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This study systematizes and analyzes the legal aspects of changes in the deployment of international peacekeeping forces over the past 50 years. The article deals with topical political and legal problems facing the peacekeeping activities of the United Nations (UN) and regional international organizations. These problems emanate from both natural institutional and artificially created factors. Overcoming the challenges ahead is possible only through the development of multilateral diplomacy, the aim of which is to achieve long-term and realizable agreements to resolve conflicts and establish lasting and sustainable peace. The study analyzes the role, effect, and potential of peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the UN and other regional international organizations to ensure international security as a timely response to legal and institutional challenges related to the interests of certain players in the world arena, where Russia and some countries in Europe and Asia have been affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains UN member-state personnel withdrawals from peacekeeping operations? Withdrawals can occur at the behest of contributor states, as contributions are voluntary. We argue that withdrawal is motivated by violence in the peacekeeping operation host state. Research shows that well-resourced missions improve the prospects of success. Personnel withdrawals are dangerous, as they are more likely when continued deployments are needed. We thus need to understand why some states resist withdrawing in the face of instability. We argue that democracies are more stalwart than their counterparts given their constituency interests, the democratic benefits of peacekeeping and the political cover offered to democratic policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most empirical studies on states' personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) use a state's annual contributions as the unit of analysis. A critical problem of the state-level analysis is that it ignores the fact that states have to decide how to distribute these peacekeepers among more than a dozen peacekeeping missions. Ignoring the mission-level decision misses a significant part of states' UN PKO contributions and could bias our empirical analysis. We propose a two-level model that sees a state's UN PKO contributions as the interactions between the state-level and mission-level factors. This model is employed to revisit the heatedly debated "reimbursement hypothesis". Our analysis of the empirical data between 1990 and 2018 shows a mixed relationship between states' economic development and their UN PKO contributions. We also find that middle-income rather than low-income countries are the most critical providers of UN PKOs since the end of the cold war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite evidence that United Nations peacekeeping is a cost-effective tool for addressing civil and interstate conflict, it has consistently experienced financial shortfalls as member states neglect to pay their dues. To enable investigation into the dynamics of peacekeeping support, we present newly collected data on all member-state financial contributions to all UN peacekeeping operations from 1990 to 2010. The data also include dues assessed by the UN to gauge the extent to which states fall short of what they owe. We show that financial shortfalls are widespread and vary across both missions and contributors. The data offer opportunities to understand patterns of financial support for peacekeeping across states, missions, and time, and can ultimately provide insight into the factors that lead states to support international institutions and public goods. We illustrate how scholars can use the data with an analysis of the factors that drive states to meet their financial commitments. We find that wealthier states, those more engaged in global trade, democracies, and those that also contribute personnel to peacekeeping operations are the most likely to pay their dues. Conversely, the United States and countries in the Americas, Africa, and Asia are more likely to shirk part or all of their financial obligations in a given year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the post–Cold War surge in peacekeeping contributions from the developing world? I argue that, amid a wave of democratization and expanded peacekeeping activity, such countries use peacekeeping deployments to reduce the threat of the military to nascent democratic institutions. Peacekeeping participation serves to placate the military in the short term with resources and continued activity, while socializing and professionalizing it to pro-democracy behaviors in the long term. Assessing troop contributions from 1990 to 2011, I find evidence that new democracies make larger contributions than other states, where the effect diminishes as democracy becomes consolidated. Moreover, the effect is amplified in countries with a greater military legacy. I supplement this with a study of Argentina to further support the proposed mechanism. These findings help explain the shift in state peacekeeping contributions in recent years, the role of democracy in peacekeeping efforts, and the impact of international actors in supporting democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organizations face a trade-off between the need to replace poorly performing leaders and the imperative of preserving the loyalty of influential or pivotal member states. This performance-politics dilemma is particularly acute in UN peacekeeping. Leaders of peacekeeping operations are responsible for ensuring that peacekeepers implement mandates, maintain discipline, and stay safe. Yet, if leaders fail to do so, is the UN Secretariat able and willing to replace them? We investigate newly collected data on the tenure of 238 civilian and military leaders in thirty-eight peacekeeping operations, 1978 to 2017. We find that the tenures of civilian leaders are insensitive to performance, but that military leaders in poorly performing missions are more likely to be replaced. We also find evidence that political considerations complicate the UN's efforts at accountability. Holding mission performance constant, military leaders from countries that are powerful or contribute large numbers of troops stay longer in post. