against civilians under certain conditions.
UNPOL and civilian peacekeepers have played important roles in this
context, yet their influence and roles have consistently been undervalued
and under-researched, thus suggesting that new research avenues could
focus on exploring when, how and with what effects these actors contribute
to PoC.
458 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

UN’s renewed push for the ‘primacy of politics’, during the past years has
been seen as a way to counterbalance the attention given to the military
aspect of peacekeeping operations, fueled in part by the heavy military com-
ponents of some of the multidimensional operations launched in the begin-
ning of 2000s. The broad slogan has been interpreted as a means to recenter
focus on UN’s role as helping to create space for political solutions or contain
violence through assistance in mediating local conflicts, supporting elections
and monitoring ceasefires. Yet, many of the current environments to which
UN is deployed lack conditions for such activities to be undertaken. This
puts the UN again in a dilemma between using military force to help creating
the conditions for such activities, while continuing to advocate political and
non-violent solutions to conflicts. More research on how the UN can balance
these two roles while remaining credible in its claim to promote the ‘primacy
of politics’ is needed.
More research is also needed on what effects partnership peacekeeping
has on mandate formulation, mandate implementation, and effects on the
ground, as the past two decades has seen an increase of non-UN bodies con-
ducting peace and stabilization operations. Africa remains the centre of
attention for these missions, as it is the continent which has seen most oper-
ations by both the UN and its partners. A shift from AU led missions towards
regional economic communities and coalitions of the willing, mirrors
African states’ preference for hybrid security governance arrangements.
Such a development provokes questions both regarding the future of the
UN-AU collaboration and possible structured financing of AU missions
but also which role the UN should adopt in relation to the more fragmented
security scene on the continent.
The developments analyzed in this article all take place in a rapidly chan-
ging geopolitical context profoundly affected by the current great power
competition. The UN Security Council has been paralyzed as a result of
the latter, while the increase of armed conflicts over the past decade has
shown the need for more, and more efficient conflict management. A
crisis of multilateralism has been declared by academics and observers,
putting into question the future of not only UN Peacekeeping, but UN’s
existence more broadly. The recent expulsion of the UN mission from
Mali following the takeover by a military junta, and the accelerated exit
from the DRC in the wake of popular protests, reflect the impact of
waning consent and with it the crisis of multilateralism.
This crisis notwithstanding, UN peacekeeping as a practice and as a
concept have weathered out crises before. Michael Pugh, the founder of
International Peacekeeping, remembered how in 1993, just before he
launched the journal, that the prospect that peacekeeping would disappear,
seemed a distinct possibility. Yet thirty years later, peacekeeping is still
there, constantly adapting to remain relevant in an ever-shifting
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 459

environment. We hope that this forum article has provided for both a broad
and deep overview of the evolution of peacekeeping, but also that it has con-
tributed to a better understanding of some of the challenges that UN peace-
keeping staff face in their work. Foremost, we hope that it has given new
ideas and incentives for research that can further develop the study and prac-
tice of UN peacekeeping.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Allard Duursma is an Assistant Professor in Conflict Management and International
Relations at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on how mediation and peacekeeping
can help to prevent and end armed conflict. He also studies the links between patron-
age politics and political order. He completed his PhD at the University of Oxford in
2015, focusing on the role of legitimacy in mediation process. His work has been
published in domain-specific journals like the Journal of Peace Research, Inter-
national Peacekeeping, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution, but also in general
audience journals like International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of
International Relations, and International Organization. He is a deputy-editor at
International Peacekeeping.
Corinne Bara is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH
Zurich. Prior to joining the CSS in 2023, she was an Assistant Professor at the
Department of Peace and Conflict Research in Uppsala, Sweden. Corinne’s research
uses computational methods to examine the impact of peacekeeping and ceasefire
agreements on violence in war zones. Much of her work in the past years focused
on detecting unintended consequences of these conflict management efforts, such
as shifts in the nature of violence. She has also worked to overcome the near-exclu-
sive focus on UN missions in quantitative peacekeeping research, and is the author
(with Lisa Hultman) of the first global dataset detailing personnel numbers in non-
UN missions. Corinne holds a PhD from ETH Zurich, and an MA in Political Science
and Humanitarian Law from the University of Zürich.
Nina Wilén is Research Director for the Africa Programme at the Egmont Institute
for International Relations and Associate Professor at the Department of Political
Science at Lund University, Sweden. Her research focuses on Security Force Assist-
ance (SFA), the politics of peacekeeping operations, and gender, all with a focus on
the military institution. Geographically her research is concentrated to Sub-Saharan
Africa, where she has conducted extensive fieldwork. Her research has been pub-
lished in a range of top-ranked academic journals such as International Affairs, Euro-
pean Journal of International Security, Armed Forces and Society and Gender, Work
and Organization. Between September 2016 and January 2020 Nina was Deputy
Editor of International Peacekeeping and since January 2020, she is the Editor-in-
Chief. Dr. Wilén is the author of the book Justifying Interventions: (De) Stabilizing
Sovereignty in Liberia, Burundi and the Congo with Palgrave Macmillan, and
African Peacekeeping, Cambridge University Press (2022) co-written with Prof.
Jonathan Fisher.
460 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

