The Politics of Action for Peacekeeping

The Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations emphasizes “the primacy of politics” to conflict resolution. The phrase, popularized by the 2015 High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, is now standard UN language. But what is the main political problem that Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) is supposed to solve?
“The A4P process is an opportunity to overcome the division between the political worlds of headquarters and the field, although it is not clear that all members of the UN are 100% committed to its success,” writes RICHARD GOWAN in ‘The Politics of A4P’, a policy brief published by the Challenges Forum.
The negotiation process leading up to the Declaration was a step in the right direction, as UN officials used a series of seminars to lay out field-level problems to New York based diplomats, GOWAN states. As a result, many diplomats showed a little more sympathy for field perspectives.
“A4P has at least created a minimum of inter-governmental consensus about the need to address the politics of peacekeeping at both the headquarters and field levels.”
But what can those countries that want to see real change, and their allies in UN system, do to build on this?
“Even if Member States and the UN system put their combined weight behind implementing A4P, the process of designing mandates will always be haphazard. ‘By definition, crisis management is a disorderly and imperfect political business that can be improved at the margins but not made into a science,’ as I concluded an earlier study of the Security Council and peacekeeping. 'The Council will never truly escape its constraints.’”
The growing range of actors involved in crisis management – most obviously regional organizations and coalitions, duly acknowledged in the Declaration (para 18) – only adds to the complexity of the world the UN faces, GOWAN states. “But if both diplomats and UN officials in the field are willing to work together a little more closely they may mitigate some of the recurrent tensions that make the politics of peacekeeping hard at all levels.”

Do Countries Use Foreign Aid to Buy Geopolitical Influence?

Evidence from donor campaigns for temporary UN Security Council seats

Do countries use foreign aid to support their campaigns for a temporary seat in the UN Security Council?
BERNHARD REINSBERG found some robust evidence of campaign-induced aid growth for some aid channels and under some circumstances. In particular, as donor experience increases, bilateral aid growth increases, whereas multi-bi aid growth tends to decline, he writes in a paper titled “Do countries use foreign aid to buy geopolitical influence?” (WIDER Working Paper 2019/4) for Helsinki-based United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.
“Conversely, multi-bi aid growth increases with declining quality of governance and with the level of internationalization of a given donor.”
A noteworthy limitation of this research, REINSBERG states, is that some findings can still be interpreted in various ways. For example, while internationalization boosts multi-bi aid growth, it does not seem to affect bilateral aid growth. One interpretation is that there really is no effect on bilateral aid growth, but another one is that bilateral aid declines but the analysis fails to produce a statistically significant effect, for example due to measurement error, he states.
Despite best efforts, the data collection might be incomplete, which would generate measurement error. Other sources of insignificant effects include under-powered tests due to short time series as well as donor heterogeneity, REINSBERG writes. These are common challenges of quantitative analysis that also this article cannot defy. Nonetheless, the above analysis produced results that are remarkably robust against several modifications, including instrumental-variable estimation.
Albeit necessarily preliminary, the author states, these findings suggest interesting avenues for future research. They demonstrate that donors care about UNSC membership. Existing studies emphasize the aid rewards for recipient countries during their temporary UNSC tenure. Future research could examine how aid flows evolve over the lifetime of a UNSC campaign, given that donors (including the ones that do not get elected) are likely to lessen aid effort once uncertainty is resolved after the outcome of a UN General Assembly election.
“Studying how aid evolves during UNSC tenure would also hint to donor motivations in this context and specifically which donors use aid for private gain versus fostering international solidarity,” REINSBERG states. In this context, further research into donors of specific UN constituencies would be promising. For Eastern European Group donors, qualitative research would be necessary given the lack of long time-series data (Szent-Iványi, Reinsberg, & Lightfoot, 2018).
Capturing the donor perspective, future research could also examine the choice of instruments other than aid for supporting UNSC campaigns. Research could also explore which recipients stand to gain most from donor campaigns for UNSC seats. Ultimately, researchers should examine the effectiveness of campaign-induced aid. Although previous research finds that aid extended to developing countries during their temporary UNSC tenure is less effective (Dreher, Eichenauer, & Gehring, 2016), this does not need to be the case for campaign-induced aid for which donor motives are less clear.

Gunter, Bernhard G. Do Countries Use Foreign Aid To Buy Geopolitical Influence?: Evidence From Donor Campaigns For Temporary UN Security Council Seats, WIDER Working Paper 2019/4  Helsinki: UNU-WIDER, 2019.

