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.
Peace operations are a highly resilient international institution for managing armed conflict. Their resilience derives from what constructivists in International Relations theory call collective ...intentionality and the malleable constitutive rules that define and structure such missions. Despite a range of current constraints, challenges, and crises, peace operations are unlikely to become extinct unless a critical mass of states consistently withdraw material support for them and explicitly denigrate the concept of peace operations itself. We see little evidence that both these things are likely to occur. However, the constitutive rules guiding peace operations are likely to continue to evolve due to ideational and material changes. While the proliferation of actors and mission types makes precise predictions impossible, we expect an evolution both in how various actors define their own peace operations and how these actors relate to each other.
This article is concerned with narratives about the relation between the military and civilians. Narratives, dominant institutionalized discourses, influence how individuals learn by providing frames ...of reference which moderate the acquisition of new knowledge. Although the importance of narratives for institutional behavior has been recognized in the field of security studies, little attention has been paid to how they influence learning. This article presents a framework to analyze narratives in the context of learning based on the case of peace operations. Using qualitative case studies for theory-building, I argue that narratives on the closeness between the military and “the people” ease pressures to improve the military’s engagement with civilians and render peacekeepers less inclined to learn. All else equal, the absence of entrenched ideas about military–society relations facilitates the acquisition of new knowledge and skills in civil–military cooperation.
Parallel Lines in the Sand Zimmerman, Shannon
Global governance,
2022, Letnik:
28, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
UN peace operations are often accompanied by parallel forces from individual states, regional organizations, or "coalitions of the willing." These forces remain distinct from the UN to address ...security concerns outside the remit of traditional peacekeeping. The deployment of UN stabilization operations, however, has resulted in an overlap between UN and parallel forces. This article investigates the complex relationships between UN stabilization operations and parallel forces using as examples the French and UN deployments in Mali and the Central African Republic. It concludes that when UN and parallel forces have distinct mandates, they often create military synergies but political tensions. In particular, when peacekeepers are reliant on parallel forces for military support, the UN can struggle to achieve its longer-term political tasks. When parallel forces are explicitly mandated to support UN efforts, the UN is better able to leverage its relationship with parallel forces to achieve its military and political objectives.
Recent scholarship and policy doctrine alike have identified local legitimacy as an important 'success factor' in peacekeeping - but like many such calls for greater attention to local dynamics, it ...is often unclear what local legitimacy actually means, how to analyse it, what causal processes are at work, and what might obstruct the operationalization of well-intentioned policy recommendations for peacekeepers to seek local legitimacy. This article aims to bring clarity to the complex concept of local legitimacy, including the ways in which insights drawn from legitimacy theory developed in very different social contexts can be adapted to the realities of the conflict societies into which peacekeepers deploy. First, it examines what it means to locate the legitimacy of peace operations at the local level, rather than the international. Second, it clarifies the causal links between peacekeepers' legitimacy and their effectiveness, reviewing scholarship on local legitimacy and its adaptation of broader legitimacy theory. Third, it identifies three important reasons that locally legitimizing peacekeepers is so difficult in practice, distinguishing between the difficulties derived from the particular features of conflict societies and those derived from the institutional characteristics of peace operations.
Over the past three decades, United Nations (UN) Peace Operations have become increasingly multidimensional and integrated. Blue helmets, originally deployed to provide security and enforce ...cease-fires, are now engaging in multi-domain activities aimed at sustaining long-term peace. As part of this trend, the UN Security Council has begun mandating Peacekeeping Operations (PKOs) and Special Political Missions (SPMs) to engage in climate-sensitive programming. Questions, however, remain over the effectiveness of climate-related activities in peace operations. This study, using a large textual dataset, provides a comprehensive assessment and evaluation of the state of climate-sensitive programming in PKOs and SPMs. The findings indicate that while mandates and programming activities related to climate change have been on the rise, most field operations have failed to integrate climate-sensitive programming into their work. Moreover, the agenda on climate security appears to have led to a process of institutional decoupling between organizational arrangements and field activities.
Researchers have shown how UN stabilization peace operations mix liberal and illiberal goals and strategies. Yet, further research is needed to theorize and comprehend illiberal peacebuilding ...features of stabilization operations. This article fills this gap by demonstrating how UN stabilization operations wield illiberal peacebuilding practices. Building upon previous scholarship, we understand illiberal peacebuilding both as an approach and outcome which is oriented by and helps diffuse illiberal norms in the societies where illiberal peacebuilding is instrumentalized by local, regional and international actors. We frame UN stabilization operations in the CAR, the DRC, and Mali as illiberal peacebuilding processes infused with illiberal strategies and show that liberal actors can engage with illiberal strategies for peace promotion. We also analyse peace agreements that accompany these missions as illiberal peacebuilding outcomes and show how these are shaped by illiberal norms. Our key finding is that a set of illiberal norms - exclusion, violence, power inequality and authoritarianism - are central for both UN stabilization operations and peace agreements signed in CAR, DRC and Mali. Therefore, we challenge the UN discourse that stabilization is a needed first step towards liberal and inclusive peace agreements.
This paper analyses the emerging culture of peace’s concept as a construction of a starting point or guide for international politics on promotion and consolidation of international peace. The main ...purpose, however, lies in verifying if that what has been perceived by culture of peace is present on platforms of action of United Nations. To this end, was choose the mandates of peacekeeping operations that had started before 1999, year of publication of the Plan of Action on Culture of Peace, and had its mandates renewed in subsequent years.
An introduction to cyber peacekeeping Robinson, Michael; Jones, Kevin; Janicke, Helge ...
Journal of network and computer applications,
07/2018, Letnik:
114
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Cyber is the newest domain of war, and the topic of cyber warfare is one that is receiving increasing attention. Research efforts into cyber warfare are extensive, covering a range of issues such as ...legality, cyber weapons and deterrence. Despite all of the research activity around cyber warfare, one aspect has been largely overlooked: the restoration of peace and security in its aftermath. In this article, we present the argument that cyber warfare will threaten civilian peace and security long after a conflict has ended, and that existing peace operations will be required to evolve in order to address this threat. We explore how existing UN peacekeeping operations could be adapted, in ways that would be both feasible and valuable towards maintaining and restoring peace in a region. We conclude that the path to cyber peacekeeping will not be easy, but that it is an evolution that must begin today so that we can be prepared for the conflicts of the future.
While new 'multidimensional' peacekeeping missions emerged at the end of the Cold War, more 'traditional' monitoring missions continue to operate. This work reviews the three current peacekeeping ...missions in the Middle East, with mandates to monitor buffer lines or zones between Israel and its previously warring neighbours: the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). We provide an overview of these three missions, their mandates, the circumstances from which they emerged and evolved. We then consider causal factors that have contributed to their effectiveness over the years and examine how such factors apply in the current state of these missions. Finally, noting that the region evolves and so must the missions, we offer recommendations for how they could remain effective into the future by investing in new technological capabilities and maintaining the integration between their analysis units.
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