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In war-torn countries, elections are held to support peacebuilding, but they sometimes trigger new violence. While peacekeeping operations (PKOs) regularly accompany electoral periods, we lack systematic knowledge on how they influence election-related violence. I argue that variation in peacekeepers' activities is fundamentally important: only if PKOs assist with securing and organizing elections can they reduce election-related violence. Using novel data on PKOs' election-related activities and accounting for endogeneity in both peacekeeping deployment and activities, the analyses of all 630 elections in conflict-affected countries support this expectation. The result implies that the design of PKOs is crucial for effectively managing post-war political transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the benefits of on‐site printing at remote geographic locations, where access to spare parts is intermittent and supplies are replenished at fixed intervals. Organizations typically have no solution to spare parts shortages other than expensive expediting orders, or waiting for a part to arrive with the next replenishment. We investigate whether on‐site three‐dimensional (3D) printing of spare parts can bring relief. Our work extends dual‐sourcing literature with fixed order cycles by considering two emergency supply options: expediting regular parts and 3D printing lower quality parts. We model the replenishment and emergency supply decisions as a Markov decision process and find that the optimal inventory control policy consists of two thresholds that control when to expedite, when to print and when to wait for regular parts via the next replenishment. We apply our model to a case study of the Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) for her United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali. Our results show that on‐site 3D printing, much more so than expediting, leads to large operational cost savings through on‐site inventory reductions and increased asset availability, thus increasing the ability of the RNLA to operate in remote locations. These results extend to many other organizations that operate in remote locations, for example, those in the mining and offshore industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do peacekeeper fatalities affect states' contributions to UN operations? While the deaths of peacekeepers are thought to be a factor in states' decisions to reduce the magnitude of their participation in a mission, not all states respond similarly to peacekeeper fatalities. I hypothesize that democracies and wealthy countries are likely to be more sensitive to peacekeeper deaths than their non-democratic and poorer counterparts. Analyses of UN peacekeeping operations between 1990 and 2011 confirm that peacekeeper fatalities generally have a negative effect upon the size of countries' contributions to peacekeeping operations, and that wealthy countries are likely to make larger decreases to their contributions than poorer countries. There is less evidence, however, that democracies are more sensitive to peacekeeper fatalities than non-democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Motivation.: A plethora of warfighting games exist commercially, but there is a lack of digital games that deal with peace processes. Furthermore, none simulate actual peacekeeping. The United Nations currently deploys about 100,000 peacekeepers to some of the world's most dangerous zones, where peacekeepers save lives, alleviate suffering, and help create conditions for peace. The United Nations and national militaries lack peacekeeping simulations to help train their soldiers. Additionally, the public needs to learn more about the way peacekeeping works. Thus, peacekeeping simulation and gaming are worth exploring, especially in the rapidly evolving digital space, which offers new avenues and benefits. Methods.: We review the meager literature on the subject and observe that there are few digital games to directly draw from. We build on previous work that argued the need for such development, but we now assess important design principles and parameters. We draw upon peacekeeping tabletop exercises that are already well developed. Results.: We conclude that excellent scenarios and simulation technologies exist that could be combined quite easily for effective peacekeeping training and public education. We find key materials and scenarios in exercises of the United Nations and of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. Highlighted areas for future digital design are the inclusion of non-military avatars, emphasis on soft skills development (especially empathy), and realistically complex links between actions and consequences. Conclusion.: While describing some UN exploration at a proof-of-concept stage, we suggest that both the United Nations and the gaming industry should explore the idea further to achieve synergies between institutional and entertainment applications. The growing capacity of digital technology allows significant innovation, yielding results that could be useful, ethical, enjoyable, and potentially profitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite some harsh criticisms of United Nations (UN) peace operations, research demonstrates that many UN missions are successful, though evaluations depend on how success is defined. Even UN missions that fail in one or more aspects provide a net benefit to peace processes and help to save lives and alleviate human suffering. While an understanding of the flaws and limitations of peace operations can help improve the operations, some unfair criticism must be directly challenged. For instance, contrary to critiques in a recent paper by Séverine