United Nations Sanctions and Mediation: Establishing Evidence to Inform Practice

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Although numerous studies exist on how best to use sanctions and on how best to mediate conflicts, relatively little is known about when and whether these tools work well or work poorly together.
THOMAS BIERSTEKER, REBECCA BRUBAKER, and DAVID LANZ have taken the first step in what they describe as a long overdue effort to establish evidence that can be used to inform practice in the joint application of UN sanctions and mediation.
Their report, UN Sanctions and Mediation: Establishing Evidence to Inform Practice, is based on an 18-month policy research project conducted by the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and swisspeace.
UN sanctions can complement mediation efforts in a number of ways, the authors write. “For example, a threat of UN sanctions can help bring parties to the table, just as the prospect of de-listing can entice a sanctioned actor to participate in peace talks.”
Similarly, a threat or enhanced enforcement of UN sanctions can make the status quo of unsettled conflict less attractive and can help encourage an individual or group to sign an agreement. Once an agreement is signed, sectoral and individual targeted sanctions can help deter actions aimed at undermining the agreement. Additionally, the creation of a new, or the adaptation of an existing, UN sanctions regime can promote compliance with a peace agreement. Conversely, the promise of UN sanctions suspension or lifting can help make settlements more attractive.
At the same time, the authors state, UN sanctions can also complicate mediation efforts in a number of ways. “For example, the stigmatizing effect of sanctions can, in some instances, lead to the exclusion of a targeted party from a peace process. In parallel, placing some parties under sanctions and not others, can embolden non-sanctioned actors who may then be more likely to pursue a military rather than negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
Moreover, decisions to sanction one party, or all but one party, can affect the perception of the UN’s impartiality and can jeopardize the mediator’s relationship with the conflict parties and their continued acceptance of mediation.
Threats of UN sanctions have been used to force premature agreements, which can backfire, as agreements reached without the genuine consent and ownership of the parties are unlikely to last. Using sanctions without leaving room for their removal can prematurely close the space for mediation. When sanctions are applied out of sync with mediation’s processes and goals, the measures can create conflicting signals for sanctions targets and can put the mediation process at risk.
Mediation needs sometimes influence the design or redesign of UN sanctions regimes, BIERSTEKER, BRUBAKER, and LANZ write. “For example, blockages in a mediation process can lead to threats of sanctions being issued or to the creation of a new sanctions regime. The need to advance a process can lead to both listings and de-listings.”
In addition, the need to ensure the participation of key actors in peace talks often leads to requests for travel ban exemptions or to the toleration of travel ban violations. Lastly, in the interest of furthering mediation efforts, entire new sanctions regimes have been created and existing regimes have been split, reduced, or expanded.
The report concludes with twenty policy recommendations intended for the UN Security Council, UN sanctions committees, UN Secretariat, and senior UN mediators. The recommendations are focused on promoting complementarity and avoiding complication between UN sanctions and mediation. It also proffers five areas for further research.

Thomas Biersteker, Rebecca Brubaker, and David Lanz, “UN Sanctions and Mediation: Establishing Evidence to Inform Practice”, United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, 18 February 2019.

Protection through Presence: UN Peacekeeping and the Costs of Targeting Civilians

