10 1111@1468-2346 12456

Twenty-first century UN peace operations:
protection, force and the changing
security environment
ALEX J. BELLAMY AND CHARLES T. HUNT
Today, United Nations peace operations are deployed in greater numbers to

more difficult operating theatres in response to more complex conflict situations
than ever before.1 More than 100,000 UN peacekeepers are deployed in missions
mandated under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to use ‘all necessary means’
to protect civilians from direct harm and to perform a host of other tasks, such
as supporting the (re)building of state institutions, facilitating humanitarian aid,
and overseeing compliance with ceasefire agreements and political commitments.2
Increasingly often, UN peacekeepers are instructed to carry out this work in
contexts where there is no peace to keep or where peace is fragile. As a result,
UN peacekeepers are sometimes targeted by insurgent groups, as in early July
2015 when six UN peacekeepers from Burkina Faso were killed during an attack
on their convoy in northern Mali. Peacekeepers also sometimes find themselves
thrust into the front line when armed groups target civilians. It was a combination
of attacks on civilians and peacekeepers that prompted the UN Operation in Côte
d’Ivoire (UNOCI) to use force against militia associated with Laurent Gbagbo,
attacks on civilians that prompted the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)
to open its bases to provide sanctuary in 2013–14, and MONUSCO’s inability to
deter attacks on civilians by the M23 militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) that prompted the UN Security Council (UNSC) to establish the more
robust Force Intervention Brigade (FIB).
It was in this context that in October 2014 the UN Secretary General appointed
a High-level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations (HIPPO) chaired by
Jose Ramos-Horta. HIPPO was charged with reviewing a broad range of issues
relating to peacekeeping and with offering recommendations on the steps that
could be taken to address them. Unsurprisingly, the key issues of interest included
the changing nature of peacekeeping environments, the evolving mandates of
1
By ‘peace operations’ the authors refer to a wide range of mission types deployed under a UN flag, blurring
the lines between traditional understandings of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peace enforcement.
2
It is important to clarify that not all missions include Chapter VII references in their mandates and that even
for those that do, the reference to Chapter VII relates to specific aspects of the mission’s mandate. In the cases
discussed here, missions are authorized with all necessary means to protect civilians but are not necessarily
authorized to use force to guarantee other mandated tasks, such as the holding of elections or disarmament of
rebel groups. Hence, only ‘most’ of the UN’s peacekeepers (100,000 of a total of around 126,000) are operating
under this type of mandate.
International Affairs 91: 6 (2015) 1277–1298

© 2015 The Author(s). International Affairs © 2015 The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Published by John Wiley & Sons
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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Alex J. Bellamy and Charles T. Hunt
peacekeeping operations, the use of diplomatic ‘good offices’ and the challenges
of peacebuilding, managerial and administrative reforms, planning, partnerships,
human rights and the protection of civilians. Not for the first time, the report
detected ‘a clear sense of a widening gap between what is being asked of UN peace
operations today and what they are able to deliver’.3 In particular, the growth
of expectations about the capacity of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians has
outpaced their actual capacity to do so, while their deployment ‘in increasingly
dangerous environments’ only compounds the difficulties confronted.4 The panel
found that, confronted by a rapid increase in global demand, the UN had been
unable to deploy sufficient peacekeeping forces rapidly enough and had come to
rely on underresourced military and police forces. Furthermore, a perceptible
‘robust turn’ in UN peacekeeping presents a series of dilemmas and issues that
must be addressed if the long-term credibility of UN peace operations is to be
retained, let alone enhanced. If these issues are not confronted, there is a risk that
the gap between expectations and capacities will widen further, raising the possi-
bility of major crises in peacekeeping such as those experienced in Rwanda (1994),
Bosnia (1995) and Sierra Leone (2000).
In setting out to understand these changes, and their implications for UN peace
operations, this article proceeds in four parts. The first identifies three transfor-
mations in peace operations—the emergence of the protection of civilians as a
central mission goal (with accompanying principle of due diligence); a so-called
‘robust turn’ towards greater preparedness to use force; and a subtle move away
from peacekeeping as an impartial overseer of peace processes towards the goal of
stabilization. The second section identifies the challenges posed to contemporary
UN peace operations by these transformations. The third section evaluates the
UN’s efforts thus far to make peace operations fit for purpose in the twenty-first
century, noting that while significant progress has been made in areas such as
policy and guidance, force sustainment and deployment, and the application of
force enablers, there remains a considerable way to go. The remaining gaps, and
suggestions for how to close them through further reform, are examined in the
fourth section.
The changing nature of UN peace operations

