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

TLDR

UN peacekeepers’ effectiveness in protecting civilians remains uncertain because prior studies have examined the issue only at the country level, obscuring specific effects and mechanisms. The study offers the first subnational evaluation of UN peacekeeping’s success in protecting civilians, arguing that a sizable local presence raises the costs for warring actors to target civilians. The authors test the hypothesis that peacekeepers, whose access depends on government consent, mainly deter rebel targeting by imposing costs, by combining new monthly data on peacekeeper locations with data on civilian killings across Africa. The results show that local peacekeeping presence improves protection against rebel abuse but is ineffective against government forces.

Abstract

Abstract Are UN peacekeepers effective in protecting civilians from violence? Existing studies examine this issue at the country level, thereby making it difficult to isolate the effect of peacekeepers and to assess the actual mechanism at work. We provide the first comprehensive evaluation of UN peacekeeping success in protecting civilians at the subnational level. We 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 we combine new monthly data on the location of peacekeepers with data on the location and timing of civilian killings in Africa. Our 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.