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Are UN peacekeepers effective in protecting civilians from violence?
In the first comprehensive evaluation of UN peacekeeping success in protecting civilians at the sub-national level, HANNE FJELDE, LISA HULTMAN and DESIRÉE NILSSON argue that peacekeepers through their sizable local presence can increase the political and military costs for warring actors to engage in civilian targeting.
“Since peacekeepers’ access to civilian populations rests on government consent, peacekeepers will primarily be effective in imposing these costs on rebel groups, but less so for government actors.
To test these conjectures, the authors combined new monthly data on the location of peacekeepers with data on the location and timing of civilian killings in Africa. Their findings suggest that local peacekeeping presence enhances the effectiveness of civilian protection against rebel abuse, but that UN peacekeeping struggles to protect civilians from government forces.
The protection of civilians is a major challenge for many peacekeeping operations. While political expectations of what peacekeepers should achieve are high, resources are often limited and missions do not have the capacity to operate in all areas where civilians are at risk. “This raises two important questions. How do peacekeepers respond to violence against civilians when they allocate their limited resources within missions? Are peacekeepers effective in protecting the civilian population in their areas of operation?”
Their findings suggest that peacekeepers deploy to areas with a recent history of violence against civilians, particularly where rebel actors operate. Despite the fact that peacekeepers seem to select the hardest cases, the presence of peacekeepers reduces the risk of violence against civilians by rebel actors. “Peacekeepers are, however, less effective in hindering government violence.”
One interpretation of this finding is that the reliance on government consent makes peacekeepers less effective and perhaps also less willing to impose military and political costs on government actors in the areas of their deployment. This result diverges from previous studies that report evidence at the country level that peacekeepers reduce the risk of violence by government actors. Jointly, it indicates that the influence of peacekeeping forces may work through different mechanisms for state and non-state actors. The national arena is important for affecting government violence, whereas local protection is more effective against rebel perpetrators. “We do not find any evidence for a displacement effect. Hence, we have no reason to believe that peacekeepers only push violence against civilians to surrounding areas where peacekeepers are not present,” they state.
“Our disaggregated analysis also points towards additional limitations in the UN’s modus operandi that may hamper successful protection of civilians. First, the UN only deploys to some of all areas where armed actors target civilians. The majority of locations where violence against civilians occurs – even in these countries where a peacekeeping mission is deployed – never see peacekeepers.
“Second, our data indicate that it often takes time until peacekeepers deploy to areas where civilians are deliberately targeted. This delayed response may signal a lack of resolve and capacity to protect civilians at the local level.
In sum, while strong local presence enhances the effectiveness of civilian protection, the authors write, UN peacekeeping struggles to credibly protect civilians from government forces and to respond to violence against civilians in a timely manner.
Patterns of local peacekeeping deployment is a variable that is subject to policy intervention. Hence, evidence pointing so strongly in the direction of peacekeeping efficacy should be useful information for those that craft policies in these areas, and those that advise them.
“Given the constraints on the supply side of peacekeepers, our findings are also important since they provide novel insights on how peacekeeping works,” they stress. If the UN wants to protect civilians, it has to be ready to prioritize areas where the risk of violence is the highest. Even if the UN on average is more likely to deploy to areas where civilians are at risk, there are many areas that are left completely unattended. In these areas, violence is allowed to continue without the interference of blue helmets.
“This means that the greatest challenge for UN peacekeeping is not primarily a military challenge of finding effective ways of dealing with violence, but rather a political challenge of gathering the willpower to take necessary action.”

Fjelde, H., Hultman, L., & Nilsson, D. (2019). “Protection Through Presence: UN Peacekeeping and the Costs of Targeting Civilians” International Organization, 73(1), 103-131. doi:10.1017/S0020818318000346.

Learning to Deploy Civilian Capabilities: How the UN, EU and OSCE Have Changed Crisis Management Institutions

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As international organizations continuously deploy civilian capabilities as part of their peacekeeping and crisis management operations, they face significant challenges: not only are civilian deployments rapidly increasing in quantity, but civilian missions are also very diverse in nature.
HYLKE DIJKSTRA, PETAR PETROV and EWA MAHR compare developments in the United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), three of the largest civilian actors in the field.
Drawing on the concept of organizational learning, they show that all three organizations have made significant changes over the last decade in their civilian capabilities. The extent of these changes, however, varies across these organizations, the authors write in the journal Cooperation and Conflict.
While the processes of change have differed – from the comprehensive Global Field Support Strategy in the UN, to practical solutions in the OSCE and incremental and institutional change in the EU – all three organizations have focused on changes based on previous experience.
“In addition, it is also clear that it has been easier to change and increase the resources for the civilian missions than the rules governing the use of resources. The member states of the UN, OSCE and EU have indeed substantially increased the financial resources for civilian missions. They have also made efforts regarding staff resources, equipment and mission support. There has been less change in the financial, personnel and procurement rules. Despite some flexibility with respect to funding, there has been little actual reform.”
The authors find surprising variation across the organizations. The EU has not done better than the UN and OSCE. It lags behind in terms of meaningful staff reform as well as mission support. It has a relatively high vacancy rate, does not provide all staff with pre-deployment training and has struggled to establish a modest Mission Support Platform. This cannot be explained by pointing out political factors, such as the composition of the membership, they stress.
The EU has a more homogeneous and wealthier membership than the UN and OSCE. Instead it is important to consider variation across the institutional factors. Due to the highly institutionalized nature of the EU, proposals for change need to be discussed by the member states in their specialized committees. This creates many veto points and obstacles even for pragmatic solutions. Getting consent is not only a formal requirement; the EU also has an institutional practice in which everything gets checked with the member states.
The importance of institutional context becomes further apparent in the UN and OSCE, the authors state. The drive to improve performance in the UN can be explained by the high demand for missions since the publication of the Brahimi report in 2000, which has been accompanied by a push for optimizing the use of the available resources.
These pressures have focused attention on mission support and have allowed for a considerable professionalization. In the OSCE, the analysis uncovered the importance of lower degrees of institutionalization, stringent budgetary procedures and the need for consensus among the diverse membership. These factors pushed the OSCE staff to suggest several pragmatic reforms as well. The large-scale Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has furthermore focused attention in the OSCE. Despite political heterogeneity, the UN and OSCE have thus managed to adopt a less-politicalized and more pragmatic approach to civilian missions.
The findings merit further research into how the institutional context constraints and facilitates learning in international organizations. Through the explicit comparative context on international organizations, it complements the institutional findings of Benner et al. (2011), who show how the UN has established dedicated learning units within the Secretariat, and Hardt (2018), who analyses the importance of informal sharing processes in NATO. This article strengthens, in this regard, the case for further research on the institutional context.
Furthermore, this article has focused on institutional change resulting from new information, experience and observation, but it has not analyzed whether learning processes eventually result in better performance. In line with the expanding literature on the performance of international organizations (Gutner and Thompson, 2010; Lall, 2017; Tallberg et al., 2016; Young, 2001), future research could focus on the role of learning when it comes to actual performance.