Once conceived of primarily as a buffer between warring states or a tool for
monitoring the implementation of ceasefire or peace agreements, UN peace opera-
tions have evolved into one of international society’s principal collective means
of maintaining international peace and security. This shift has been accompanied
by inflated expectations about the capacity of peacekeepers to mend broken states
and societies and to impose their will on recalcitrant armed groups—expectations
that have tended to obscure the fact that sustainable peace can be established only
3
Uniting our strengths for peace: politics, partnership and people, report of the UN High-level Independent Panel on
UN Peace Operations (New York: UN, June 2015; hereafter HIPPO Report), p. vii.
4
HIPPO Report, paras 26–7.
1278
International Affairs 91: 6, 2015
Copyright © 2015 The Author(s). International Affairs © 2015 The Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Twenty-first century UN peace operations
by the peoples of a particular country itself.5 It is now common for missions to be
expected to help rebuild state institutions, promote the rule of law, facilitate the
delivery of humanitarian assistance, monitor and promote human rights, support
national and local political processes, oversee ceasefires, manage the disarmament,
demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants, promote security
sector reform and set in motion a range of early peacebuilding programmes in
collaboration with other partners, all while paying particular attention to the
needs and participation of women and children.6 However, it is the protection
of civilians as a whole-of-mission activity that has become the benchmark against
which today’s UN peace operations are judged.7 This in turn has encouraged two
other transformations: moves towards the adoption of more ‘robust’ postures in
the face of persistent attacks on civilians, and a subtle shift in mandates away from
the impartial overseeing of peace processes towards active support for the consoli-
dation and extension of state authority.
Protection of civilians
Although, historically, peacekeeping operations sometimes contained human
rights components, civilian protection was typically not considered a core part
of peacekeeping before the end of the twentieth century.8 Indeed, one of the
tragic ironies of the UN’s self-named ‘Protection Force’ deployed to the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s was that it did not actually have a mandate to protect
civilians within its area of operations. Following the failure of UN peacekeepers
to protect vulnerable civilians in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the mid-1990s, the
seminal Brahimi Report on UN peace operations recognized that ‘no failure did
more to damage the standing and credibility of United Nations peacekeeping in
the 1990s then its reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor’. It went on to
state that: ‘Peacekeepers—troops or police—who witness violence against civil-
ians should be presumed to be authorized to stop it, within their means, in support
of basic United Nations principles.’9 The realization outlined in the first of these
quotations led to a gradual sea-change in the purpose and promise of UN peace
operations. Reflecting this, since 2002 the UN’s Standing Rules of Engagement
for peace operations have authorized the use of force ‘to defend any civilian person
who is in need of protection’.10 As Lisa Hultman has argued, UN peacekeeping
has moved systematically towards the upholding of civilian protection norms.11
5
This is the central thesis advanced by Jean-Marie Guéhenno in The fog of peace: a memoir of international peacekeep-
ing in the 21st century (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015).
6
See UNSC Resolution 2086 (2013), S/RES/2086, pp. 3–4, para. 8.
7
By ‘whole-of-mission’ activity we mean that action to this end should pervade all activity under the mission.
8
Katarina Månsson, ‘Use of force and civilian protection: peace operations in the Congo’, International Peace-
keeping 12: 4, 2005, pp. 503–19, and Katarina Månsson, ‘Integration of human rights in peace operations: is
there an ideal model?’, International Peacekeeping 13: 4, 2006, pp. 547–63.
9
Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (New York: UN, 2000; henceforth Brahimi Report, p. 51).
10
Cited in D. S. Blocq, ‘The fog of UN peacekeeping: ethical issues regarding the use of force to protect civilians
in UN operations’, Journal of Military Ethics 5: 3, 2006, p. 205.
11
Lisa Hultman, ‘Keeping peace or spurring violence? Unintended effects of peace operations on violence
against civilians’, Civil Wars 12: 1, 2010, pp. 29–46.
1279

Starting in 1999 with the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), the
UNSC has invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter with increasing frequency
to authorize peacekeepers to use ‘all means necessary’ to protect civilians from
harm.12 Since then, civilian protection and the authorization of ‘all means neces-
sary’ to that end have gradually become core aspects of UN peace operations
and central to many of its new mandates, such as those for the Central African
Republic (MINUSCA), Mali (MINUSMA), and South Sudan (UNMISS). By
2015, the protection of civilians from harm had become the ‘centre of gravity’ for
modern peacekeeping missions.13
In practice, the protection of civilians by military peacekeepers has evolved
to entail one or more of three types of activity. The first and most common
type involves the positioning of military forces to deter attacks on civilians.14 The
second, less frequent, type involves measures designed to eliminate or restrict the
activities of armed groups that threaten civilians. The third, least frequent of all,
is the interposition of peacekeepers between civilians and their armed tormen-
tors. Empirical evidence suggests that, overall, UN peacekeepers are effective in
protecting civilians since the rates of attacks on civilians are lower in areas where
peacekeepers are deployed than they are in those where they are not and similar
conditions prevail.15 But these developments point towards a second critical trans-
formation in UN peacekeeping—the so-called ‘robust turn’—and a range of new
issues associated with the use of force in peace operations.
The ‘robust turn’

Although referred to in the Brahimi Report, which insisted that peacekeepers
should have the wherewithal to defend themselves and their mandate, a robust
approach to peacekeeping was defined in the 2009 ‘New Partnership Agenda’
launched by the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) as ‘a
political and operational strategy to signal the intention of a UN mission to
implement its mandate and to deter threats to an existing peace process in the
face of resistance from spoilers’.16 In operational terms, the DPKO understands
robust peacekeeping as entailing ‘the use of force by a United Nations peace-
keeping operation at the tactical level, with authorisation of the Security Council,
to defend its mandate against spoilers whose activities pose a threat to civilians or
risk undermining the peace process’.17 In practice, ‘robust’ peacekeeping can entail
12
Kofi Nsia-Pepra, UN robust peacekeeping: civilian protection in violent civil wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014); Benjamin de Carvalho and Ole Jacob Sending, The protection of civilians in UN peacekeeping: the evolution
of a concept and its implementation in practice (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012); Siobhán Wills, Protecting civilians: the
obligations of peacekeepers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
13
Author’s interview with UN DPKO official, New York, Feb. 2015.
14
Thomas G. Weiss, ‘The humanitarian impulse’, in David M. Malone, ed., The UN Security Council (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), p. 48.
15
Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman and Megan Shannon, ‘United Nations peacekeeping and civilian protection in
civil war’, American Political Science Review 57: 4, 2013, pp. 875–91.
16
UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and Department of Field Support (DFS), A new partner-
ship agenda: charting a new horizon for UN peacekeeping (New York, 2009).
17
DPKO, Peacekeeping operations: principles and guidelines (‘Capstone doctrine’) (New York, UN, 2008), p. 19.
1280

