Finding the Utility of Force to Protect Civilians from Violence: Exploring Outcomes of United Nations Military Protection Operations in Africa (1999–2017)

Abstract

ABSTRACT For more than two decades, the United Nations Security Council has tasked Blue Helmets to use all necessary means – including lethal force – to protect civilians from violence. Despite policymakers’ emphasis on reducing threats to civilians, we remain ignorant of the conditions leading to successful outcomes when force is used to protect. Introducing four promising causal conditions, this article employs a new dataset capturing military protection operations across 10 UN missions in Africa from 1999 to 2017 to explore combinations of necessary and sufficient conditions for successful protection outcomes, finding promising recipes for success.