Dijkstra, H., Petrov, P., & Mahr, E. (2019). 'Learning to deploy civilian capabilities: How the United Nations, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and European Union have changed their crisis management institutions'. Cooperation and Conflict. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718823814

Are Mercenaries Friends or Foes of African Governments and the United Nations?

UN Security Council on Climate and Security (2017-2019)

An Analysis of Transitional Justice Terminology in UN General Assembly Speeches (1971-2015)

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Each year, a top-level representative from every member state of the United Nations addresses the General Assembly in New York summarizing national policy objectives and major accomplishments.
How have they attended to the issue of transitional justice, i.e., the ways in which countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large-scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response?
In search for answers, MICHAEL LAHANAS went through UN General Assembly speeches from every member state from 1971 to 2015. He divided the dataset into a variety of different regional and political combinations that reflect historical alliances, rivalries, and interests of major nations and then entered terms relating to transitional justice as well as human rights.
“While some terms showed up rarely, the times they did were closely tied with the socio-political history of the countries that mentioned them,” LAHANAS says.
“As I suspected, Western democracies led the pack with more frequent mentions of terms like human rights, and rule of law. Meanwhile, countries like Russia, China, Venezuela, and Cuba tended to mention sovereignty more often – a hint at their more unique foreign policy agendas. Curiously, justice was also one that was mentioned far more often by this cluster of countries.”
Sanctions were also close behind this language, more heavily for some countries that are subject to them than others. Additionally, there has been a significant uptick in the use of some transitional justice terminology in the late 1990s.
“Unfortunately, a great many terms specific to the burgeoning field of transitional justice remain unmentioned in General Assembly speeches,” LAHANAS says. “This does not, however, mean that they are being neglected by international diplomats – presumably they are being discussed in different settings at the UN.”
Still, the fact that some are being used at all, and can be traced to countries with a historical relationship to transitional justice mechanisms means that this dataset remains a rich resource for scholars to understand trends in diplomatic language over the last forty years, he says.

Tackling the Power-Sharing Dilemma: Role of Mediation

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How does mediation affect the long-term performance of power-sharing agreements? In a report for Swisspeace, ALEXANDRE W. RAFFOUL analyzes case studies from Burundi (2000), Nepal (2006), Northern Ireland (1998), Bosnia (1995), Lebanon (1989), and Rwanda (1993).
“In the reviewed cases, effective power-sharing resulted not from one, but from a series of agreements,” he writes. “Power-sharing can thus be conceived as a process of continuous inter-elite bargaining. Mediation can enhance the ability of elites to successfully negotiate solutions to the problems that tend to emerge after the adoption of power-sharing agreements.”
Two main conclusions can be drawn from the report. First, specific features of the mediation process have an impact on the ability of elites to cooperate in the post-agreement phase. More specifically, the case studies suggest that elite cooperation is facilitated by mediation processes where:
- The impetus for sharing power is internal, rather than external;
- All relevant actors are included, rather than only moderates;
- Effort is extended towards building trust between the parties, rather than solely achieving an agreement;
- Citizens are informed and consulted;
- Provisions for the continuation of assisted negotiations in the implementation phase are included in the agreement.
Second, the report found that the continuation of mediation after the adoption of power-sharing agreements can enhance the ability of parties to successfully negotiate solutions to the problems that emerge in the post-agreement phase. In particular, the case studies suggested that:
- If external leverage was critical to achieving an agreement, third parties can prevent the re-emergence of balance of power problems by maintaining pressure on the parties;
- Post-agreement mediation can help address spoiler problems by facilitating negotiations to broaden the power-sharing coalition;
- Post-agreement mediation can help address inside spoiler problems by improving the relationships between the signatories and their commitment to peace;
- Post-agreement mediation can help address identity and political accountability problems by building popular support for the agreement;
- Post-agreement mediation can help address credible commitment problems by facilitating negotiations over unresolved issues.

The Global South and UN Peace Operations