ABSTRACT Localization has emerged as a dominant reform paradigm guiding humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts on a global scale. It signals a commitment to shift power to local actors by recognizing, valuing, and strengthening their role in humanitarian or peacebuilding interventions. Despite this commitment, a noticeable reorientation of power to local actors has not occurred. This article contributes to the critical scholarship on localization by analysing 22 United Nations reports to examine their understanding of local actors and their envisaged contributions to missions in Iraq since 2003. The study engages with the UN's perspectives on localization across its key mission areas: development, stabilization, and humanitarianism. The findings show a lack of consistency in the Unites Nations’ perception of local actors and their contributions, with different sub-sectors presenting disparate views. The reports predominantly emphasize the instrumental use of local actors to achieve pre-defined mission objectives. Consequently, this article shows that the case of Iraq exposes a disconnect between the progressive and normative scholarly framing of localization as a political project aimed at restructuring power dynamics, and its on-ground implementation, which often simplifies localization as mere involvement of local actors.

ABSTRACT How has the local turn approach been translated within peacebuilding mission mandates? Novelties introduced by International and Regional Organizations’ strategic documents shape a new approach termed ‘local turn’ (LT) in the literature, which envisages a more context-sensitive peacebuilding focused on resilience and local ownership. While finding significant potential, academic debate describes LT as a strategic adaptation of the liberal peace paradigm, functional to the provision of means for a pragmatic retreat from (over)ambitious goals. The study builds on this by focusing on a rather unexplored type of primary source: mission mandates. Through automated text analysis, we trace the consistency of liberal peace and local turn features in the United Nations and European Union peacebuilding mandates over the past two decades. The results confirm a detachment between policy orientations versus goals and instruments already at the level of mandates and highlight traits of systematicity in the utilitarian use of LT as an exit strategy. This study enriches the literature on UN and EU peacebuilding and paves the way for further research on policy change in post-conflict reconstruction.

ABSTRACT Private interests might occasionally influence the decisions of troop-providers when contributing to UN peacekeeping missions. However, the pursuit of private benefits impacts how the mandates of peacekeeping missions are fulfilled. Drawing upon the conflict-of-interest theory, I argue that the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations is compromised when troop-providers lack ideational commitment to the principles of UN peacekeeping. This article explores the impact of troop-providers’ ideational commitment to UN peacekeeping on the duration of UN missions. To achieve this, a duration analysis is conducted over all completed and ongoing peacekeeping operations from April 1991 to December 2019. The results reveal that conflicting interests within peacekeeping operations lead to an increased time required for concluding UN missions. In essence, by establishing a connection between the raison d’^etre of troop-providers and the duration of missions, this article outlines significant policy implications for the United Nations.

ABSTRACT This year marks the 75th anniversary of what the UN itself understands to be its first peacekeeping operation. It is therefore an appropriate time to reflect on the track record of UN peacekeeping in its efforts to try to maintain and realize peace and security. Moreover, this milestone invites us to ponder what lies ahead in the realm of peacekeeping. For this reason, this forum article brings together both academics and UN officials to assess the achievements and challenges of UN peacekeeping over the past 75 years. Through a dialogue among peacekeeping scholars and practitioners, we hope to identify current trends and developments in UN peacekeeping, as well as explore priorities for the future to improve the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations in terms of achieving their mandate objectives, such as maintaining peace, protecting civilians, promoting human rights, and facilitating reconciliation. This forum article is structured into six thematic sections, each shedding light on various aspects of UN peacekeeping: (1) foundational principles of UN peacekeeping - namely, consent, impartiality, and the (non-)use of force; (2) protection of civilians; (3) the primacy of politics; (4) early warning; (5) cooperation with regional organizations; and (6) the changing geopolitical landscape in which UN peacekeeping operates.