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.