Autesserre, the UN has helped end civil wars, and it does not have a fixation on elections nor does it ignore the bottom-up approach. Most UN multidimensional missions pursue multiple levels of engagement, from local to national leaders. Elections are a key way to engage locals. With decades of experience, the UN has many positive lessons to offer in making, keeping, and building peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United Nations peacekeeping operations (UN PKOs) increasingly engage with local communities to support peace processes in war-torn countries. Yet, while existing research tends to focus on the coercive and state-building functions of UN PKOs, their concrete local activities with community leaders and populations remain, empirically and theoretically, understudied. Thus, this study investigates how peacekeepers' community-based intergroup dialogue activities influence communal violence. It argues that facilitating dialogue between different communal identity-based groups locally can revive intergroup coordination and diminish negative biases against other groups, thereby reducing the risk of communal conflict escalation. This argument is tested using a novel data set of intergroup dialogue activities organized by the UN PKO in Côte d'Ivoire across 107 departments from October 2011 to May 2016. Bivariate probit and matching address the nonrandom assignment of these interventions. The analyses provide robust evidence that the UN PKO mitigated communal violence by organizing intergroup dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peacekeeping mitigates killing, but nonlethal violence also influences both positive peace and stability. We evaluate peacekeepers' effect on one such type of abuse, sexual violence. We posit that peacekeepers raise the cost of abuses and foster institutional and cultural changes that curb violence. We find that missions both reduce the chance of any violence and limit its prevalence; larger deployments and multidimensional missions are more effective. Governments curtail violence more quickly than rebels do in response to military contingents; rebels are especially responsive when missions include large civilian components. These findings contribute to our understanding of peacekeeping in three primary ways: we expand the evaluation of peacekeeping to consider nonlethal violence; we draw attention to mission size, capacity to use force, and civilian-led programming as determinants of effectiveness; and we demonstrate how addressing nonlethal violence requires similar tools as lethal violence but is further enhanced by specific civilian-led initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much literature on peacekeeping seeks to determine the effect of United Nations (UN) intervention on post-conflict peace processes, most peacekeeping operations (PKOs) are deployed to active conflicts. The limited research on peacekeeping in active civil conflicts suggests that robust PKOs reduce hostilities. Yet, if PKOs serve to extend conflict duration, even lowered hostilities can yield greater destruction over time. We thus explore the effect of peacekeeping on conflict duration. We argue that PKOs with larger troop deployments are better able to increase the cost of combat, improve information sharing between belligerents, and provide security guarantees, thus reducing the time to negotiated resolutions. Using fine-grained data on monthly peacekeeping personnel commitments and observations of ongoing conflict between combatants, we examine how variations in mission deployments affect the success of UN peacekeeping in ending civil conflicts. As expected, our findings indicate that larger troop deployments shorten war duration to negotiated resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions are complex social organizations, with soldiers coming from several countries. In this environment, effective communication and interactions with local populations are often difficult, and establishing essential local support can be jeopardized when soldiers are culturally distant from local communities. At the same time, however, when local populations perceive peacekeepers as sufficiently distant or unbiased, the promotion of cooperation is enhanced. We explore whether cultural distance—in terms of geography, language, and religion—and social distance—in terms of economy and institutions—between the peacekeepers and the local population improve the operational capabilities of a mission. We use monthly information on UN peacekeeping missions' composition from 1990 to 2015. We find that higher geographic and cultural distances correspond to higher levels of violence against civilians and higher battle deaths, whereas institutional and economic differences have the opposite effects, although these are less robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping on conflict has received a sustained amount of attention in the empirical literature. The advent of new data on UN peacekeeping and new temporal units of analysis have enabled researchers to expand the frontiers of peacekeeping research and undertake a more nuanced examination of peacekeeping effectiveness. In this special section, a series of articles examine how UN peacekeeping affects different types of violence within conflicts and leads to different types of peaceful outcomes. Factors such as the cultural affinity between peacekeepers and local communities, the size of peacekeeping operations and the specific composition of UN forces are shown to be important variables associated with lower levels of casualties and violence and also a higher likelihood of mediation and timely peaceful settlements in civil wars. In the aggregate, these articles suggest that robust peacekeeping is associated with better outcomes in many stages of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an increased emphasis on both protection of civilians and the problem of sexual violence. We explore the impact of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping on the occurrence of wartime sexual violence. Acknowledging