the use of significant force, including small arms fire, cannon and artillery fire, and
the use of helicopter-launched munitions, against an armed group.18
While the UN operation in the Congo (1960–64) was an antecedent, a water-
shed in mandating peace operations with the use of force beyond self-defence
came with the UNITAF/UNOSOM II operations in Somalia in 1992–3. This
foray into ‘peace enforcement’ proved disastrous, precipitating a retreat from
offensive mission postures and a reversion to a non-coercive form of peace opera-
tions. A resumption of more muscular force configurations and operational
concepts accompanied the return to peace operations in the early 2000s in missions
in Sierra Leone, the DRC, Haiti and Liberia. Since 2011, the UNSC has authorized
a number of missions that have arguably espoused this robust approach.19 Missions
such as MINUSMA in Mali, MINUSCA in the Central African Republic (CAR)
and the FIB under MONUSCO have adopted a more forceful posture and have
deployed into places where there is active conflict and ‘no peace to keep’. This
has precipitated what some see as an incremental doctrinal shift with respect to
the use of force in UN peace operations.20 Such an approach allows for the use
of force at the tactical level in self-defence and defence of the mandate—the latter
invariably applied to the task of protection of civilians—while continuing to rule
out the use of force at the operational level (i.e. across the whole mission, or as a
part of the mission’s operational plan). Doctrinally, it is argued that it is the level
at which force is utilized that distinguishes peacekeeping (limited to tactical-level
force) from peace enforcement (operational-level force). It has also become an
article of faith that peace enforcement should be the exclusive domain of UNSC-
authorized multinational operations and certainly not a field of action for UN
peacekeeping. Although the record is mixed, these shifts have enabled the more
proactive and forward-leaning interpretation of the civilian protection mandate
observed in some of the UN’s field missions.21
Maintaining this fine balance between tactical and operational uses of force has
proved difficult in practice, however, and nowhere more so than in the context of
MONUSCO’s FIB in the DRC. The FIB was established by the UNSC in March
2013 (Resolution 2098) with a mandate to help MONUSCO ‘neutralize’ non-state
armed groups (the Council had the M23 militia specifically in mind). Aware of the
need to maintain the important conceptual distinction between peacekeeping and
peace enforcement, the resolution stated that it should be implemented ‘without
creating a precedent of any prejudice to the agreed principles of peacekeeping’
(namely, consent, impartiality and minimum force in self-defence). Despite these
protestations, however, it is difficult to see how UN missions charged with cooper-
ating with one party to a conflict (in the DRC, the government and the Forces
18
For a guide to evolving thinking, see DPKO/DFS, Draft DPKO/DFS concept note on robust peacekeeping (New
York: United Nations, 2010).
19
Charles T. Hunt, ‘UN peace operations and “all necessary means”’, R2P Ideas in Brief (Asia Pacific Centre for
the Responsibility to Protect, 2013), p. 2.
20
Peter Mateja, ‘Between doctrine and practice: the UN peacekeeping dilemma’, Global Governance: A Review of
Multilateralism and International Organizations 21: 3, 2015, pp. 351–70.
21
For a critique, see Thierry Tardy, ‘A critique of robust peacekeeping in contemporary peace operations’,
International Peacekeeping 18: 2, 2011, pp. 152–67.
1281

Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC)) to ‘neutralize’
another party (M23) could do so without departing from the principle of minimum
force used only in self-defence. In April 2013, the UNSC passed Resolution 2100
mandating the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission
in Mali (MINUSMA). In addition to stipulating common tasks for contemporary
multidimensional peace operations, acting under Chapter VII, the MINUSMA
mandate also authorizes a French contingent of over 1,000 troops ‘to use all neces-
sary means ... to intervene in support of elements of MINUSMA when under
imminent and serious threat upon request of the Secretary-General’. While refer-
ence to such an ‘over-the-horizon’ force is not unprecedented, the potential use of
French forces previously employed in coercive operations against armed elements
in Mali’s Sahelian north as an integrated component of MINUSMA suggests that
they may be called upon to suppress any subsequent resurgence of rebel activity,
thus actively combating armed elements while serving under a UN peace opera-
tion mandate.22
This brings us to the third, quite subtle, shift in UN peace operations—away
from the impartial overseeing of peace processes and towards the adoption of a
stabilization role.
Peace operations as stabilization

Traditionally, peacekeeping has been understood as the deployment of forces
to support a peace process or assist in the implementation of ceasefires or peace
agreements. However, a third role—stabilization, the use of military means to
stabilize a country—has grown in prominence over the past decade. At the time of
writing, the UN had four missions explicitly labelled as stabilization operations—
MONUSCO (DRC), MINUSCA (CAR), MINUSMA (Mali) and MINUSTAH
(Haiti).
Stabilization missions are distinct from more traditionally conceived UN
missions—even robust, complex, multidimensional ones such as the UN/AU
Mission in Darfur (UNAMID)—in at least two significant ways. First, they are
self-consciously partial. Stabilization missions are explicitly mandated to stabilize
a country or to assist the government to do so. Their deployment is therefore not
necessarily associated with a peace process and the peacekeepers are not directed to
treat all parties alike. Instead, written into their mandate is a directive to support
one particular armed group (the state), if necessary to defeat spoilers. Second,
while peacekeeping lore (and the Brahimi Report) insists that peacekeepers should
be deployed only where there is a peace to keep,23 stabilization missions are inten-
tionally directed towards countries where there is no such peace and therefore
they operate in active conflict zones. Their objective is to stabilize a country, which
implies that at the point of deployment it is unstable.24 As John Karlsrud points
22
Thomas G. Weiss and Martin Welz, ‘The UN and the African Union in Mali and beyond: a shotgun wedding?’,
International Affairs 90: 4, July 2014, pp. 889–905.
23
Brahimi Report, para. 11.
24
Cedric de Coning, ‘Do we need a UN stabilization doctrine?’, in Richard Gowan and Adam C. Smith,
1282

