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Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has increasingly used peacekeeping operations (PKOs) to manage crises between and within states. The mandates of contemporary PKOs are demanding, calling on peacekeeping personnel to separate belligerent parties, enforce ceasefire agreements, and protect the physical security of civilians. The pursuit of these distinct objectives presents a unique challenge for the UN because it relies on member states to volunteer personnel for these missions. Therefore, the achievement of mandated goals depends on the ability of diverse national contingents to overcome coordination problems and function as a cohesive force. Integrating research of PKOs and international military coalitions, we argue that as national contingents share operational experience within a UN mission, they develop common institutional practices, and become more effective at protecting the civilian population. Using monthly data on UN PKOs from 1990 to 2019, we find that increasing operational experience within a peacekeeping coalition reduces civilian fatalities significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While International Relations scholarship has increasingly addressed questions of race, the literature on international organizations (IOs) has been slower to do so. In particular, it has neglected how race functions within IO workforces. Building on sociological theories of racialized organizations, we develop the concept of racialized IOs. Like domestic organizations, racialized IOs are characterized by enhanced or inhibited agency of racial groups, racialized distribution of resources, credentialing of whiteness, and decoupling of formal rules and informal practices along racial lines. However, there are also two important differences. First, since IOs rely on member states for resources, their secretariats need to accommodate powerful white-majority countries (macro-level pressures). Second, since IO workforces are diverse, their employees may bring a range of racial stereotypes that exist in their societies into their professional practice (micro-level pressures). Using the case of UN peacekeeping, we demonstrate how the four features of racialized organizations operate in light of these macro- and micro-level pressures. We show that locally hired peacekeeping staff face constraints on exercising agency; that non-white peacekeepers perform more dangerous jobs than their white counterparts; that whiteness serves as a proxy for desirable skills while non-white peacekeepers' knowledge is devalued; and that peacekeepers from white-majority countries receive special treatment or deviate from UN-wide procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China shows a growing commitment to peacemaking and peacekeeping overseas. Yet Chinese peace efforts have met considerable challenges across multiple conflict settings. This article seeks to understand the difficulties facing Chinese peacemaking and peacekeeping and asks how these experiences influence the future behaviour of Chinese actors towards peace and conflict issues. Previous scholarship has largely taken a state-centric perspective to explain China's engagement in peacemaking and peacekeeping. In contrast, this article harnesses an assemblage approach to reveal the diversity of Chinese actors and the significant role local actors and normative forms of power play in influencing China's broader peace efforts. In South Sudan, it finds that the political ideas advanced by warring factions and the legitimacy they placed on United Nations peacekeeping intervention, both undermined Chinese peacemaking and peacekeeping and held far-reaching effects for Chinese actors beyond the conflict. Consequently, these challenges in South Sudan pushed China's national oil company to adopt new risk management policies throughout its investments in conflict settings. The South Sudan experience also influenced China's foreign ministry by tempering its proactive approach to conflict resolution in other conflict-affected countries and to promote peacekeeper safety and support peacekeeping intelligence at the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH, 2004–2017) was an unprecedented effort of Latin American peacekeeping. Nine countries contributed the majority of troops to the mission in which regional governments sought to handle a security crisis in their neighbourhood rather than leaving the lead to western countries. However, when the mission came to an end after thirteen years, peacekeeping faded from the regional and national security agendas, with the exception of Uruguay. How and why did MINUSTAH impact the region's current hesitation to engage in peace operations? To answer this question, the article draws on assemblage theory and uses data from policy documents, academic literature and previous research on peacekeeping in Latin America. I argue that contrary to what Latin America's current, limited peacekeeping engagement suggests, MINUSTAH produced significant changes in the region's political landscape. While these could have paved the way to greater involvement in peace operations, however, parallel developments shaped Latin American security policies and military planning at the expense of the region's future participation in UN peacekeeping. The article adds to existing scholarship by probing the conditions that drive the temporality of assemblages and provides a new perspective on Latin American peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the evolution of intelligence in United Nations peacekeeping through a practice-based assemblage lens. We address a gap in the literature by transcending the focus on 'peacekeeping intelligence' as merely an evolving policy instrument. Instead, we employ an 'analytic of assemblage' that reveals the intrinsic ambiguity of both the concept of peacekeeping intelligence, and the related competing perspectives as well as forms of expertise among stakeholders. We select the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC, 1960–1964), the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH, 2004–2017), and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA, 2013–2023) as cases to reconstruct the historical evolution of intelligence within peacekeeping. Our analysis reveals profound tensions between efforts to transform intelligence for broader goals like the protection of civilians, on the one hand, and the persistent dominance of military knowledge and tactical priorities in its implementation, on the other. We convey the enduring predominance of military priorities shaping intelligence practices across spatio-temporal contexts, grounded in historical legacies of doctrinal developments, training and