the difficulty in reducing sexual violence, we propose two conditions under which peacekeepers are more likely to be successful: when the mission has a protection mandate and when the conflict actors exercise a high level of control over their forces. We find that the ability of peacekeepers to reduce sexual violence in general is weak. Only police within protection missions reduces the risk of sexual violence by rebels. However, when the actors exercise control, the number of peacekeepers is associated with a lower risk of sexual violence by both governments and rebels. We conclude that dealing with sexual violence by weak and fragmented actors is a challenging task beyond the current capacity of UN peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the proposed benefits of third-party involvement that has been offered to justify its use is that it helps reduce the severity of conflict. Existing work finding that peacekeeping operations reduce battle-related fatalities considers peacekeeping in isolation from other forms of third-party diplomatic involvement, such as mediation. We argue that mediation has its own effect on patterns of violence. Moreover, we argue that peacekeeping and mediation can have an interactive effect, in which each enhance the violence-reducing potential of the other. Using monthly data on battle-related deaths in African intrastate conflicts, we find that mediation is associated with reduced bloodshed. We also find, consistent with existing work, that a greater number of peacekeepers leads to a reduction in violence. In addition, we find that mediation and peacekeeping efforts reinforce one another, although each type of involvement is able to reduce battlefield fatalities independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses original survey data to study the effects of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) on the political attitudes and behaviors of ordinary Liberians. Three results emerge: (i) UNMIL has positive, statistically significant effects on political participation measured over multiple outcome indicators; (ii) UNMIL’s effects display heterogeneity across individual outcome indicators, most positive effects are concentrated around measures associated with participation in national politics as well as political interest and efficacy, while the effects on participation in local politics are mixed; and (iii) self-reported measures of citizens’ interactions with UNMIL military personnel and exposure to democracy and to human rights campaigns carried out by international actors have strong positive associations with political participation, suggesting that results are driven by security and nonsecurity mechanisms. This article discusses the implications of these findings and areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief examines how the motivations and goals of China's participation in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations have evolved since 1990 as a result of China's changing national interests. We conclude that China is unlikely to abandon its long-held foreign policy principle of non-interference. However, motivated by a desire to be seen as a responsible global power, Beijing is seriously considering a more proactive approach to humanitarian crises, which may include direct intervention. Furthermore, as a significant contributor of troops and financing, China is uniquely positioned to represent the perspectives of both developing and developed countries in UN peacekeeping. To do so, Beijing will need to increase its leadership role in UN peacekeeping operations and offer creative ideas about how to promote reconciliation and development in postconflict societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a theory on how economic development in South Korea has reshaped its foreign policy and examine the rising middle power’s personnel contributions to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs) using a supply-side rational choice model. Not only do the results reaffirm economic development as the fundamental driving force of South Korea’s growing contributions to UN PKOs, a handful of factors that influence South Korea’s decision on UN PKO participation were also discovered. This study highlights an important approach to bridge our knowledge of the global peacekeeping endeavors and individual countries’ self-interested calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the release of the 2015 United Nations Peacekeeping Missions Military Special Forces Manual, there has been surprisingly little scholarly attention devoted to it. Indeed, much of the recent literature on the topic of special operations forces (SOF) is descriptive, sensationalized, or simply boosting the image of SOF as the proverbial "easy button" for decision-makers. This article seeks to critically engage with the 2015 United Nations manual on SOF through the framework of specialized generalists, boundary spanning, and military autonomy. This paper will then continue the argument that SOF has a role in peace operations, albeit a limited one. Finally, it will conclude with some recommendations for how these findings can inform Canada's employment of SOF in the future. Indeed, given that Canada is a relative newcomer to the "global SOF network," such critical inquiry is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interoperability is central to UN peace operations. These operations are civilian-led enterprises that pursue complex objectives, which often can only be achieved through the close collaboration of civilian, police, and military actors. As a result, coordination and interoperability between civilian and uniformed personnel in peace operations is not only desirable but often necessary to the success of these missions. Yet, interoperability is not a given. Peace operations face important challenges that can undermine the ability of their different components to work effectively together towards common objectives. Based on observations made during field research in Haiti and time spent at the UN headquarters in New York