Personnel Shortages of UN Peacekeeping Operations

• In Event: Peacekeeping

Abstract

Despite their remarkable growth in the post-cold war era, UN Peacekeeping Operations (PKOs) have been constantly puzzled by personnel shortages, namely, the huge gap between the actual contributions from troop contributing countries (TCCs) and the size authorized by the Security Council. Insufficient peacekeepers have become one of the major concerns to fulfil UN PKOs’ mandates. Although UN PKO personnel contributions have been a heated topic in the literature, little heed is paid to personnel shortages. While we know many PKOs are understaffed, we have only limited knowledge on how and why personnel shortfalls vary across PKOs and, for a specific PKO, across various types of peacekeepers (troops, military observers, and civilian police) and over time. In this paper, we see UN PKO personnel contributions as primarily decisions by TCCs, and establish a theoretical framework of states’ contributions to UN PKOs. Hypotheses derived from the model are tested using the empirical data between 2000 and 2015 from the SIPRI yearbook. Our empirical analysis reveals significant insights in the features of UN PKO personnel shortages.

Author

• Min Ye, Coastal Carolina University