regional collaborations. The analysis thereby highlights the interplay between contingency and the influence of enduring power structures in shaping the evolving peacekeeping assemblage. This offers a perspective that links assemblage approaches with the analysis of not only emergence but also path dependency influenced by historical and geopolitical contexts and suggests that strengthening such analytical link holds wider potential for advancing contributions of assemblage approaches to critical security studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While studies have investigated why states contribute personnel to peacekeeping operations, little consideration has been given to how domestic political factors influence state contributions. We argue that changes in executive power that involve a shift in the domestic source of leadership support cause fluctuations in troop deployments, leading to inconsistent contribution behavior. However, we argue that this effect is attenuated in more democratic states since greater overlaps in the preferences of domestic groups are present and political institutions exist to constrain major policy shifts. Analysis of state troop commitments to UN peacekeeping from 1991 to 2018 supports this argument. This research highlights the often overlooked role of domestic policy processes in peacekeeping contributions while moving beyond considering why some states contribute relatively more personnel to address variation within countries. The findings indicate that while democracies typically contribute fewer peacekeepers, they tend to be more consistent contributors in the face of leadership turnover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many international organizations (IOs) provide assistance to governments through country offices or peacekeeping operations. Sometimes, government authorities in countries receiving IO services violate norms that underpin the IO's engagement. IO officials must then choose between confrontational and conciliatory responses. These responses are located on a spectrum that ranges from a firm and public response to silence and downplaying. How do IO officials decide on their response? Based on over 200 interviews with UN peacekeeping officials, we argue that the factors that shape their decision-making are found across three categories: individual, departmental, and positional. In terms of individual characteristics, previous experience, career security, and the length of service at a particular duty station matter. Regarding departmental factors, politicization of work, professional composition, and the type of interlocutors predispose departments to be supporters or critics of authorities in recipient countries. In terms of positional considerations, the place of a post or department in the IO hierarchy, relations with other IO entities, and the distance from the field play a role. While important in its own right, decision-making by civilian UN peacekeeping officials is informative about similar processes in other complex international bureaucracies that employ individuals from diverse backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UN blue helmets increasingly deploy in partnership with regional organizations and coalitions of states. While this development is hailed as a way out of geopolitical fragmentation and capacity overstretch, little is known about the effectiveness of these peacekeeping partnerships. We argue that UN and non-UN operations exercise different forms of power, which reinforce each other to reduce battle violence in active wars. If non-UN military operations actively engage in combat, the UN can focus on what it does best—employing its broad toolbox to coerce, induce, and persuade. Our quantitative analysis of the interaction between UN and non-UN peacekeeping supports these expectations: partnership peacekeeping works. With a non-UN partner, UN troops can reduce battlefield violence more effectively, that is, with fewer blue helmets. Importantly, non-UN missions need UN operations to successfully curb violence. The UN's multidimensional engagement offsets the potential negative effects of an all-too militarized approach to violence reduction. Regional and coalition peacekeeping can only support the UN, not replace it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What effects does participation in peacekeeping operations (PKO) have on the participating countries' civil–military resource allocation? Answering this question can widen our understanding of state motivations to contribute to the United Nations PKOs by incorporating the civil–military dynamic. We argue that contributing states can substitute part of their domestic military expenditures with external resources. Governments act as brokers between domestic military interests and international sources of rent, a process which we call civil–military resource substitution through international brokerage. By doing so, governments can (i) reduce part of the bottom-up demands for increased military spending (i.e., salaries and allowances) and (ii) outsource critical resources to meet military organizational priorities (i.e., training, weapons, perks for the military elite, and so on). Using cross-national statistical analysis, we find that the UN PKO contributing states allocate fewer resources to the defense sector than the non-contributing states, and higher troop-contributing states are likely to allocate fewer resources to the defense sector than the lower-contributing or non-contributing states. The implications point to a much wider role of the UN peacekeeping missions than what is previously understood and demonstrate their impacts beyond the host countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stian Kjeksrud's book, "Using force to protect civilians," examines the successes and failures of United Nations peace operations in Africa. The book utilizes a novel dataset of 200 military protection operations from ten UN missions in Africa from 1999 to 2017. Kjeksrud's analysis reveals that UN troops effectively protected civilians in 76 instances, but were unable to adequately protect a significant portion of the local population in 83 cases. The book challenges the perception that the UN is unfit to use force to improve security for civilians and emphasizes the importance of tailored military responses based on an understanding of the perpetrators' motivations. However, the book's methodology is limited by the uncertainty of the dataset and potential underreporting of cases. Overall, the book provides valuable insights for policymakers interested in UN military protection efforts. [Extracted from the article]