out, ‘stabilization is about using military means to stabilize a country, sometimes
with all necessary means to neutralize potential “spoilers” to a conflict’.25
This subtle shift towards stabilization is significant for a number of reasons.
In particular, it involves a coupling of peacekeeping to broader practices of state-
building and peacebuilding, such that the strategic objectives of these new peace
operations are stretched to include these more expansive goals. Moreover, with
stabilization, the use of force by UN peacekeepers moves from being a potential
resource that might be used sparingly in response to unforeseen circumstances to
a tool whose use is directly presaged by the mandate itself. Indeed, in unstable
conditions it is difficult to see how peacekeepers could accomplish their stabiliza-
tion goals without using some degree of force.
In summary, this section has suggested that UN peace operations in the twenty-
first century are changing in at least three important ways: they are becoming
more focused on the protection of civilians, they are becoming more robust, and
in some cases they are starting to adopt stabilization as a mission goal. It is impor-
tant to acknowledge that these trends have emerged over a considerable period
of time. The explicit use of stabilization terminology is arguably a manifestation
of the slower trend towards deeper relationships with host governments, backed
up by greater willingness to use force to protect civilians, and an evolution of
the peacebuilding/statebuilding activities developed in the early 2000s. However
gradually they evolved, these transformations have begun to change UN peace
operations in fundamental ways, presenting a range of relatively new challenges
for UN peacekeepers which are examined in the following section.
Challenges for UN peacekeepers

The transformations described in the previous section create at least five critical
challenges for contemporary peace operations. Unless the UN develops compel-
ling responses to these challenges it will confront an increasingly unbridgeable gap
between what peacekeepers are expected to achieve by international society and
the resources and capabilities granted to them.
First, the willing embrace of protection, stabilization and robustness by the
UNSC has already increased the expectations associated with peacekeeping in at
least two respects. At one level there are international expectations about what
peace operations ought to be able to achieve in terms of protecting vulnerable
communities, preventing violent conflict, delivering life-saving relief, supporting
the establishment of legitimate and democratic states that respect human rights,
and building sustainable peace. When missions are asked to achieve these goals in
contexts where there is no peace to keep, no tradition of democratic government or
respect for basic human rights, and little goodwill between the parties, it is hardly
eds, What needs to change in UN peace operations? An expert briefing book prepared for the High-Level Independent Panel
on Peace Operations (New York: Centre on International Cooperation, New York University and International
Peace Institute, 2014), pp. 31–2.
25
John Karlsrud, ‘The UN at war: examining the consequences of peace-enforcement mandates for the UN
peacekeeping operations in the CAR, the DRC and Mali’, Third World Quarterly 36: 1, 2015, p. 42.
1283

surprising that they fall short. UN peacekeepers and international peacebuilders
cannot achieve these long-term and structural goals by themselves. All they can
realistically do is facilitate the creation of conditions that allow local communities
and armed groups themselves to build peace.26 This increase in global expectations
has occurred without concomitant work to clarify the strategic purpose of UN
peace operations and specify what peacekeepers have to do in order to achieve the
desired outcomes.27 A related point is that the shift towards ‘robustness’ might
give the false impression that there are external military solutions to local political
problems. Ultimately, as both HIPPO and Guéhenno have pointed out recently,28
there is a primacy of politics. UN peacekeeping strategy has to support a political
strategy, not the other way around. This is especially pertinent because, while
these new missions are engaged more intrusively in shaping the security environ-
ment, sustainable solutions can come about only through the political and peace-
building efforts for which their work opens up space.
At the more local level, the embrace of protection in particular has given rise to
expectations among local populations about the capacity of UN peacekeepers to
protect them from armed groups. In the DRC, South Sudan, the CAR, Mali and
elsewhere it is common for displaced people to gather in and around UN instal-
lations—including remote and small observation posts—expecting direct protec-
tion from armed groups. Although UN peace operations are associated with better
protection for civilians, compared to similar situations where peacekeepers are
not deployed, peacekeepers cannot prevent or react to every atrocity crime since
there is simply not enough capacity to have a ‘peacekeeper behind every tree’.
Given increasing local and global expectations, examples of UN peace operations
failing to protect civilians from atrocity crimes are proving increasingly damaging.
Sometimes missions have failed to protect civilians because peacekeepers decide
not to intervene to stop attacks, usually because they are not deployed in the
immediate locale of the attack or do not get to the location of an attack quickly
enough. A 2014 report of the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)
was especially blunt in criticizing the implementation record of civilian protection
mandates, its main finding being that: ‘Peacekeeping missions with protection of
civilians mandates focus on prevention and mitigation activities and force is almost
never used to protect civilians under attack.’29
Although some positive developments have occurred in the design and conduct
of peace operations, many remain incapable of protecting civilians from attack.
For example, although it was able to protect some 150,000–200,000 civilians from
direct harm in 2013–14, UNMISS in South Sudan was unable to prevent the wave
of violence against civilians sparked by the conflict between President Salva Kiir
and his Vice-President Riek Machar; nor could it do much to protect those beyond
26
Guéhenno, The fog of peace.
27
Mats Berdal and David H. Ucko, ‘The use of force in UN peacekeeping operations’, RUSI Journal 160: 1, 2015,
pp. 10–11.
28
Guéhenno, The fog of peace.
29
OIOS, Evaluation of the implementation and results of protection of civilians mandates in United Nations peacekeeping
operations (New York, 2014), p. 1.
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the fences of the ‘protection of civilians’ (POC) sites. Nor has UNAMID proved
able to prevent recurrent atrocity crimes in Darfur, including a sharp escalation
of violence in 2014 in an area to which it struggled to gain access. UN peace
operations in the CAR, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC and Mali, among others, have
confronted similar challenges and been similarly unable to protect civilians from
attack. The central problem is that the capabilities given to these missions do not
match the expectations and mandates attached to them.30 Even relatively large
peace operations are seldom able to provide comprehensive protection throughout
their areas of operation.
In practice, it has proved difficult to eliminate threats to civilians entirely, and
using force against militia groups may make it harder to secure their cooperation
in the future. Cases where peacekeepers succeed in eliminating threats are rare—
the use of force by UNOCI and French forces against Gbagbo’s militia in Côte
d’Ivoire and MONUSCO/FIB’s campaign against the M23 militia in the DRC
provide the best examples. More often, groups are weakened but may regroup and
return to attacks on civilians. For example, in the DRC prior to the creation of the
FIB, although the UN mission MONUC succeeded in weakening the Democratic
Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels and restricting its freedom of
movement, it neither destroyed the militia nor forced it to disarm.31 The FDLR
responded by negotiating an alliance with the DRC government, prompting the
2008 conflict with the CNDP militia which had devastating effects on the civilian
population. To return once more to Guéhenno, to be effective in the longer term,
the use of force must be tied to a political strategy—as it was in Côte d’Ivoire.32 If
it is not, its tactical use in defence of civilians is likely only to give rise to heightened
expectations that will probably be disappointed.
The second set of issues stems from the fact that the developments charted
in the previous section challenge the established principles of peacekeeping in a
variety of ways.33 Most obviously, as noted earlier, the adoption of ‘stabilization’
as a goal and mandates to ‘neutralize’ specific armed groups moves UN peace-
keeping away from its position of impartiality, requiring it to differentiate rather
than treating all armed groups alike. This becomes an acutely difficult problem in
situations where the host state’s armed forces prove themselves to be as abusive as
some non-state armed groups, and yet the UN’s focus—and practice—involves
using force and deterrence only against the latter, while consciously cooperating
with the former. Similar problems relating to host state consent have arisen in
Darfur, South Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire.34
30
Thus, between 2000 and 2004, the UN Secretary General advised against the adoption of protection as a core
role for MONUC, even after it had been mandated by the UNSC, on the grounds that the mission lacked the
necessary resources. See Månsson, ‘Use of force and civilian protection’, pp. 507, 512.
31
Victoria K. Holt and Tobias C. Berkman, The impossible mandate? Military preparedness, the Responsibility to Protect
and modern peace operations (Washington DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2006), pp. 166–7.
32
In Côte d’Ivoire, the strategy involved ensuring the removal of Gbagbo and building a government of national
unity under Ouattara. See Guéhenno, Fog of peace, ch. 4.
33
A problem identified by Tardy, ‘A critique of robust peacekeeping’.
34
Giulia Piccolino and John Karlsrud, ‘Withering consent, but mutual dependency: UN peace operations and
African assertiveness’, Conflict, Security and Development 11: 4, 2011, pp. 447–71.
1285