Sara Hellmüller is an assistant professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She cur-
rently leads a five-year research project on the impact of changing world politics on
UN peace missions. With her team, she recently developed the dataset on UN Peace
Mission Mandates (UNPMM). Her research interests include norms in mediation,
UN peace missions in various world orders, local and international peacebuilding
(particularly in Syria and DR Congo), as well as knowledge production on conflict
contexts.
John Karlsrud is a Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs. He works on global governance issues, in particular peace operations. Karls-
rud is a co-Principal Investigator of ADHOCISM, a project on the role of ad hoc
coalitions in global governance funded by the Research Council of Norway, and
NAVIGATOR, a Horizon Europe-funded project exploring changes in global
cooperation across a range of issues. He is a member-at-large of the International
Organization section of the International Studies Association, deputy editor of Inter-
national Peacekeeping. His latest books are Multinational Rapid Response Mechan-
isms (Routledge, 2019, co-edited with Yf Reykers) and United Nations peace
operations and International Relations theory (Manchester University Press, 2020),
co-edited with Kseniya Oksamytna).
Kseniya Oksamytna is a Lecturer in International Politics at City, University of
London and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Conflict, Security, and Development
Research Group at King’s College London. She is the Reviews Editor of International
Peacekeeping. Her research interests are UN peacekeeping, international bureauc-
racies (decision-making, politicization, and equality and diversity), and international
norms. Her book, Advocacy and Change in International Organizations: Communi-
cation, Protection, and Reconstruction in UN Peacekeeping, is coming out in June
2023 with Oxford University Press. With Prof John Karlsrud, she is a co-editor of
United Nations Peace Operations and International Relations Theory (Manchester
University Press, 2020).
Jenek Bruker is a junior researcher at ETH Zurich and will begin a PhD in Conflict
Management in November 2023. He is particularly interested in the protection of
civilians in local conflicts and areas with limited state control. In his Master’s
thesis, Janek studied the impact of mediation in local conflicts on the level of
lethal violence against civilians in conflict areas. He completed his master’s degree
in Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zurich in 2022. After that, he
worked for an NGO in Niamey (Niger) conducting research and data analysis for
various projects in the Central Sahel. His work in Niamey included analyses on
humanitarian access and perceptions of humanitarian actors in the central Sahel, a
study on small arms proliferation in Malian communities and a conflict analysis of
border areas in Burkina Faso.
Susanna Campbell is an Associate Professor at the School of International Service
(SIS) and the Director of the Research on International Policy Implementation
Lab (RIPIL) at American University, and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Inter-
national Center for Scholars. Her research examines the sub-national behavior of
international actors in fragile and conflict-affected states, addressing debates in the
statebuilding, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, international aid, and global governance
literatures.
Salvator Cusimano is a Political Affairs Officer currently serving in Yemen with the
UN Mission to support the Hudaydah Agreement (UNMHA). He has previously
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 461