Kseniya Oksamytna's book, "Advocacy and change in international organizations," offers a nuanced perspective on institutional change in international organizations (IOs). Oksamytna emphasizes the importance of advocacy in driving change and examines three case studies in UN peacekeeping operations to illustrate this framework. The book challenges conventional understandings of change in peacekeeping and highlights the various sources and actors that can initiate institutional change. While the advocacy framework is complex, it provides valuable insights for scholars and practitioners alike. Oksamytna suggests that future research should explore the application of this framework to other IOs and consider the factors that influence the success of different advocacy strategies. Overall, the book offers original and thought-provoking insights into institutional evolution. [Extracted from the article]

Several recently published international relations and criminal justice writings, textbooks, and supplements focus on using science fiction and fantasy texts to teach social science theories. This article investigates how science fiction and fantasy examples affect student learning compared to documentary films. We use mixed methods to conduct two studies on the use of science fiction and fantasy in political science and criminal justice classrooms. In the first study, we divide up a large lecture class, comparing how examples from the HBO series Game of Thrones versus documentary films affect student learning about the United Nations and peacekeeping. Our second study uses a combination of interviews and surveys to assess how students apply various criminological theories to the 1997 film Gattaca versus a documentary. Our research reveals that science fiction and fantasy examples neither help nor harm student learning. However, incorporating examples from fictional worlds may alienate some students, affecting their enjoyment of class and perception of preparedness. Most importantly, we find that the use of fictional examples creates an interpretive barrier in the classroom. Thus, we recommend judicious use of science fiction and fantasy examples. When fictional examples are used, we encourage student preparation and extensive debriefing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Margot Tudor's book provides a history of UN peacekeeping efforts from the second half of the twentieth century, highlighting the UN's role as an actor in its own right. Tudor argues that UN peacekeeping missions were largely ideological, colonial, racist, hierarchical, and self-serving. These missions often destabilized societies and perpetuated violence, acting as a vehicle for wealthy and powerful western states to wage the Cold War and reinvent colonialism. The book covers case-studies from different continents, including the Arab-Israeli War, the Korean War, UN operations in the Congo, and the United Nations Force in Cyprus. While the book focuses on the actions of mid-level UN bureaucrats, it also discusses the role of senior officials. Tudor's work is critical of the UN's actions, with a focus on the Indigenous Peoples who often suffered as a result of UN peacekeeping missions and colonial regimes. The book offers new approaches for understanding the Cold War, decolonization, and multilateral institutions, making it a valuable resource for those interested in the shortcomings of the UN and the broader international system. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the book "Feminismo, gênero e Relações Internacionais" which provides an academic overview and critical engagement with feminist, intersectional, queer, and Indigenous theories in Brazil. The book aims to introduce debates surrounding feminism in International Relations (IR) and other research agendas. It explores the challenges of balancing feminist theory from the global South with insights from the global North, without perpetuating colonizing practices. The book also highlights the impact of colonization on different segments of the population and emphasizes feminist solidarity. It contributes to existing literature by providing an overview of feminist perspectives in Brazil, offering insights from a Brazilian standpoint, and increasing visibility for underrepresented groups. [Extracted from the article]

Academic researchers typically spend long periods of time in the field, and they are often are more attentive than others to the I long durée i in Rwanda, as opposed to seeing Rwanda strictly through a post-genocide lens. I n T he 20 Y ears S ince the genocide in Rwanda, the small, land-locked, coffee-and-tea exporting, ex-Belgian country has attracted considerable more scholarly, policy, and human interest than one might have expected given the size and geostrategic importance of the country. Post-genocide Rwanda has achieved remarkable economic growth, averaging some 8 percent per annum during the past decade, as Julie van Damme, An Ansoms, and Philippe V. Baret discuss. [Extracted from the article]

This research focuses on a positive, and previously largely unknown, implication of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping: better environmental quality. While maintaining international peace and security remains the main goal of peacekeeping operations, we contend that they can also be linked to environmentally friendly outcomes. Mission mandates and UN policies increasingly comprise actions that potentially promote environmental quality. At the same time, positive side effects on the environment materialize due to the cooperation with and activities of other UN bodies. The empirical analyses, also correcting for the likely non-random assignment of peace missions and employing several alternative outcome measures, suggest that UN peace missions are indeed substantively associated with better environmental quality. This research has important implications for our understanding of peacekeeping operations, and it contributes to the literatures on the (unintended) consequences of peacekeeping as well as environmental politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher educational attainment levels are associated with better public health outcomes, lower levels of income inequality, more participation in democratic instructions, and safer communities. Promoting education in war-torn societies can have an immediate impact in mitigating violence and play a significant role in preventing conflict recurrence. This study investigates UN peacekeeping missions' role in this process, positing that UN deployments to locations experiencing armed conflict lead to higher levels of educational attainment by increasing local stability, incentivizing individuals to return to school while also making renewed investment worthwhile. Testing this logic using new data on local-level educational attainment across Africa from 2000 to 2014, this study