This turn away from impartiality also raises potentially difficult questions about
the legal status of UN peacekeepers. As impartial intermediaries, UN peacekeepers
are granted legal protections not afforded to other armed personnel. In short, they
are to be treated as inviolable such that any attack on peacekeepers is considered
a war crime. However, if peacekeepers are given mandates to use force and act
partially (as in the case of FIB), the all-important distinction between combat-
ants and non-combatants becomes blurred and the legal protections afforded
to UN peacekeepers fall into question.35 This move also potentially opens the
door to the granting of wider combat roles for peacekeepers, including in the
field of counterterrorism. Although HIPPO was adamant in insisting that UN
peacekeepers must never be employed for counterterrorism purposes, countering
terrorism has already become part of the peacekeepers’ role in northern Mali. It
is not difficult to see how this task might be expanded were terrorists to target
civilians in other countries where UN peacekeepers are deployed with civilian
protection mandates.36
Another area where the principles of peacekeeping are being stretched by the
new circumstances is in relation to the use of force. Traditionally, the use of force
by peacekeepers has been limited to the minimum needed to defend themselves
from direct attack.37 Since the Brahimi Report, this understanding has nominally
included the use of force in ‘defence of mandate’, but in practice things were
seldom stretched this far and peacekeeping operations stopped well short of using
force to impose their will or enforce their mandate. Under the newer mandates,
peacekeepers are expected to protect not only themselves and their UN colleagues,
but civilians in their areas of operation as well. They are also increasingly expected
to take not just reactive but proactive measures. In particular, while it has explic-
itly been said not to be a precedent, the mandate for FIB to conduct proactive
and targeted measures to disarm, degrade and ‘neutralize’ aggressors represents a
significant shift from the minimum use of force principle: coercive measures were
now justified and framed in offensive rather than purely defensive terms (i.e. force
protection and defence of mandate/civilians).
Third, there are concerns that the transformations described above increase
the vulnerability of peacekeepers, a problem exacerbated by the emergence of
non-state actors and violent extremists able and willing to target peacekeepers.
Following high-profile casualties in the UN engagement in Somalia in the 1990s,
UN missions sustained casualties in a number of missions. More recently, the safety
and security of peacekeepers has become a matter of heightened concern in the
35
Scott Sheeran and Stephanie Case, The intervention brigade: legal issues for the UN in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (New York: International Peace Institute, 2014).
36
On this point, see Richard Gowan, ‘Can UN peacekeepers fight terrorists?’, Brookings Institution, 30 June
2015, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/06/30-un-peacekeepers-gowan. There
is some suggestion that China contributed combat troops to MINUSMA specifically because it sees this
mission as countering global violent extremism. See ‘China’s role in peacekeeping and counter-terrorism in
Mali’, Clingendael, 30 April 2015, http://www.clingendael.nl/event/chinas-role-peacekeeping-and-counter-
terrorism-and-counter-violent-extremism-mali. (Both URLs accessed 2 Oct. 2015.)
37
An early exception to this was the ONUC mission in Congo (1960–64), but not only did the use of force there
prove controversial, that mission also created a lasting financial crisis for the organization.
1286

