Peacekeepers Cannot Stop State Violence

The international community deploys UN peacekeeping missions to conflict zones to stop violence, protect civilians, and engage in peacekeeping negotiations. UN peacekeeping operations are the cornerstone of post-conflict reconstruction in war torn regions and peacekeepers are increasingly deployed to ongoing conflict zones to mitigate violence on and off the battlefield. In recent decades, the missions’ priorities have shifted to protecting civilian, even intervening in ongoing conflict zones to achieve this mission. Peacekeeping missions are successful at reducing violence against civilians incited by rebel actors; however, minimal focus is given to assessing the success of protecting civilians from government actors. Effectiveness of peacekeepers may be affected by placement of peacekeepers in areas of severe violence, their ability to locate far from headquarters, resource constraints, conflicting agendas with central governments who may be supporting violence, and the capacity to operate in certain areas. In addition, local governments must authorize UN peacekeeping missions. This allows governments to restrict missions in areas where government actors are the primary perpetrators of violence against civilians.

Hanne Fjelde, Lisa Hultman, and Desiree Nilsson from Uppsala University in Sweden examine the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping on the protection of civilians. To analyze the peacekeeping forces’ ability to protection civilians from government actors, the authors make a clear distinction between violence by rebel and government actors. They employ a disaggregated research design to analyze variations in the subnational patterns of UN peacekeeping deployment on the African continent from 2000 to 2011. The study focuses on UN peacekeeping missions with the explicit mandate to protect civilians and is unique in its leverage of a spatial grid structure to divide countries of interest to analyze the effect of peacekeeping presence on the behavior of different parties in their respective areas of deployment. The researchers then use monthly observations of each unit to study the effects of peacekeeping missions.

Through their study, the researchers seek to understand how peacekeeping missions respond to violence against civilians given their limited resources and if they are effective in executing their missions. The authors find that UN peacekeepers do in fact deploy to areas that have experienced civilian atrocities and that the more peacekeeping forces deployed to a location, the less likely that rebel groups will carry out attacks in these areas. Peacekeepers are, however, less effective in hindering government violence. One interpretation of this finding is that the reliance on government consent makes peacekeepers less effective and perhaps also less willing to impose military and political costs on government actors in the areas of their deployment.Peacekeeping resources may work in conflicting ways to protect or not protect civilians, depending on the source of violence.

In addition, their findings show that peacekeepers deploy to some areas where armed actors target civilians, but not all. Many areas in conflict zones where civilians are subjected to violence never see peacekeepers. In addition, the time it takes for peacekeepers to successfully arrive on the ground often allows for violence to be committed before their arrival. Often the delays are seen in areas where civilians are intentionally targeted.

The researchers find the presence of peacekeepers is effective in mitigating violence against civilians by rebel actors, but that their presence is not effective in protecting civilians against government actors. This could be because peacekeeping missions must be authorized by local governments and perhaps there are incentives to intentionally keep peacekeeping resources away from these targeted areas.

The international community relies on UN peacekeeping missions not only to promote on-going peace and reconciliation in post-conflict regions, but also for the immediate protection of civilians in circumstances of on-going conflict. In many war-torn regions, violence is not only perpetrated by rebel actors, but also governments and government-affiliated parties. The ability to provide sound protection for civilians means the provision of safety against violence from any source. The authors seek to identify the success of UN peacekeeping missions in protecting civilians specifically from government-led violence and find that the mere presence of peacekeepers is not effective when government actors are the perpetrators of violence.

These insights lead to opportunities for the international community to think creatively about other means to protecting civilians against government-incited violence rather than just the mere presence of peacekeepers on the ground. The methods employed for the protection of civilians need to be reevaluated and prioritized by international actors to ensure the necessary security and resources are in place to provide the protection all civilians in conflict zones deserve. If civilian protection is a central policy objective of the international community in conflict intervention, actors need to rethink the strategies and methods of their missions. In addition, the findings highlight opportunities for reevaluating where aid resources are dedicated. Moving forward, leaders should evaluate ways to ensure resources, beyond the presence of peacekeepers, can be dedicated to areas where government actors have incentives to carry out violence against civilians. Unique opportunities may exist to identify sources of government perpetrated violence and provide sufficient civilian protection in these regions during time periods of heightened risk through other means.

---

Article Source: Fjelde, Hanne, Lisa Hultman, and Desirée Nilsson. 2019. “Protection Through Presence: UN Peacekeeping and the Costs of Targeting Civilians.” International Organization vol. 73, iss. 1 (Winter): 103-131. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000346.

Featured Image: Otografias, iStockPhoto