finds that conflict zones where the UN maintained peacekeeping deployments saw an increase in educational attainment when compared to those that did not, a finding corroborated by coarsened exact matching. Maintaining a modest number of UN forces is shown to increase female attainment by at least 4.89 percent and reduce gender disparity by 5.13 percent, revealing the critical role UN peacekeeping plays in restoring education in the shadow of political violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When reform negotiations in international organizations (IOs) produce limited substantive progress, the diagnosis is typically a lack of political will. We identify a different dynamic: in protracted negotiations, international policy paradigms can emerge that enshrine a politically realistic but incomplete issue definition and thereby focus the debate on a subset of policy instruments that do not fully address the underlying problem. We draw on the multilateral negotiations literature to show how policy paradigms—which are widely explored in Comparative Politics, but largely neglected in International Relations—can emerge even in heterogenous IOs, where deep cognitive cohesion is unlikely. The risk of negotiation failure incentivizes negotiators to adopt and maintain "achievable" issue and goal definitions, which over time are accepted as axiomatic by diplomats, IO officials, and policy experts. The resulting international policy paradigms help avoid institutional paralysis, but can also impede more ambitious reforms. To establish the empirical plausibility of this argument, we highlight the contemporary international policy paradigm of rapid deployment in UN peacekeeping, which focuses more on establishing an initial brigade-sized presence than on rapid deployment of the full peacekeeping force. Drawing on primary documents and interviews, we identify the roots of this First Brigade policy paradigm in reactions to the UN's failure to respond to the 1994 Rwandan genocide and trace its consolidation during UN reform negotiations in the 2000s and early 2010s. We also demonstrate that an alternative explanation of the paradigm as reflecting operational lessons-learned does not hold: a brigade-sized initial presence is rarely sufficient for mandate implementation, does not reliably speed up full deployment, and creates risks for peacekeepers. By highlighting the existence and impact of international policy paradigms, our study adds to scholarship on the role of ideas in International Relations and provides a novel perspective on reform negotiations in IOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Since its detection in the early 1980s, HIV and AIDS have claimed 32.7 million lives. The HIV epidemic continues to plague the world with its most devastating effects felt in Eastern and Southern Africa. The exposure, vulnerability, and impact of HIV have been prominent among military personnel due to environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics. Policies have been developed to mitigate its exposure, vulnerability, and impact on the military. However, there are disparities across these policies, especially on recruitment, enlistment, and deployment. These contentions inspired this evaluation, which was designed to provide vital information and insights for militaries developing new HIV policies, for example, the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).Materials and Methods: Content analyses of key documents and secondary resources from South Africa (SA), the USA, and the United Nations and International Labour Organizations were undertaken. The key documents evaluated included HIV and AIDS policies of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), the U.S. DoD, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and International Labour Organization (ILO); national HIV and AIDS policies; and legislations of SA and the USA.Results: The SANDF policy permits the recruitment of HIV-positive applicants while the U.S. DoD policy does not. Mandatory pre-employment health assessments including HIV testing is conducted for prospective applicants. Again, discrimination against persons living with HIV (PLHIV) is discouraged by national policies and legislations of both countries and the ILO policy. At the same time, the SA national policy permits discrimination based on requirement of the job.On deployment, the SANDF policy explicitly permits deployment of HIV-positive service members, while the U.S. DoD policy cautiously does so. Both policies support mandatory pre-deployment health assessments in line with the UN peacekeeping policy and medical standards even though voluntary confidential HIV counseling and testing is recommended by the UN. All HIV-positive service members are retained and offered treatment and care services; however, the U.S. DoD policy retires unfit service members after 12 months of consecutive non-deployment. Further, the UN policy repatriates service members with pre-existing medical conditions and pays no compensation for death, injury, or illness, which is due to pre-existing medical conditions or not mission-related.Conclusions: First, the contents of the military policies are not very diverse since most militaries do not enlist or deploy PLHIV except few countries including SA. Implementation and interpretation is however inconsistent. Some militaries continue to exclude PLHIV despite the existence of policies that permit their inclusion. Second, discrepancies exist among the military policies, national legislations, and international policies. The UN policy is not coherent and empowers the military to exclude PLHIV. Also, potential costs to be incurred, in the form of compensation and repatriation, seem to be a major factor in the decision to deploy HIV-positive service members. Harmonization of military HIV policies to ensure uniform standards, interpretation, and implementation and the coherence of the UN policy are essential to guide countries developing new policies, for example, GAF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UN peacekeeping became a flagship activity of the liberal international order (LIO) in the post-Cold War era, characterized by globalization, liberal norms and western leadership. Western states' diminished support for LIO UN peacekeeping has left it increasingly open to challenge, but significant changes are only likely if a strong group of states coalesces around an alternative model of UN peacekeeping. This article highlights African actors and China as well positioned to play pivotal roles in such a coalition. African states, who host the preponderance of UN missions and furnish almost half of the UN's uniformed peacekeepers, support globalized UN peacekeeping, show relatively weak support for the