UN Peacekeeping Research Articles

Xi Jinping’s Political Strategy for Developing Multilateral Security Diplomacy

The purpose of the article is to analyze the implementation of the multilateral diplomatic policy in the feld of security by the current head of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping. To achieve this goal, the article uses the method of content analysis of the public speeches of the leader of the Chinese state, followed by a generalization and inductive analysis of the main directions of the implementation of China’s modern foreign policy. The article discusses the current directions of the foreign policy strategy of the head of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, which allows to ensure the achievement of the state’s national interests in the feld of global security. The main vectors of multilateral diplomacy of modern China and its positioning in the world community as a leading state are considered. The role of China in security issues and UN peacekeeping missions is noted. The analysis resulted in the vectors of China’s foreign policy outlined in the article to ensure global security and develop multilateral diplomatic ties from the standpoint of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Conclusions are drawn about the correspondence of the main foreign policy discourse of Xi Jinping to the values of peaceful development, and its focus on the positions of multilateralism, cooperation and mutually benefcial relations of China on a global scale.

Developing a conceptual framework for the health protection of United Nations peacekeepers against the COVID-19 pandemic from global health perspectives

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has posed particular health risks to United Nations peacekeepers, which require prompt responses and global attention. Since the health protection of United Nations peacekeepers against the COVID-19 pandemic is a typical global health problem, strategies from global health perspectives may help address it. From global health perspectives, and referring to the successful health protection of the Chinese Anti-Ebola medical team in Liberia, a conceptual framework was developed for the health protection of United Nations peacekeepers against the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this framework, the features include multiple cross-borders (cross-border risk factors, impact, and actions); multiple risk factors (Social Determinants of Health), multiple disciplines (public health, medicine, politics, diplomacy, and others), and extensive interdepartmental cooperation. These strategies include multiple phases (before-deployment, during-deployment, and post-deployment), multi-level cooperation networks (the United Nations, host countries, troop-contributing countries, the United Nations peacekeeping team, and United Nations peacekeepers), and concerted efforts from various dimensions (medical, psychological, and social).

Strategic Deployment of UN Political Missions to Replace UN Peacekeeping Operations: The Demand and Supply Sides of Transition Logic

ABSTRACT Although United Nations peacekeeping operations (UN PKOs) produce positive outcomes for peace, some missions are strategically replaced by cheaper and smaller UN political missions (PMs). This article explores why certain peacekeepers are replaced by UN PMs and unpacks the exit strategy of UN PKOs. The logic of demand-side and supply-side perspectives is evaluated using data on the deployment of UN peacekeepers and UN PMs in post-civil war countries between 1993 and 2016. Signing comprehensive peace agreements (CPAs) increases the chances of UN PKOs being replaced by UN PMs because as the willingness to develop politically increases, the demand for civilian personnel after demilitarization also rises. On the supply side, as the preferences of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council concerning target states become more heterogenous, UN PKOs are more likely to be replaced by UN PMs because coordination problems encourage members to choose less burdensome missions.

Public Support for UN Missions and Attacks on Peacekeepers: Evidence From the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract UN peacekeepers are often targeted by rebel groups. The violence they experience hinders the functionality of peacekeeping operations, constituting a major problem for the UN. What conditions make these attacks more likely? How does the local support for UN peacekeeping operations affect the violence against peacekeepers? Using an original data set that includes local trust sentiments towards MONUSCO’s peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from October 2014 to December 2020, this study finds that peacekeepers are attacked more often when they lack local support. In the absence of local support, peacekeepers become vulnerable as they can no longer gather intelligence about rebel activities from the locals and the increased distrust for peacekeepers gives propagandist benefits to rebel groups. This study suggests to the UN that it needs to employ strategies in peacekeeping operations that would legitimize the presence of peacekeepers and cultivate more strengthened civil-military relations.

Ethical exit: When should peacekeepers depart?

AbstractWhen should peacekeepers partially or fully withdraw from a country or region in which they are operating? This important question has received little scholarly attention. However, it has profound implications. If peacekeepers depart prematurely, as happened in Rwanda in 1994, the consequences can be disastrous with the potential to lead to widespread preventable deaths and human suffering. If they overstay, peacekeepers risk alienating the population they are seeking to protect and undercutting popular sovereignty at significant economic costs. Striking a balance, we propose a framework for just withdrawal that is both normatively compelling and empirically sound. It focuses on three aspects that are vital for understanding when peacekeepers can depart in an ethically justified manner: just cause, effectiveness, and legitimacy. By considering a number of objections, we also address critics who challenge the overarching premise of peacekeeping or might prefer different standards by which to suggest peacekeepers should stay or depart. Finally, we illustrate our argument with theoretical and empirical examples and a discussion of UN peacekeeping in East Timor.