City, this essay discusses the challenges faced by peace operations in regard to interoperability, factors that facilitate interoperability, and implications for Canada's announced return to peacekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes stock of some of the important contributions to the study of peacekeeping (PK). Two key topics stand out: peacekeeping burden sharing and mission effectiveness. For burden sharing, the theoretical foundation is the private provision of public goods and joint products. Implications for burden sharing differ whether financial or troop contributions are being shared, with the latter driven by jointly produced country-specific benefits. Financial burden sharing can also differ between United Nations (UN)-led and non-UN-led peacekeeping operations, wherein country-specific benefits are especially important for the latter. Many articles gauge peacekeeping effectiveness by the mission’s ability to maintain the peace or to protect lives for a set time period. More recently, multiple criteria are raised for evaluating peacekeeping in today’s world of multifaceted peacebuilding operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the shortcomings in the intelligence units involved in United Nations (UN) operations including the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), known as MONUSCO. Topics include the fabricated stories of a anonymous witness Mr. X. which allowed the DRC government and MONUSCO to mislead the the international community and the Congolese people and the lack of a professional intelligence agency in UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

How do we account for the dearth of female contributions to UN peace operations (UNPOs)? For answers, this study examines conditions that led the United Nations to move to reduce the gender imbalance in UNPO personnel and provides descriptive evidence that points to the continuing underrepresentation of women in these operations. To interpret this evidence, the study presents theoretical explanations for the varying contributions of personnel to UNPOs—including the political and socioeconomic character of the contributing states, international reputations and norms, and various demand-side influences exerted by missions—and then tests these explanations with a cross-sectional time-series model that accounts for female personnel contributions to each mission in the 2010–2011 period. Although offering significant support for domestic political explanations, the findings indicate that gender diversity is not a primary goal of most contributors and is largely a by-product of force sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on issues regarding the relationship between peace agreements and the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions. It explores variation in the UN's willingness in sending peacekeepers to conflicts or civil wars in the 1990s based on the experience of the UNOSOM II mission in Somalia. It also examines the effects of UN peacekeeping on the likelihood of combatants signing peace agreements.

The article combines research on postconflict management with public administration research by presenting a single case study on the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo. To investigate the reasons for the UN mission’s failure to implement its policies on minority relations, the study turns toward local municipal bureaucracies and offers a two-part causal argument that derives from principal–agent theory and bureaucratic representation theory. First, due to a lack of political and administrative oversight by Kosovar institutions and the UN peacebuilding mission, local municipal authorities experienced a high degree of autonomy. Second, those units within municipal administrations that were responsible for minority policy implementation did not include minority bureaucrats who could have acted as their communities’ advocates. In the absence of such active representation and a lack of top-down supervision, the municipal civil service departed from its mandate to implement affirmative policies serving the Serb and Roma community in Kosovo. The article finds that this ethnic bureaucratic drift constitutes a central explanation for the lack of minority policy implementation in Kosovo between 2001 and 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study on the personnel commitments to the peacekeeping operoations of the United Nations (UN) from 1990 to 2011. The number of deployed troops, police and military observers coded monthly is highlighted. The implications of the study on the coding processes in the peacekeeping operations of UN are outlined.

In their reply to our paper, Hudson and Matfess criticize some aspects of this final extension, suggesting that our proxies suffer from a "flawed conceptualization of brideprice dynamics." At present, it seems there are none, since in their response Hudson and Matfess simply discuss additional cross-sectional analyses that they have done using the static WomanStats Brideprice Scale. We thank Valerie Hudson and Hilary Matfess for their commentary. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores local level dynamics and the reciprocal relationships with national conflict dynamics. Local social structures and networks are at the centre of analysis and action,while unpacking the category of the "external actor". A case study of United Nations civilian peacekeeping support to local peacebuilding in South Sudan is presented.

The author offers opinions on participation by Canada in international peacebuilding efforts from 1992-2011. The involvement of Canada's armed forces in the United Nations (UN) intervention in Somalia in 1992-1993, as part of UN peacekeeping forces in Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2000-2001, in Sudan, South Sudan and the Darfur region of Sudan from 1998-2012 are cited to support the contention that the experiences have resulted in Canada's government and public opinion in that country adopting more limited goals for the role of foreign intervention in peacebuilding.