most liberal peacebuilding principles and assert the need for African-led solutions to continental crises. China's influence reflects its P5 status, financial and personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping and engagement with regional actors, notably in Africa. Aspiring to global leadership and a 'new world order', China endorses globalized UN peacekeeping but proposes a non-liberal (and non-western led) notion of 'developmental peace' to guide it. The complementarities between African and Chinese priorities raise the possibility of a profound challenge to LIO peacekeeping. Rather than heralding deglobalization, however, this challenge illustrates that post-LIO international institutions may instead be characterized by deliberalization and dewesternization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have highlighted that United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are effective at reducing violence during civil wars. But can these operations also change the incentives of the warring parties and lead them to pursue non-violent alternatives? This article provides the first direct test of UN peacekeeping troops' effectiveness at inducing non-violent engagements, specifically negotiations during civil wars. Our analysis of disaggregated monthly data on peace operations, negotiations, and violence in African conflicts (1989–2009) reveals that sizable deployments of UN military troops, by themselves, are insufficient to foster negotiations, even when they reduce battlefield violence. Instead, the probability of negotiation instances is conditional on rebel tactics. We posit, when rebels engage in terrorism, peacekeeping troops can inadvertently alter the "power to hurt" of the belligerents in favor of rebel groups and create conditions conducive to negotiations. Our results have important implications for research on the effectiveness of both peacekeeping and terrorism and for policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States covet leadership and staff positions in international organizations. The posts of civilian leaders and force commanders of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are attractive to member states. In selecting peacekeeping leaders, the UN Secretariat balances three considerations: satisfying powerful member states by appointing their nationals; recognizing member states' contribution to the work of the organization; and ensuring that leaders have the necessary skill set. We investigate appointments of more than 200 civilian and military leaders in 24 UN missions, 1990–2017. We find that contributing troops to a specific mission increases the chances of securing a peacekeeping leadership position. Geographic proximity between the leaders' country and the conflict country is also a favorable factor whose importance has increased over time. Civilian leaders of UN peacekeeping operations tend to hail from institutionally powerful countries, while military commanders come from major, long-standing troop contributing countries. Despite some role that skills play in the appointment process, the UN's dependence on troop contributors, together with its reliance on institutionally powerful states, can be a source of dysfunction if it prevents the organization from selecting effective peacekeeping leaders. This dynamic affects other international organizations that have significant power disparities among members or rely on voluntary contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do peacekeeping missions facilitate nonviolent political contention in post–civil war countries? The nonviolent expression of political grievances is a crucial part of the post–civil war peace-building process but is understudied thus far. We claim that the presence of peacekeepers significantly contributes to establishing a secure environment for nonviolent political contention, particularly nonviolent public protest. In addition, we claim that peacekeeping missions with personnel from countries with robust civil societies are more likely to promote nonviolent political contention because of prior socialization to civic engagement and bottom-top political participation. This is particularly true for UN police personnel (UNPOL), who both train local police forces and have the most direct interaction with protesters. We test our hypotheses using a newly crafted dataset on nonviolent protests in post–civil war countries and peacekeeping missions' presence, size, and home-country composition. We find that peacekeeping missions' presence significantly increases nonviolent protests in post–civil war country-years. This effect is largely explained by the presence of UNPOL from countries with strong civil societies. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of post–civil war political revitalization and policy implications for the composition of peacekeeping missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1988, Bangladesh has been one of the highest police contributing countries (PCCs) to United Nations Peacekeeping operations. Over the years, Bangladesh Police has not only carved out space for itself as a top PCC, but also earned a name for itself as a dependable force which delivered the tasks assigned to it. However, in the last few years, Bangladesh Police has seen a fall in deployment to various missions due to an increasing number of participation of other new contributors across the world. Moreover, there are significant transformations in the nature of conflict and mandates of peacekeeping operations which would require Bangladesh Police to be prepared itself for future participation in such missions. Against such a backdrop, this article examines how Bangladeshi police peacekeepers evaluate their participation in peace missions and their capacity in addressing the challenges of the contemporary and future peace missions. It also investigates issues of capacity building, skill enhancement, and increasing competency of Bangladesh police peacekeepers as perceived by themselves. This article argues Bangladesh needs to comprehend the changing scenario and enhance the capacity of police peacekeepers by undertaking appropriate measures including tapping into the experience of its returning police personnel. Otherwise, the sustainability of Bangladesh's participation in UN police peacekeeping deployments may face severe stress and become problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 there is an almost unanimous call for an increased number of uniformed women in peace operations from policy-makers and multilateral organizations. This continuous push for the inclusion of more women is often justified by arguments about an increased operational effectiveness related to women's 'added value': both implicitly and explicitly