Argentinian peacekeepers and moral becoming in Cyprus

ABSTRACT The chronic absence of combat is central to deployment experience for Argentinian Army personnel, and serves as a lens to explore ethical life from a military perspective, not as a fixed set of military virtues, yet as an evolving moral project grounded in everyday ambiguities around humanitarian militarism. Combining a historical analysis of state repression and institutional reform with ethnographic fieldwork with Argentinian members of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, this article shows how present-day Argentinian military ideals and aspirations change, overlap, and awkwardly sit together while being a ‘beachkeeper’. Due to far-reaching military curtailment and precarious working conditions that are both related to legacies of authoritarianism, even the potential of combat is no longer a possibility for the Argentinian Army. Through the analysis of both ethnographic observations and interviews with mid-career Argentinian officers, this article suggests that because of a chronic inaccessibility to military virtues (such as thrill, manliness, and toughness), participating in humanitarian assistance does not provoke military boredom nor a moral failure to become a competent and virtuous warrior. Being involved in light peacekeeping is rather a form of survival from a social death in a society that has largely turned its back to its armed forces, while at the same time it is an expression of their institutional limitations. This article concludes by suggesting how the ethical turn in anthropology can critically address the absence of combat as a productive force for a non-violent ethic without fixing military virtue in stone.

Special Operations Forces in United Nations Peace Keeping Operations

Special Operation Force’s had started to participate in the United Nations peacekeeping operations not long ago, but the consensus on acceptability of their use in peacekeeping operations has already been reached. Present article analyzes views on SOF use in peacekeeping as expressed by the specialist and enshrined in guidance documents of different countries, explores normative regulation formalized in mandates of respective peacekeeping operations and contemplates typical SOF tasks in peacekeeping operations as defined by the UN in „United Nations Peacekeeping Missions Military Special Forces Manual“.

African Union defense demand and spatial spillovers

The study of the determinants of African defense demand is of enhanced importance because of unique security challenges, growing defense spending, and changing African Union (AU) integration. From a political geographical vantage, this study presents the first analysis of AU members' demand for defense spending, which accounts not only for members' relative locations, but also for political considerations (e.g., state failure, coups, and armed conflicts). Our analysis marries the economics of alliances with spatial considerations that include members' contiguity, between-member distance, and contiguous threats. Given two-way causal concerns, we employ an appropriate defense demand estimator (i.e., two-step generalized method of moments) correcting for the endogeneity between a member's defense spending and that of the other allies. Evidence of defense free riding or relying on the defense spending of other AU members characterizes contiguous and nearby AU countries during 2002–2019. Defense spending is an income normal good, which generally increases with armed conflict. UN and non-UN peacekeeping troop contributions provide some free-riding opportunities within the AU. Given regional differences in armed conflicts and coups, the determinants of African defense demand are influenced by regional divisions.

CHINA’S PARTICIPATION IN UN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS

2020 marks the 30th anniversary of China’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations. China’s participation in it is gaining weight in China’s diplomatic and military strategy. China is currently the second largest contributor to UN peacekeeping after the United States. The reasons for the rapid development that China’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations has gained in a short period of time are of particular interest to study. The purpose of the research is to examine China’s participation in UN peacekeeping. The study highlights the main stages of China’s attitude to UN peacekeeping and its participation in peacekeeping operations, identifies the motives and reasons for China’s participation in peacekeeping operations, as well as the unique features of Chinese peacekeeping. Results. China’s motivations for becoming a peacekeeper consist of “soft” reputational and “hard” national interests. Support for international peacekeeping under the auspices of the UN provides an opportunity to maintain China’s image as a responsible power interested in creating a stable environment for peaceful development. China encourages the use of political and diplomatic means to resolve conflicts and adheres to the principle of national sovereignty. China’s participation in UN peacekeeping operations is a manifestation of China’s active multilateral diplomacy and a kind of “creative intervention”.

Detaining the Short-Term: Assessing the Nature of “Interim” United Nations Peacekeeping Missions and Mandates

Abstract When looking at the classification of United Nations peace operations, the role of the ‘interim’ mission is one that evokes particular interest. What is evident is that there has been a repeated usage of this term to describe missions with vastly different mandates, operational parameters and ultimately, lives. Considering the importance of how the nature or character of a mission is presented to themes concerning their legitimacy and related narratives, there is value in exploring how the United Nations has historically employed this term in peacekeeping contexts and the rationales and realities that may have underpinned such usage. This paper purports to make such an exploration with the understanding that the language used to outline the contours of peace operations and characterize the terms of their existence is an essential element when assessing the dialectics that surround the justifications of employing peacekeeping missions.

