UN peacekeeping presence and local food security outcomes

Abstract

A now extensive literature examines effects of international peacekeeping on conflict-affected countries’ war-to-peace transitions. Still, we know little about how impactful peacekeeping is in stemming a wider set of hardships affecting host communities, such as hunger. Addressing this gap, we theorize and empirically examine the relationship between local UN peacekeeping deployment and food security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and Liberia. The results suggest an overall positive but substantively modest association between peacekeeping presence and more food secure communities—proxied by stunting rates in children—and point to context-specific variation. We conclude by discussing implications for future research.