Does It Matter If Peacekeepers Follow Their Mandates?

• In Event: Peacekeeping: New Challenges & Perspectives

Abstract

Research on UN peacekeeping suggests that UN missions can support political and economic development in host countries. Mandates in particular seem to contribute to these positive outcomes. However, why exactly mandates matter remains an open question. Implicitly, researchers assume that peacekeepers faithfully execute mandated tasks. In reality, however, peacekeeping missions often deviate from their mandates, especially when the mandates are complex and when missions operate in unstable contexts. In this paper we ask whether it matters if peacekeepers do what they are mandated to do. We address this question in the context of human rights protection, a crucial cross-cutting goal that is explicit in almost all peacekeeping mandates. We analyze how the implementation (or lack thereof) of human rights mandates affects human rights violations in African host countries between 1998 and 2016. We find that when human rights promotion is both mandated and implemented on the ground, there is a positive correlation with human rights improvement. However, the positive association remains even in cases where human rights promotion is mandated but not implemented, suggesting an independent effect of mandates. We explore possible mechanisms that might explain this result.

Authors

• Robert A. Blair, Brown University

• Jessica Di Salvatore, University of Warwick

• Hannah Smidt, University of Zurich