Explaining Police Misconduct in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, 2010-2019

ABSTRACT Several recent studies consider the determinants of misconduct by military personnel deployed to United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs). While the majority of peacekeepers carry out their duties honorably and often at great personal risk, these studies operate from the premise that misconduct by even a few peacekeepers can undermine a mission, and reduce support for future missions. Even so, misconduct by civilian police deployed to PKOs remains massively understudied in comparison to their military counterparts, though UN police are more likely to face credible allegations of misconduct compared to UN troops. Based on the inclusive or extractive incentives of contributor states, we find support for the argument that the behavior of security personnel at home readily predicts misconduct when deployed to PKOs. This same logic has implications for the UN's increasingly preferred ‘Formed Police Units,’ whose use may actually increase the likelihood of sexual exploitation and abuse.

How Do Non-UN Peacekeepers Affect Civilian Violence? An Instrument Investigation

ABSTRACT This research note extends the Bara and Hultman (2020) study on the effectiveness of non-UN peacekeeping missions in terms of curbing one-sided violence (OSV) against civilians. In particular, we employ two novel instruments to address the two-way causality between the number of non-UN peacekeepers and OSV measures. For each panel year, our instruments involve the interaction between the sum of various designated peacekeepers contributed and the inverse distance between the capitals of contributor and conflict countries. As required, the instrument satisfies the necessary inclusion and exclusion (exogeneity) requirements. The instrument-based results establish a robust reduction in government OSV stemming from the number of non-UN peacekeepers deployed. That reduction also holds for propensity-score matching and the inclusion of UN peacekeepers in the same regression. Non-UN peacekeepers did not have a robust influence on rebel OSV.

The ‘Expected Leadership’ in Indonesia’s Initiative to Form ASEAN Peacekeeping Centres Network

Various International Relations works of literature positioned Indonesia as one of the leading countries in Southeast Asia, both formally and informally. Indonesia is considered a driving force behind various regional cooperations that lead to regional progress. This paper also sees that Indonesia is capable of initiating and pushing for cooperation in the peacekeeping area. Peacekeeping cooperation is sensitive in Southeast Asia, considering that one of the norms that mutually agreed upon since the formation of ASEAN is the norm of non-interference. The non-interference norms hinder regional peacekeeping cooperation due to its adoption of interventionist norms. Despite these organizational obstacles, Indonesia has successfully initiated peacekeeping cooperation that in the form of the ASEAN Peacekeeping Centres Network (APCN). The APCN aims to increase the contribution of peacekeeping forces from the ASEAN Member States in the UN Peacekeeping Missions. By looking at the case, this paper aims to explain why Indonesia was successful in initiating the APCN when the regional norm of non-interference is still adopted. This explanation will refer to the role theory, first theorized in International Relations by Kaleevi Jakko Holsti. Although the initiation of the APCN was also driven by foreign policy aspirations from the policymakers, another contributing factor was the regional expectations for Indonesia to lead the regional peacekeeping cooperation. This expectation is in line with Holsti’s concept of role prescription. Further understanding of the expected leadership could be an alternative perspective in seeing the success or failure cases of regional cooperation – especially in Southeast Asia – in the future.

The UN voluntary compact and peacekeeping abuse: assessing a soft law solution for sexual exploitation and abuse

ABSTRACT In 2017, to address the increasingly visible and prevalent occurrence of peacekeeper sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of civilians under their protection, the UN Secretary-General created a Voluntary Compact on state behaviour. As of 2020, 103 states signed the agreement. Building on the robust literatures of human rights law, sexual abuse, and conflict, I examine whether signing the Voluntary Compact has any relationship with the levels of reported abuse, punishing accused SEA perpetrators, and funding victim relief efforts. Through quantitative analysis of annual reports of reports of SEA and punishment actions from the UN Conduct in Field Missions unit 2007–2019, I find that Troop Contributing Countries that signed were more likely to issue national-level punishments in cases of severe abuse and to contribute to victim funding. However, there is not a clear finding of any reduction of reported abuse following signature. I conclude by discussing the Voluntary Compact as a mixed-success story for soft international law so far. Given its lack of teeth, this finding is important as the UN and other international organisations continue to prevent and punish peacekeeper SEA and use nonbinding international law.

Who leads peace operations? A new dataset on leadership positions in UN peace operations, 1948–2019

It is widely recognized that UN peace operations have been critically influenced by their leadership personnel in the field since the first UN peacekeepers were deployed in 1948. But who exactly are the people that lead peace operations and decide how these are implemented on the ground? This special data feature introduces a new dataset on leadership positions in UN peace operations from its interception in 1948 up to 2019. The relevance of different authorities in peace operations is discussed, followed by an examination of general trends in the data with regards to the duration of term in different leadership positions, the national and regional origin of peace operations authorities, and the distribution of gender. It is shown that scholars studying a variety of topics, including policymaking at the UN, the use of force in peace operations, international responsibilities, and the role of the global south in international politics, can benefit from paying closer attention to the question of who occupies leadership positions in UN peace operations.