light of new and evolving threats. In April 2013, for instance, eight Indian peace-
keepers were killed when armed militia attacked a convoy they were escorting
in Jonglei state, South Sudan. A few months later, seven Tanzanian peacekeepers
were killed in Darfur when militia attacked their base. Three more Indian peace-
keepers were killed in Akobo in Jonglei state in December, when militia attacked
a UN base sheltering civilians. At around the same time, anti-Balaka militia in the
CAR killed a UN peacekeeper from the Republic of the Congo. In Mali, nine
UN peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in October 2014, and five more when
their convoy was attacked in July 2015.
These incidents have understandably given rise to concerns that the adoption
of robust mandates for the protection of civilians in semi-hostile environments,
combined with the innovation of stabilization missions that have aligned peace-
keepers more closely with contestable political objectives, has dramatically
increased the risks confronting UN peacekeepers. Operating in pursuit of political
objectives set by the UNSC in situations that are deeply unstable and characterized
by the presence of multiple armed groups, many of which oppose the Council’s
objectives, contemporary peacekeepers operating in South Sudan, Darfur, Mali,
the DRC, the CAR and elsewhere can no longer rely on their perceived neutrality
and impartiality to guarantee their own safety. Along with the obvious opera-
tional issues this presents, there is also a significant force generation problem.
Several troop-contributing countries have identified concerns about the potential
for casualties as a significant political obstacle to contributing to UN missions.
Thus, if peacekeeping is becoming more dangerous, it will become more difficult
for the UN to recruit the forces it needs.38
Fourth, the UN is a multi-agency organization. While its peacekeepers might
be the most visible UN presence, a number of humanitarian agencies—such as
UNHCR, UNICEF and the World Food Programme, coordinated by Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)—also operate under the UN
flag, increasingly in the context of integrated missions.39 These humanitarian
agencies, as well as non-UN actors such as the International Committee of the
Red Cross, Médecins sans Frontières, Merlin, Oxfam, and Save the Children, are
guided in their work by the humanitarian principles of impartiality, indepen-
dence and humanity. Fidelity to these principles is not only a matter of moral
purpose, though that in itself is important. The principles help to create ‘space’
(both physical and political) for humanitarian work. The perceived political
neutrality of humanitarian work grants it a legitimacy that allows humanitarians
to negotiate their access to vulnerable populations with states and non-state armed
groups.40 This perceived independence is put at risk by the association of humani-
tarian agencies—especially the UN’s, but also those that work in partnership with
38
See Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘Explaining the national politics of peacekeeping’, in Alex J.
Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, eds, Providing peacekeepers: the politics, challenges, and future of United Nations
peacekeeping contributions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
39
Kathleen M. Jennings and Anja T. Kaspersen, ‘Introduction: integration revisited’, International Peacekeeping
15: 4, 2008, pp. 443–52.
40
Michiel Hofman, ‘The evolution from integrated missions to “peace keepers on steroids”’, Global Responsibility
to Protect 6: 2, 2014, pp. 246–63.
1287

it—with the political (and contentious) agendas pursued by robust UN forces.
This raises challenging practical and operational questions about the sustenance
of ‘humanitarian space’ and the security of humanitarian workers and those with
whom they work in the context of UN peacekeeping.
There are concerns that the explicit association of humanitarian action with
the political goals pursued by peacekeepers could make it more difficult and
dangerous for humanitarians to do their work. This anxiety is partly derived
from the perception that robust peacekeeping is inconsistent with humanitarian
principles and the widespread sentiment in the humanitarian community that it
adds controversy without delivering tangible operational benefits. Humanitarian
agencies rely on the consent and cooperation of governments, communities and
armed groups for access, infrastructural support and security, often in environ-
ments where goodwill is in short supply. In these contexts, any sort of linkage
between humanitarian work and the political action sometimes needed to achieve
the peace operation’s objectives could make life more difficult for the humanitar-
ians. As mentioned earlier, this is an especially vexing problem for the UN system,
which includes both humanitarian and political agencies, as well as the military
component.41 In particularly difficult and volatile situations, the explicit associa-
tion of humanitarian work with political work, and robust peacekeeping, can be
unhelpful and even potentially dangerous.
Together, these challenges create a fifth major challenge, already hinted at
above: additional strains on the UN’s capacity to generate the forces it needs to
implement the UNSC’s mandates. One comprehensive study found that member
states are ‘highly sensitive’ to the nature of different peace operations, and that
this influences decision-making about whether they will contribute.42 Contrib-
uting countries want to avoid sustaining casualties and they are more reluctant
to contribute to missions that are thought overly dangerous. Troop contribu-
tors are also concerned about the potential length of their commitment and want
to be confident that missions have clear and achievable strategic plans.43 Thus
the combination of more complex and ambitious mandates and greater risk and
potential for force might weaken the commitment of states to contributing the
forces needed to implement the UNSC’s new mandates. Finding practical and
effective responses to the challenges identified in this section is important not
only for ensuring that the UN’s current missions deliver on their promise, but
also for ensuring that the UN continues to be able to generate the basic capacity
to deliver in the future.
41
Victoria Metcalfe, Alison Giffen and Samir Elhawary, UN integration and humanitarian space: an independent study
by the UN Integration Steering Group (Washington DC: Stimson Center and Humanitarian Policy Group, 2011);
Abby Stoddard, Adele Harmer and Katherine Haver, Providing aid in insecure environments: trends in policy and
operations. 2009 update (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2009).
42
Bellamy and Williams, Providing peacekeepers. It is also argued by some that only self-interested states are willing
to contribute troops to missions with robust postures perceived as high-risk, raising the possibility that those
who are contributed may be less impartial.
43
See Richard Caplan, ed., Exit strategies and state building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
1288