International relations literature is well developed on the effects of United Nations intervention on the duration of crises. The global human rights community has on a case-by-case basis addressed some of the unintended effects of UN intervention, namely, substantial increases in the human sex trafficking trade into crisis areas. We bridge these two literatures and evaluate the effects of UN involvement in Kosovo, Haiti and Sierra Leone.We look beyond the intended effects of UN intervention and consider the unintended effects in a systematic and generalizable way. We argue that UN involvement has the unfortunate and unintended effect of increasing the rates of human trafficking in these crisis areas. Our work concludes that the UN should proceed with caution into crisis areas and have plans in place to avoid the potentially devastating externalities of otherwise well-intentioned efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mandates for UN peacekeeping operations in Africa have become more robust since the delivery of the Brahimi Report in 2000. Contrary to before, soldiers are now unmistakably expected to use force to protect local civilians in a number of UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. While this expectation of force may be celebrated, the question rises whether peacekeeping soldiers can meet the expectation. Are they ready to kill and risk their lives to protect local civilians? This question is especially pertinent to Western armed forces, which have contributed little to post-millennium UN peace operations in Africa but are explicitly called upon by the UN administration to contribute to the robust peacekeeping missions. This article discusses the question of moral and psychological preparedness in light of the possible tension between the nationalist orientation in Western armed forces and the cosmopolitan demands of UN peacekeeping operations in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents alternative estimates for the demand for UN and non-UN peacekeeping. Generally, three-way fixed-effects models, which account for the country, year, and conflict region, provide the best estimates. The demand for UN peacekeeping is primarily influenced by the contributions of other nations (i.e., spillins), with spillin elasticity not significantly different from 1. For non-UN peacekeeping, both spillins and country-specific interests in the conflict region influence contributions. These peacekeepers' interests include trade and FDI concerns, along with proximity to the conflict. Peacekeeping missions appear partitioned: UN missions for global public benefits and non-UN missions for peacekeeper-specific benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the politics of representation in Kosova since the United Nations took over 'peace management' in 1999. It uses UN propaganda posters (political pedagogy) and local nationalist political advertising as a way to read the multiple gendered discourses of representation. It shows how gender is used relationally between competing forces-the 'international community' and nationalists-as a tool to ensure UN's imposition of Western policies and norms and as a mechanism for local politicians to consolidate their domination of the domestic/private sphere. Moreover, it discusses the price paid to mimic the West: how Kosovar politicians have sought to 'undo' national identity in favour of a Western self-representation through a gendered abnegation of Islam. Thus, as an intrinsic part of the discourse of 'peace-building', these images represent the site of power production, domination, negotiation, and rejection, involving the collaboration of different actors, institutions, and individuals. Three specific points will be made: first, the article seeks to show that a Western political modernization discourse has, paradoxically, reinforced patriarchal relations of power and traditional gender roles in Kosova through the subjugation of women. Second, it explains the inability to resolve competing Albanian narratives — one relying on the legacy of peaceful resistance and the other on the armed struggle against Serbian domination during the 1990s. Third, through the intermeshing of international peace-keepers and local nationalist patriarchs, it will show how the militarization of culture is perpetuated through, and in relationship to, gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On numerous occasions in the past fifteen years, U.N. peacekeepers have been accused of sexually assaulting or abusing the populations they serve. A Comprehensive Review of peacekeeper misconduct completed in 2005 identified significant problems and recommended numerous changes to address them. The U.S. Army and NATO, in a response to the possibility that their deployed troops will be engaged in or facilitate human trafficking, have enacted new policies intended to remove their troops from the demand for women trafficked for sexual services. The Department of Defense and NATO initiatives are similar to those being considered by the United Nations for preventing sexual misconduct by its peacekeepers. Because the United States, NATO, and the United Nations are all addressing the problems of sexual misconduct by deployed troops, their efforts should be mutually reinforcing. The examples of American and NATO armed forces offer hope that the United Nations will also enact strong measures to prevent future misconduct by its peacekeepers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘The inexhaustible problem of the Balkans’ (Tuchman, 1962, p. ix). Kosovo, technically still a province of Serbia, was devastated by the wars of the 1990s, culminating in 1999 in the flight of refugees to neighboring countries, whether voluntarily or through deliberate ‘ethnic cleansing’ the NATO bombing raids; the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops; and the transfer of civil administration to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). UNMIK's Department of Education and Science (DES) set about reorganizing the education system without regard to ethnicity. This article presents a case study of the state of education of students who are deaf and blind during the war and in the early days of the DES administration in the hope of a more peaceful future for the children of Kosovo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides an overview of the peacemaking efforts of the United Nations (UN) in East Timor, following the withdrawal of Indonesia in September 1999. Background on the history of East Timor; Challenge posed by the restoration of security; Assessment of the economic contributions of foreign governments to the country; Policy of the UN on local government.