Community Policing Solutions for Religion-on-Religion Conflict: Lessons from an Indian Case Study

UN peacekeepers face new conditions of conflict today, which call for expanded peacekeeping strategies. Among these new conditions is the increasing localization of violent conflict, especially among extra-state forces that are mobilized by ideological and religious passions. Responding to such challenges, the UN and its multinational partners attend increasingly to regional and local settings of intergroup tension and conflict. Among the consequences are greater emphasis on relations between UN peacekeeping and local police forces and on community policing. In this essay, we argue that these new peacekeeping directions are promising but lack one key dimension: attention to unique behavioral features of local, religion-on-religion conflict. Because such conflict plays an increasing role in location-specific tension and violence, it is increasingly important for peacekeepers to learn how to identify and analyze these unique features in real time and then reshape peacekeeping strategies accordingly. To illustrate how it is possible to do so, we introduce a detailed case study of successful community policing of religion-on-religion conflict: Muslim-Hindu intergroup conflict in Madhya Pradesh India.

Use of Force to Protect Civilians in United Nations Peacekeeping: Military Culture, Organisational Learning and Troop Reticence

ABSTRACT Combining empirical examples from domestic counterinsurgency operations, with historical and primary field data in longitudinal cases of peacekeeping participation by the Indian troops, we develop a preliminary theory of troop reticence. We find that while there is significant learning around civilian protection on the part of Indian troops from internal counterinsurgency operations, there are also important operational differences. Problems with insubordination to international command, gaps in intelligence analysis, and ambiguity over the rules of engagement amidst host-state directed armed attacks on civilians, can make troops hesitant to execute the protection of civilians (PoC) mandate more robustly.

OPTIMIZATION OF HUMAN RESOURCES FOR WOMEN IN THE TNI ENVIRONMENT IN THE MISSION OF MAINTENING WORLD PEACE BASED ON UNSCR 1325

This study aims to describe and analyze the Bureaucracy of Human Resources and the opportunities and challenges of optimizing the role of TNI women in world peacekeeping missions. The method used in this research is qualitative method. The results showed that the optimization of the role of TNI women in the world peacekeeping mission was realized through Administrative Reform in the Human Resources Sector, starting with a recruitment and selection process policy based on standards according to the needs of the UN. Every female TNI personnel who pass the recruitment and selection are given competency training to support operations in the field. Coaching includes aspects of personnel (groups) to develop the quantity of needs desired by the UN. Institutionally, organizational development is carried out in accordance with Presidential Regulation Number 85 of 2011. The opportunity to increase the proportion of women in the Indonesian Armed Forces is a long-term commitment of Indonesia to the WPS Agenda. Challenges faced in Involvement at the international level, Indonesia sent women TNI and Polri to the UN Peacekeeping Mission, among others, there is still a gap in the proportion of male and female soldiers due to the absence of a map depicting the increase in the number of women in the TNI in the Indonesian Defense White Paper, there is no National Action Plan from TNI/Kemhan Headquarters regarding women's participation, there is still no integrated communication from the United Nations to the Government of Indonesia.
 Keywords: Optimization, Role of Women, Peacekeeping Operations.

ANALYSIS OF PAKISTAN'S ROLE IN UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS

Peacekeeping missions from the post-World War II era have played an important role in maintaining global peace and resolving conflicts in ambiguous regions and states. These missions are supported by contributions from various United Nations members, including Pakistan. The primary goal of this research is to investigate Pakistan's commitments and involvement in UN peacekeeping missions. This study seeks to explain Pakistan's involvement in UNPKOs and the accomplishments Pakistan has made in these operations. Maintaining world peace and security is one of Pakistan's primary foreign policy objectives. As a result, it has been actively taking part in United Nations peacekeeping missions ever since it was founded. Pakistan has participated in a total of 46 missions in 28 countries and regions, which were crucial in maintaining international peace and security. Pakistani peacekeepers have completed numerous successful missions, won the hearts and minds of the local populace, and received a great deal of international acclaim thanks to their patient demeanors and high level of professionalism. 157 Pakistanis have also lost their lives in this worthy purpose to date. The qualitative research methodology has been applied on following article.

The impact and experience of female police officers in peacekeeping missions: A qualitative exploration

ABSTRACT This paper explores the differences in experiences between female and male police officers deployed in United Nations peacekeeping missions. In the last decade, the United Nations Police (UNPOL) have pushed to increase the percentage of female officers deployed to peacekeeping missions. These UNPOL officers are at the forefront of post-conflict police reform. Police reforms can have a serious impact on how females are treated in UNPOL and in the host nation. UNPOL officers face various challenges, including difficulties transitioning into a multicultural environment and the physical dangers they must circumvent in a peacekeeping mission. The differences between male and female officers are discussed to provide insight into the impact of the missions and the policy implications to improve the effectiveness and efficacy of the missions.