advocating for greater gender equality. Yet, in this article, I contend that using instrumentalist arguments to increase the number of female peacekeepers may on the contrary undermine gender equality. This is related to the risk of producing self-fulfilling prophecies whereby female peacekeepers try to live up to the high expectations by fitting into gender-stereotypes and/or by working harder than their male colleagues. Rather than increase gender equality, such efforts risk transforming the female 'added value' to an 'added burden' which male peacekeepers do not have to carry. Anchoring the study in feminist theory with the aim to understand gendered relations of power, to illustrate my argument I draw on extensive interview material from military staff and peacekeepers in South Africa, Burundi, Belgium and Niger; interviews and informal discussions with female and male peacekeepers; and participation in several policy and research workshops on female participation in peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most analyses of legitimacy and legitimation in international organizations (IOs) focus on the perceptions of external audiences. In so doing, they fail to consider self-legitimation, where an IO undertakes legitimation internally, as a way of developing and reinforcing its identity. Moreover, most studies of IO legitimacy neglect the fact that IO identities are rarely uniform and instead are multiple and conflicting. I address these omissions by examining self-legitimation in three IOs—the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the World Bank. These organizations are both operational and normative actors, and both institutions dependent on member states and autonomous bodies with independent expertise and capacities. These identities sometimes dictate contradictory goals and practices, forcing the organizations to violate the principles and activities considered appropriate to one of their identities, thus complicating legitimation. Based on extensive fieldwork and drawing on a range of disciplines, this article proposes a novel theory of IO self-legitimation: I argue that the need for self-legitimation depends on the degree of identity cohesion and identity hierarchy of the organization. I identify two temporal dimensions of self-legitimation, three categories of self-legitimation practices, and three broader repercussions of self-legitimation, ultimately showing that self-legitimation is a necessary and constitutive activity for IOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has begun to examine patterns of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) perpetrated by peacekeepers deployed in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs). Yet, SEA makes up only a fraction of credible allegations of misconduct by peacekeepers. In this article we explore the contours of misconduct in UN PKOs beyond SEA allegations. We argue that the behavior of military forces in their own countries should easily predict their behavior when deployed as part of UN PKOs, which are typically set in fragile, postconflict countries where civilians have minimal protections or legal recourse. Using an original dataset of misconduct in PKOs from 2009 to 2016, we find the behavior of PKO contributor states toward their own populations strongly and consistently predicts the behavior of these states' military forces in UN PKOs. These findings have implications for the vetting, supervision, and composition of PKOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United Nations peacekeeping soldiers commit atrocities while deployed despite their mandate to protect civilians from harm. Yet, there is tremendous variation across missions in reported human rights abuses. Why are some missions more susceptible to misconduct than others? To answer this puzzle, we identify three broad sources of influence on peacekeeper behavior: institutions, society, and military culture. Using newly collected data, we find that host-country and contributing-country institutions, particularly press freedoms and rule of law, dramatically decrease violations. Compliance with international humanitarian law also decreases violations, though to a lesser degree than institutions. Societal influences, such as gender norms and income inequality, have virtually no impact on abuses. We illustrate the utility of these findings by generating out-of-sample predictions for hypothetical peacekeeping missions in countries with recent political turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary United Nations (UN) peacekeeping deployments commonly pursue both security and economic objectives, but the existing scholarly literature contains hardly any systematic assessments of peacekeeping missions' economic effects. We address this issue in two ways. First, we use cross-country data to show that UN peacekeeping missions are large-scale economic interventions. They stimulate demand in depressed economic environments; we find significantly higher economic growth in the presence of peacekeeping deployments than in comparable cases without them. However, we estimate that economic growth rapidly declines when missions end, which suggests that they do not necessarily promote stable economic development. Second, we provide evidence in this vein by turning to microlevel survey data that we collected in Monrovia, where the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) had a large presence from 2003 onward. Our data suggests that UNMIL's spending created demand for low-skill employment in the service sector, largely without facilitating skill transfers or loosening credit constraints for business owners. This illustrates the problem of "peacekeeping economies" suggested by our cross-country analysis: peacekeeping missions help create an economic boom fueled by demand in nontraded products, particularly low-skill services, which may not be robust to the mission's withdrawal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the limits of the United Nations (UN) diplomacy in the case of the removal of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) by UN Secretary-General U Thant from its positions on the border between Israel and the United Arab Republic (UAR) in mid-May 1967. As the removal of UNEF left the two countries' military forces directly facing each other during a time of growing political tension in the region, war broke out. Several factors combined to shape the response of Thant to the evolving crisis, such as his consideration about his authorship to respond to the UAR without referring the matter to either the Security Council or General Assembly. Various factors were attributed to Thant's lack of success in his diplomatic initiative, such as his own shortcomings as a diplomat.