worked in Central African Republic, supporting political processes and the protec-
tion of civilians in MINUSCA’s Bria field office, and in UN Headquarters, providing
political and operational support to several peacekeeping operations across Africa.
He was co-author of the Independent Review of peacekeeper fatalities (“the Santos
Cruz report”) and its associated action plan, and was a member of the team that
launched Action for Peacekeeping and developed the Declaration of Shared Com-
mitments. Prior to joining the Secretariat, he worked in the field of refugee protection
with UNHCR in the Mediterranean region and in civil society in his native Canada.
He holds a Master’s degree in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the Uni-
versity of Oxford.
Marco Donati leads the Civil Affairs team in the Division for Policy, Evaluation and
Training (DPET) of the Department of Peace Operations conducting review of prac-
tices and lessons learned that inform policy and guidance support provided to civil
affairs components serving in peacekeeping operations. Prior to his assignment at
Headquarters, Marco served for 12 years as a Civil Affairs Officer in UN peacekeep-
ing operations deployed in Kosovo; the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Haiti.
Over the last 11 years he has worked on projects examining peacekeeping work in
engaging with civil society actors and communities, supporting the extension of
state authority, local conflict management and peacebuilding, including local peace
initiatives addressing transhumance related intercommunal violence.
Han Dorussen is Professor of Government with the University of Essex since 2001.
He holds an MA in Political Science from the Radboud University Nijmegen, and a
PhD in Government from the University of Texas, Austin, in the USA. In his
research on peacekeeping, he has emphasised the importance of disaggregating
data to identify the impact of peacekeeping on violence. In 2022, he edited the Hand-
book on Peacekeeping and International Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).
Dirk Druet is a policy adviser and researcher focusing on multilateral peace and
security interventions. He is a former official of the United Nations Departments
of Peace Operations and Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, where he advised on
intelligence, technology, and preventive diplomacy strategies for UN missions and
country teams. He has served with UN operations and human rights organizations
in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Kenya. Dirk
is an Adjunct Professor and Research Affiliate at the Max Bell School for Public
Policy at McGill University in Montreal, where his work focuses on political and pro-
tection challenges in complex international emergencies. He is also a Non-resident
Fellow at the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations of the International
Peace Institute in New York, where he works on the protection of civilians in
armed conflict and peace operations. Dirk holds a B.A. (Hons) in Political Science
and History from Carleton University and an M.A. in Political Science from the Uni-
versity of Toronto.
Marine Epiney is a researcher at ETH Zurich. She works on the development of the
Peace Observatory. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Zurich and
wrote her Master’s thesis on the effectiveness of traditional leaders in mediating
non-state conflicts. In 2022, Marine spent several months as an advisor at the
Swiss Mission to the United Nations in New York. There, she worked in the Peace
and Security team, dealing with Security Council matters and the preparation of
Switzerland’s seat on the Security Council.
462 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

Valentin Geier is an incoming PhD student at ETH Zurich where he will investigate
the impact of climate change on local peacebuilding efforts, particularly in the
context of UN Peacekeeping missions. He is currently a graduate student in Inter-
national Administration and Conflict Management at University of Konstanz and
in International Security at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI),
focusing on micro-level conflict dynamics, the politics of natural resources, and geos-
patial research approaches. He also gained practical experience in foreign and devel-
opment policy at the German Federal Foreign Office and the German Agency for
International Cooperation (GIZ).
Linnéa Gelot is a senior lecturer of War Studies and director of studies at advanced
level for War Studies and Military History. Linnéa previously worked as senior
researcher at the Folke Bernadotte Academy and the Nordic Africa Institute. Prior
to that she was a senior lecturer of Peace and Development Studies at the School
of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. She was promoted to Associate Professor
of Peace and Development Studies in February 2018. She earned her PhD in Inter-
national Politics from Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.
Dennis Gyllensporre is an Associate Professor in Security Policy and Strategy at the
Swedish Defence University and an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Secur-
ity Policy. He also holds office as the Vice President of the Royal Swedish Academy of
War Sciences. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Gyllensporre has 38 years of service in the
Swedish Armed Forces. In October 2021, he completed three years of service as the
Force Commander for the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization
Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). He came from a four-year appointment as the Chief
of Defence Staff and Director of Special Forces of the Swedish Armed Forces.
Annick Hiensch has 15 years of experience in the United Nations and serves as the
Team Leader for Partnerships as well as Climate, Peace and Security Focal Point in
the Department of Peace Operations, which recently deployed its first Climate, Peace
and Security Adviser in South Sudan. Prior to her appointment with DPO, Annick
Hiensch worked for the Office of the Under-Secretary-General for Counter-Terror-
ism, setting up the EU-UN Global Counter-Terrorism Facility, and in the front office
of the Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs. She also supported the
establishment of the UN Liaison Office for Peace and Security in Brussels in 2011
and worked for the European Commission in Brussels and the World Food Program.
Lisa Hultman is Professor of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University,
Sweden. She studies peacekeeping and protection of civilians using quantitative
methods. Her book, Peacekeeping in the Midst of War (co-authored with Jakob
Kathman and Megan Shannon), offers a global analysis of the effectiveness of UN
peacekeeping in reducing violence. Hultman is also the co-author of the Geo-
coded Peacekeeping Operations (Geo-PKO) Dataset, that provides data on the
location and type of peacekeeping deployments within host countries.
Charles T. Hunt is Associate Professor of Global Security at RMIT University in Mel-
bourne, Australia. He is also Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the United Nations Uni-
versity Centre for Policy Research in New York/Geneva and Senior Research
Associate at the Institute of Security Studies in Addis Ababa. His research is
focused on UN peace operations and peacebuilding in conflict-affected states with
recent articles published in International Peacekeeping, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, Survival, Conflict and Cooperation, and Civil Wars. He is currently
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 463