We present a statistical model that predicts the force size of United Nations peacekeeping operations, relying on experiences from thirty-nine peacekeeping operations over the period 1945-1994. As we expected, the type of mission performed by the peacekeeping operation was a major factor in determining force size. Although the second-generation mission category includes a panoply of different mission types, these new peacekeeping operations still on average require almost 12,000 more personnel than observer operations. Our results indicate, however, that the size of a peacekeeping operation is not solely a function of mission type; the context of the conflict situation matters as well. Specifically, the severity of the violence in the crisis precipitating UN intervention has a significant effect, as does the addition of more actors to the conflict. In general, the geographic characteristics of the area (except the size of the deployment area), the type of conflict (civil or interstate), and superpower involvement had no statistically significant effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of peacekeepers in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in former Yugoslavia during 1990s. In this context a questionnaire study has been highlighted, which was conducted to get information from soldiers in four Swedish mechanized infantry battalions about their role in the mission. These soldiers were deployed in Bosnia/Herzegovina as part of the United Nations Protection Force mission. During the study, 45 questions were asked from soldiers of each battalion. They were asked to judge and evaluate their service during the mission. It was found in the study that some of the soldiers joined the mission on humanitarian grounds.

The article presents information on a study that analyzed whether the U.S. soldiers deployed in Macedonia approved or disapproved of the peacekeeping mission. The interview and survey responses of two rotations of soldiers, predominantly from the combat arms, who were deployed in a preventive diplomacy mission as part of the United Nations' Protection Force in Macedonia were gathered. The findings suggest that soldiers who had completed their rotation in Macedonia had a lower evaluation of the mission than did those who were just beginning their service. Also, many soldiers were of the view that any deployment is better than none for training combat troops.

The article discusses aspects related to strategic peacekeeping and delves over the future of peacekeeping operations. Strategic peacekeeping operations have followed the traditional peacekeeping prevalent in the Cold War period. After the end of the Cold War, besides the United Nations, regional organizations such as the Economic Organization of West African States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also provided military elements for peacekeeping operations. Peacekeeping operations in the 1990s deployed forces that were larger, equipped to undertake forceful defense and were assigned more numerous and widespread tasks than in traditional peacekeeping. The article concludes that strategic peacekeeping serves diplomacy and cannot itself guarantee success.

The article reports on the role and contributions of peacekeepers in conflict resolution with reference to Canada's experiences with the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). Peacekeeping is the prevention, containment, moderation and termination of hostilities between, or within states, by the help of a peaceful third party intervention. To attain effectively these objectives organizational planning is required as in waging war. The author after reviewing the contributions of peacekeeping as it has been practiced in the past dwells on new techniques that help peacekeepers work more actively with civilians to eliminate violent conflict.

The article presents information on the peacekeeping operations organized by regional organizations and multinational forces, which are not under the control of an international organization. The United Nations often organizes and directs peacekeeping operations. Sometimes peacekeeping operations are organized by regional or multinational organizations. This indicates that states may transfer their security concerns to regional organizations rather than the global organizations. It is natural to expect organizations such as the Organization of African Unity, the League of Arab States, and the European Community to conduct peacekeeping missions.

Examines the ways and degrees to which nation-states participate and financially support United Nations peacekeeping operations (UN PKO). National contributions to peacekeeping operations; Four part of the empirical treatment of UN PKO; Locations of UN PKO cases; Importance of the United States in the discussion of the hegemonic stability in relation to public goods provision of the UN PKO; Financial stakes for the United States in UN PKO.