How do peacekeepers operating in Haiti, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) discursively construct the local people, especially local women, and to what effect? I show a connection between peacekeepers' representations of local people, articulated in discourse, and the gendered, often sexualized interactions and transactions in peacekeeping sites. Gender plays a central role in peacekeeper discourse. It situates the peacekeeper outside, and superior to, the chaotic, dysfunctional, feminized local. At the same time, a close reading of peacekeepers' representations of local people disrupts idealized notions of peacekeeper masculinity as protective and benign, which still persist in peacekeeping circles, revealing it as something more vulnerable and brittle. The connection between discourse and (non)performance of peacekeeping duties is neither causal nor straightforward, but I argue that peacekeepers' discursive constructions of locals affect how peacekeepers interpret their mandate to protect civilians: protection becomes conditional on peacekeepers' perceptions of locals' appearance, affect, behavior, and their ability to act out an idealized role as someone "worth" protecting. The article thus brings new insight to our understandings of gender, masculinities, and protection failures in peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.N. peacekeeping missions succeed in preventing the resumption of conflict and saving lives. At the same time, a series of sexual exploitation and abuse scandals since the early 2000s has raised concerns about the conduct of peacekeepers. We examine a related, but generally overlooked, potential negative externality of peacekeeping missions: the forced trafficking of sex workers. We argue that U.N. peacekeepers increase demand for sex work and that this demand may be met through human trafficking for forced prostitution. Using data on U.N. peacekeeping missions between 2001 and 2011, we evaluate the effect of a peacekeeper presence on human sex trafficking in and around the host state. We find that the presence of U.N. peacekeeping forces correlates positively with a state being cited as a destination for forced prostitution. This has important implications for the future deployment of peacekeeping forces around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author express his perspectives on Devika Hovell's views about sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by United Nations (UN) personnel. It mentions about UN's relationship to local populations during peacekeeping operations; prevention of gender-based violence; and providing provide redress to victims of rape.

The appointment of a new United Nations (UN) Secretary-General brings new opportunities to address issues that have beset the organization over recent decades. A priority in that regard should be accountability for harms caused within peacekeeping. This issue has received significant attention over recent years, with the close scrutiny of cholera in Haiti and lead poisoning in Kosovo being just two examples. While legal scholarship in recent years has focused on how to reform UN accountability, particularly in relation to the Haiti cholera claims, there have been fewer proposals on how to address crimes committed by UN peacekeepers. One of the most serious of those crimes, in terms of harms caused both to victims and to the legitimacy of UN peacekeeping operations, is sexual abuse. Yet the proposals for addressing this issue largely have not been successful. To that end, this article – which is exploratory in nature – sets out why there is a need for a wholesale reform of how we approach accountability for peacekeepers who perpetrate sexual abuse, explaining particularly how the problems relate to laws and normative frameworks as well as to investigations and prosecutions. The article then proposes elements that might be considered in a new victim-centred approach – namely, criminal justice, truth and reconciliation, human rights and political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the views of author regarding exposure of sexual abuse by United Nations (UN) peacekeepers. It mentions about Rosa Freedman's approach towards accountability in response to sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers; and the history of humanitarian nature of an institution or authority, and the history of humanitarianism, and paternalism.

Do shifts in global power affect the performance of United Nations peacekeeping? While many have studied the impact of rising powers on the global economy, none examine how they impact the structure of the UN's peacekeeping institutions. By engaging in a multi-level analysis, this article links the ascendance of India with the decreased performance of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO). By examining the performance of Indian peacekeepers in Congo before and after India's ascension to a seat on the Security Council in 2011, the article illustrates the specific mechanisms through which India's shift on peacekeeping undermined the performance of the mission in North Kivu. Drawing on interviews in Congo and India, the article links India's machinations within the Security Council over the Libyan intervention to the reduced performance of MONUSCO. Specifically, India's decision to withdraw military hardware from the mission and to end reforms designed to improve relations between peacekeepers and Congolese civilians undermined its ability to fulfill its primary mandate of civilian protection. The analysis suggests that the once firm boundary between troop-contributing countries and those that pay for missions is increasingly unstable with negative consequences for civilian protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While China used to condemn UN peacekeeping as a Western tool in the 1970s, it now supplies the largest number of UN peacekeeping troops among the UN Security Council Permanent Five. To explain this puzzling change in China's attitude toward UN peacekeeping, this paper constructs an original framework that unpacks China's evolution in self-identity as a "responsible major power" by first disaggregating the economic, military, and political costs and benefits for its participation in UN peacekeeping. In so doing, this paper shows that China's attitudinal change is best captured by a shift from a present-cost-driven, "purchase" model of participation in international institutions to a future-benefit-driven, "investment" model of participation. A series of key events that occurred between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, notably China's accession to the WTO and its successful bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, had in part accustomed China to paying large institutional costs upfront in order to be "part of the club." The paper concludes with a brief discussion on the applicability, or the lack thereof, of the Chinese experience to other countries' experiences with international institutions given China's unique