leading a thematic study on the role of human rights in UN peace operations for the
Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network (EPON).
Rajkumar Cheney Krishnan is an Information Management Officer at the United
Nations Operations and Crisis Centre (UNOCC), within the UN Department of
Peace Operations (DPO) in New York. He manages the UN Sage incidents/events
reporting system (now integrated into the Unite Aware situational awareness plat-
form) that is used in UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions for situational
awareness. In addition, he also manages the Early Warning App used in MINUSMA,
and the Notification of Peacekeeper Casualties (NOTICAS) database. He is a
member of the Situational Awareness team currently deploying the wider Unite
Aware suite of digital situational awareness tools in all Peacekeeping Missions. Raj-
kumar has been working in Peacekeeping since 2012. Prior to joining Peacekeeping,
Rajkumar served in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and the
International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) since 2006. He also has experience in
the private sector, having worked as a Software Analyst in the insurance industry,
managing the development of software solutions supporting risk management and
actuarial functions. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, and a Master’s
degree in Data Science.
Patryk I. Labuda is a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow at the University of
Zurich. A former practitioner with work experience in central and north Africa,
Patryk draws on interdisciplinary methods to study how international institutions
interpret legal norms to achieve public policy aims. He is currently working on
the interplay of international law and protection of civilians’ policy in UN peacekeep-
ing. His research has been published by the International Peace Institute, Journal of
Conflict and Security Law, and Journal on the Use of Force and International Law.
Patryk holds a PhD from the Geneva Graduate Institute. His first book ’In the Court’s
Shadow. International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability’ (OUP) was
published in June 2023.
Sascha Langenbach works as Data Scientist at the Center for Security Studies (CSS)
at ETH Zurich. He supports the CSS in identifying novel research opportunities that
open up through advances in data analytics, and coordinates data-centric collabor-
ations with partners within ETH Zurich as well as with outside stakeholders.
Sascha completed his PhD at ETH in 2019, and holds a Master’s degree from the
Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Currently, Sascha serves as
technical coordinator for a collaboration between ETH Zurich and the UN Oper-
ations and Crisis Center (UNOCC), which aims at leveraging event data from the
DPO’s “SAGE” database for short-term conflict-event prediction.
Annika Hilding Norberg is Head of Peace Operations and Peacebuilding policy
applicably research, dialogue and discussion, and education and training at the
Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) since 2017. She serves on the Board of
Directors of the International Leadership Association, and the Management Com-
mittee of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. Her current focus is on the future of
peace operations, the new agenda for peace and the strengthening of inclusive leader-
ship for peace and security. Prior to joining the GCSP, she was the Founder and
Director of the International Forum for the Challenges of Peace Operations aimed
at strengthening UN peace operations.
Alexandra Novosseloff is a research associate at the Centre Thucydide of the Univer-
sity of Paris-Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2). Alexandra holds a PhD in political science
464 A. DUURSMA ET AL.

