UN Peacekeeping Aid and Violence against UN Peacekeepers in Civil War

• In Event: Peacekeeping: New Challenges & Perspectives

Abstract

The legitimacy of United Nations peacekeeping missions is under threat, with peacekeepers facing attacks at the hands of armed groups, and in some cases, even civilians. One way that the United Nations has sought to generate support for peacekeeping missions is through Quick Impact Projects (QIPs)—small scale, low cost, visible projects, carried out in consultation with local communities. Do QIPs increase, decrease, or have no effect on violence against peacekeepers? We argue that QIPs decrease violence against peacekeepers by building support from the civilian population through winning civilian support. This in turn increases civilians’ willingness to provide intelligence to peacekeepers and renders armed groups more hesitant to attack peacekeepers for fear of losing civilian support. We test the relationship between QIPs and violence against peacekeepers using geo-located data from the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan, and find that as QIPs in a given district-month increase, armed group violence against peacekeepers decreases in the following month.

Authors

• Jori Breslawski, Tel Aviv University

• Jacob Daniel Kathman, SUNY, University at Buffalo