historical trajectory and cultural idiosyncrasies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research demonstrates that larger and better-equipped United Nations peacekeeping missions more effectively ensure peace and security. This raises an important question: what explains the willingness of member-states to contribute the substantial numbers of troops needed to achieve peacekeeping goals? We argue that narrow member-state security interests offer an important explanation. We find that states embroiled in an ongoing rivalry with another state in the international system contribute more personnel to ongoing missions. Additionally, we find that regimes concerned about coup attempts increase deployments to peacekeeping operations. In a more general sense, this article suggests that the provision of security by peacekeeping operations to their host states is partially dependent upon higher levels of insecurity elsewhere in the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution provides an overview of the litigation in the Dutch civil and criminal courts concerning the Srebrenica massacre. The author maps out the Dutch courts' divergent approaches to immunity of United Nations peacekeepers, state responsibility and individual criminal responsibility for the events in Srebrenica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains China's deployment to UN peacekeeping operations? Material factors are necessary but insufficient to explain China's calculus; identity is a key causal variable also. China is the only permanent UN Security Council member to claim dual identities as a great power and a Global South state in regards to peacekeeping and is therefore receptive to social influence from its respective peer groups. I apply competing explanations for deployment against the critical case of China's 2007 commitment to the UN-African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur, a leastlikely case for identity-based explanations. I use extensive interviews of Chinese and UN foreign policy elites, participant observation at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and written sources to reconstruct the case. The article concludes with reflections on rising powers and peacekeeping, and the implications on the scope conditions for identity as a variable in Chinese foreign policy and China's intervention behavior more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has investigated the relative effectiveness of peacekeeping in stabilizing postconflict states, preventing the return to armed hostilities between belligerents, and reducing civilian abuse during civil conflict. This research has shed light on important theoretical and policyrelevant issues. However, scholars have largely neglected to evaluate the role of peacekeeping in protecting civilians during the notoriously unstable postconflict period. Even after active conflict has ended, the factions often persist in abusing civilians to reinforce conflict gains, shape the postconflict environment, exact revenge for wartime grievances, or spoil peace processes. This analysis investigates the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions in protecting civilians during the post-conflict "peace." Using newly collected data on the number and type of United Nations peacekeeping personnel commitments along with civilian victimization data for all African conflicts between 1992 and 2010, we find that greater numbers of peacekeeping troops reduce anticivilian violence. By contrast, larger deployments of UN observers are positively correlated with violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United Nations peace operations are deployed in greater numbers to more difficult operating theatres in response to more complex conflict situations than ever before. More than 100,000 UN peacekeepers are deployed in missions mandated under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to use 'all necessary means' to protect civilians from direct harm as well as to achieve a host of other tasks such as supporting the (re)building of state institutions, facilitating humanitarian aid, and overseeing compliance with ceasefire agreements and political commitments. With increasing regularity, UN peacekeepers are instructed to complete these tasks in contexts where there is no peace to keep or where peace is fragile. To understand these changes, and the implications for UN peace operations, this article examines three key transformations: the emergence of the protection of civilians as a central mission goal (and accompanying principles of due diligence); a subtle move away from peacekeeping as an impartial overseer of peace processes towards the goal of stabilization; and a so-called 'robust turn' towards greater preparedness to use force. It identifies the challenges posed to contemporary UN peacekeeping operations by these transformations and evaluates the UN's efforts thus far to make peacekeeping fit for purpose in the twenty-first century, noting that while significant progress has been made in areas such as policy and guidance, force sustainment and deployment, and the application of force enablers, there remains a considerable way to go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how involvement by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in situations of ongoing conflict affects peace processes. It argues that the level of ICC involvement is crucial for the Court's impact on peace settlements and that this impact takes the form of delegating politico-legal and discursive authority away from peace process actors. To make this argument, the article disaggregates the processes of ICC involvement and peacemaking into component parts and conceptualizes a broad notion of judicialization. This analytical framework is applied to two cases with different negotiation outcomes: the Juba talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army and the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation between the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some peacekeeping mandates broad and expansive while others are narrow and well defined? Does variation in mandate flexibility reflect the needs inherent in resolving the conflict or the political interests of powerful states? The modern thread of debate surrounding UN action focuses on whether the political interests of the Permanent Five ( P5) members in the Security Council or the stated goals of the institution as a whole drive UN behavior. While most analyses focus on where the UN intervenes to assess the political 'pull' that member states exert on the institution, we examine variation in operational latitude across UN peacekeeping in war-torn states. Our analysis offers three main results. Powerful states do constrain international bureaucracies; however, bureaucratic independence varies with the intrinsic interests of the P5. Further, heterogeneity across powerful state preferences systematically affects bureaucratic flexibility in peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]