from the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas (Paris 2), and works since then on UN
peacekeeping and Security Council related issues with various research institutes,
including the International Peace Institute and the Center on International
Cooperation in New York, NUPI in Oslo, the Global Governance Institute in Brus-
sels, and the Réseau francophone sur les operations de paix of Montréal.
Daniel F. Oriesek served two tours in the Balkans before joining the Swiss Depart-
ment of Defence as a civilian employee. Mr. Oriesek has a strong background in
strategy development and business wargaming, as well as general security topics
and international relations. He co-authored several books and brings over 30 years
of military experience with rising responsibility in Switzerland as well as in
cooperation with other nations on exercises and missions abroad. He currently
serves as the Deputy Head of Regional Military Cooperation and supports with his
team the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs with military expertise during Switzer-
land’s tenure on the UN Security Council.
Emily Paddon Rhoads is Associate Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore
College. Her research and teaching interests span the fields of international relations,
comparative politics, and peace and conflict studies. She is author of Taking Sides in
Peacekeeping: Impartiality and the Future of the United Nations (Oxford University
Press, 2016) and co-editor of Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings: A Com-
parative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2023), as well as several academic
journal articles on civilian agency in armed conflict, peacekeeping, humanitarianism,
and the United Nations. She has conducted research in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Kenya, and Iraq. Paddon Rhoads
earned her MPhil and DPhil (Phd) from the University of Oxford, and her A.B. from
Brown University.
Francesco Re is a MA student at the Department of Computer Science at ETH
Zurich. He is a member of the collaboration between ETH Zurich and the UN Oper-
ations and Crisis Center (UNOCC), which aims at leveraging event data from the
DPO’s “SAGE” database for short-term conflict-event prediction.
Jenna Russo is the Director of Research and Head of the Brian Urquhart Center for
Peace Operations at the International Peace Institute in New York. Russo completed
her PhD in Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center, with a focus on the pro-
tection of civilians in armed conflict settings. Her other research considers the nor-
mative development of the human protection regime, in particular how member
states conceive of and implement their protection responsibilities. Prior to joining
IPI, Dr. Russo spent more than ten years working as a consultant to the United
Nations, with a focus on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-com-
batants; peacekeeping training; and as a project manager in the Office of the Sec-
retary-General. She also spent time with the Global Centre for R2P as a senior
fellow in peacekeeping.
Melanie Sauter is a researcher in political science at the University of Oslo. Addition-
ally, she is affiliated with the ’Data-driven Analysis of Peace Project’ lab at Washing-
ton University in St. Louis and is an external lecturer at the University of Zurich
where she teaches a course on the `Introduction to United Nations Peacekeeping
and the Protection of Civilians’.
Hannah Smidt is an Assistant Professor at the University of St. Gallen and an associ-
ated researcher at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on political violence
and United Nations peacekeeping. Currently, she leads a project on persuasive effects
 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING 465

of UN radio and social media communication in the context of anti-UN disinforma-

tion campaigns, using field research and survey experiments in Mali and Cyprus. Her
research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, American
Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, International Studies
Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and Journal of Conflict Resolution. She com-
pleted her doctorate at University College London (2017) and held post-doctoral
researcher positions at the University of Oxford and the African Institute at the
GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
Ueli Staeger is a Research and Teaching Fellow at the University of Geneva. He is also
an Associate Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Com-
parative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS). Staeger teaches courses on inter-
national relations and security. He holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies, Geneva. His research focuses on how inter-
national organizations shape the provision of security in Africa. Staeger studies the
resource mobilization relationships of International Organizations (IOs) with
member states and external partners, and in particular the African Union’s partner-
ships and reforms. Staeger consults different organizations on African Union politics
and reform, peace & security in Africa, and resource mobilization, partnerships and
donor coordination in IOs.
Andreas Wenger is professor of International and Swiss Security Policy at ETH
Zurich. He studied History, Political Science and German Literature at the University
of Zurich. He holds a Doctorate from the University of Zurich and was a visiting
fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the
Center of International Studies, Princeton University. During that period, he
wrote his doctoral dissertation analyzing the role of nuclear weapons in the Cold
War international system. The focus of his main research interests lies on security
and strategic studies and the history of international relations. Andreas Wenger
has been the Director of the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich
since 2002.

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