Reacting to change: the nature and effectiveness of UN responses

In the light of the challenges identified above, the UN has developed a range of
responses at different levels to mitigate the difficulties and overcome some of the
hurdles. This section evaluates some of the major developments and initiatives
that have been undertaken.
Division of labour
Since the 1990s, a de facto division of labour has emerged such that when proactive
enforcement action (the ‘dirty work’) was required, the UNSC would mandate
regional arrangements or coalitions under a multinational force to do so. The UN
has often ‘re-hatted’ troops and assigned follow-on activity to a new UN peace
operation in support of a peace agreement. Some African states have been more
willing than the UN peace operations and even better prepared to adopt robust
posture and use force. For example, the missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia and
Côte d’Ivoire were all preceded by missions mounted by the Economic Commu-
nity of West African States (ECOWAS) that eventually made the transition to
UN command and control. Enforcement auxiliaries have also been provided by
non-African regional arrangements (such as the EU in the DRC and Chad) or
pivotal states (such as France, which has assumed differing roles in Côte d’Ivoire,
Mali and the CAR). These arrangements have enabled a rapid response by bodies
that have been more willing to undertake what was deemed unpalatable for the
UN. However, they have not been particularly effective and are certainly not
sustainable. Whether as a consequence of this, or for lack of other options, the
UN has developed new concepts and configurations to accommodate a more
robust posture and expansive set of tasks within its own missions.
In some cases, peacekeepers have developed partnerships with host state armed
forces, cooperating closely in order to undertake robust (potentially offensive)
operations against insurgent entities to promote stabilization and enhance civilian
protection. For instance, in the DRC, MONUSCO has conducted joint opera-
tions with government armed forces, the FARDC. These have evolved as a means
both of providing training and support and of deterring the abuse of civilians by
these forces. While this was a novel response, it also created its own problems as
the UN was aiding and abetting, through material and technical support, some
of the more abusive elements of the FARDC. This severely detracted from the
credibility and reputation of UN peacekeepers seen to be directly associated with
elements of a national army blighted by a terrible human rights record.
The UN has tried to address the problem through its human rights ‘due
diligence’ policy, which insists that the UN withdraw cooperation from armed
groups, including those of governments, that are responsible for human rights
abuses.44 But in countries where the UN relies on host state consent and active
44
Jérémie Labbé and Arthur Boutellis, ‘Peace operations by proxy: implications for humanitarian action of UN
peacekeeping partnerships with non-UN security forces’, International Review of the Red Cross 95: 891–2, 2013,
pp. 539–59.
1289

cooperation on logistical and transport issues, due diligence has been implemented
only patchily. What is more, there are concerns that the implementation of due
diligence might actually weaken the UN’s capacity to prevent human rights abuse.
For example, MONUSCO’s leadership was reluctant to withdraw from joint
patrols with the FARDC on the grounds that doing so would only weaken the
restraints placed upon the Congolese soldiers.
Another significant development in the Congolese theatre was the authoriza-
tion by the UNSC of the FIB which, as noted above, was established with the
specific goal of going on the offensive against those non-state armed groups that
employ mass violence against civilians.45 Although it had its genesis in regional
initiatives,46 the FIB concept effectively placed a peace enforcement auxiliary
under the mandate of a pre-existing UN mission, MONUSCO.47 Composed
of South African, Tanzanian and Malawian troops (contingents already part of
MONUSCO), the FIB managed to carve out a degree of autonomy and somewhat
independent operating modality, and was able to deploy different hardware and
equipment not usually used in UN peacekeeping situations (e.g. more advanced
South African artillery), but importantly it remains under a UN chain of command.
In a series of joint operations with the FARDC, the brigade defeated the
M23 militia in November 2013 and received plaudits for its initial effectiveness
in reducing threats to civilians. The FIB epitomized a shift towards counter-
insurgency (COIN) type operations to ‘clear, hold and build’—the last element
conceptualized as the creation of ‘islands of stability’ to consolidate gains made and
allow for the provision of humanitarian assistance.48 This created space to provide
basic public services (particularly relating to the rule of law, essential to address
impunity) in order to provide a peace dividend to civilians in affected areas and
thereby justify the stabilization strategy, demonstrate its benefits and encourage
their sustained dissociation from armed groups. While the resolution authorizing
the FIB’s action declared that this should not be seen as a precedent, its early gains
contributed to the ‘robust turn’ mentioned above. Although the FIB succeeded in
defeating M23, it has been unable to defeat other non-state armed groups such as
the FDLR, and has also had limited success in preventing abuses by the FARDC.
The point here is that in most cases, military efforts will have positive strategic
effects only when they are supporting broader political processes.
Innovative protection approaches

UN peace operations have developed a number of innovative responses to the
challenge of protection. One of the most significant was to alter the way in which
they respond to civilians seeking refuge in UN bases. This happened incremen-
45
First and foremost the M23, but also the FDLR and other elements such as the Allied Democratic Forces
(ADF) and Mai-Mai.
46
Originally mooted by regional countries through the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region,
the idea was carried forward by the Southern African Development Community and African Union.
47
A similar arrangement was established in the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in 1995, when
a NATO Rapid Reaction Force was attached to the mission.
48
Similar concepts and doctrine have since been employed by MINUSCA peacekeepers in the CAR.
1290

tally and on a case-by-case basis, but culminated in a major shift in policy and
practice in South Sudan. Having ‘opened the gates’ to fleeing civilians following
the eruption of violence in December 2013, UNMISS began providing sanctuary
to tens of thousands of civilians unwilling or unable to return to their homes. At
one stage as many as a quarter of a million people sought refuge in the bases, and
as of 3 September 2015, some 186,000 civilians seek the protection of UNMISS
military and police peacekeepers inside these POC sites.49
The decision undoubtedly saved thousands of lives but has not been without
problems. First, POC sites are susceptible to internal security issues. Flare-ups
within the sites between groups of displaced people, including serious violence
along ethnic lines as a microcosm of the conflict beyond the fence, create diffi-
cult public order challenges. While such issues have long since threatened order
inside camps for refugees and internally displaced people (IDP), the responsi-
bility to protect these civilians falling to UNMISS peacekeepers presents new
challenges and contributes to the overstretch of existing capacity and mission
operational abilities in general. Moreover, for the first time this task is falling
primarily to UN police who—mainly in the form of Formed Police Units
(FPUs)—are being asked to ‘police’ internal security in the sites but without an
executive mandate that would allow them to detain and hand over suspects to
national authorities.50
Second, while these POC sites have provided sanctuary for vulnerable popula-
tions, they are extremely vulnerable to external security threats. For instance, in
May 2015, in the course of outbreaks of fighting in Melut in the north-eastern part
of South Sudan, the UNMISS base and POC site were struck by stray bullets and
over 20 artillery shells. On several occasions, armed militia raided UN bases in the
pursuit of the civilians sheltering there, prompting UN peacekeepers to use force
to protect their own bases and the civilians within them. This and other similar
security threats had contributed to increasingly stretching the military compo-
nent’s operational abilities and limiting the mission’s effectiveness. Notwith-
standing these unprecedented efforts, familiar problems endure as many troops
have refused to leave their bases or proactively seek to protect civilians as the
country (South Sudan) has descended into prolonged chaos.
Third, these ad hoc IDP camps inevitably become hubs where the delivery
of humanitarian assistance, including vital food aid, can be focused and facili-
tated. While this can have some advantages in terms of access, the co-location and
interdependence of military, police and humanitarian actors reproduces the issues
identified above regarding encroachment on humanitarian space and poses further
challenges to the interoperability and coordination of all stakeholders in theatre.
Consequently, military protection efforts usually focus on specific geographic
areas, be they ‘safe havens’, ‘safe corridors’ for transit, or undesignated areas close
to the peacekeepers’ bases. The rationale for designating safe areas is that through
49
UNMISS update, ‘UNMISS Protection-of-Civilians sites’, Juba, 7 September 2015,
50
Mark Malan and Charles T. Hunt, Between a rock and a hard place: the UN and the protection of civilians in South
Sudan, ISS paper no. 275 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2014), pp. 15–16.
1291

the concentration of force, peacekeepers can carve out secure areas.51 The problem
with this approach is that it only protects those civilians who are able to reach the
safe zone.52
These mission configurations, partnerships and unprecedented policies represent
significant developments and have had some successes. However, their value is
primarily in the short-term eradication of threats and/or provision of temporary
safety. In practice, the effectiveness of these initiatives has been limited, and in the
medium and longer term the sustainability of protection outcomes remains elusive.
Community-focused mechanisms
In view of the unsustainable nature of the initiatives above, some effort has
been dedicated to both harnessing and building the capacity of local actors and
community-based mechanisms with the aim of empowering communities and
avoiding dependency on peacekeepers who will eventually leave.53 A better under-
standing of the self-protection strategies and perceptions of local communities has
informed a number of developments that have contributed to better protection
outcomes in some cases.54
An initiative arising from work in the DRC has been engagement with local
stakeholders to develop Community Alert Networks (CANs) and Community
Liaison Assistants (CLAs). The CANs are established in towns in order to broaden
and deepen engagement and sharing of information, and through basic equipment
(mobile phones) to improve communication channels between vulnerable commu-
nities and UN protection actors to facilitate better responses in times of crisis. A
CLA is usually someone from the local community employed as a link person to
facilitate engagement and exchange between peacekeepers and the community.
CLAs also provide a source of early warning information and can contribute to
assessments of protection initiatives through impact monitoring and participation
in Joint Protection Teams ( JPTs).55
While these innovations have been quite effective in improving protection
outcomes, they can also render local communities and specific individuals suscep-
tible to reprisals if they are deemed to be collaborating with the enemy. This
danger must be taken into account and mitigated as far as possible.56 Further-
more, while these initiatives can generate useful insights, the weight of informa-
tion flowing in as a result can overwhelm the limited capacity of missions for the
handling and analysis of that information which are necessary if early warning is
51
Phil Orchard, ‘Revisiting humanitarian safe areas for civilian protection’, Global Governance: A Review of Multi-
lateralism and International Organizations 20: 1, 2014, pp. 55–75.
52
Ian Johnstone, ‘Dilemmas of robust peace operations’, Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2006 (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006), p. 7.
53
Erin Baines and Emily Paddon, ‘“This is how we survived”: civilian agency and humanitarian protection’,
Security Dialogue 43: 3, 2012, pp. 231–47.
54
Aditi Gorur, ‘Community self-protection strategies: how peacekeepers can help or harm’, in Civilians in
conflict: issue brief no.1 (Washington DC: Stimson Center, 2013).
55
For more on JPTs, see below.
56
Erin A. Weir and Charles T. Hunt, ‘DR Congo: support community-based tools for Monusco’ (Washington
DC: Refugees International, 2011).
1292

to be translated into early response. These community-focused strategies can also
serve the purpose of managing expectations of local populations by giving them
a better understanding of what peacekeepers are mandated and resourced to do
(including how they can facilitate those actions) as well as a clearer sense of what
they cannot do, whether due to lack of access or lack of capacity.57
Whole-of-mission POC efforts

As the POC concept has become more central to mission objectives and plans, a
number of missions have developed a range of integrated planning, capabilities
allocation and assessment tools. A good example of this are the JPTs, comprising
members from a cross-section of mission components brought together in order
to draw on a range of expertise and reflect the whole-of-mission character of POC
efforts.58 Military peacekeepers escort JPTs to visit areas that have recently expe-
rienced civilian protection crises, or are perceived to be vulnerable; on each visit,
which lasts for a few days, the team will engage with local populations, investigate
recent events and gather information to develop better situation analyses that can
inform and repeatedly update POC strategies and planning. The mission-wide
representation, closer engagement and presence even in remote areas has proved to
be an effective means of enhancing planning of POC activities and improving
partnerships such as the CANs. However, JPTs make intensive use of human
resources, drawing staff away from their duty stations and other tasks. Further-
more, they are only ever a periodic response to challenges that are often continuous.
Development of policy, guidance and training

A decade of practice implementing POC mandates in the field led to a period of
reflection and introspection. Having identified civilian protection as a ‘critical role’
of modern peacekeeping in its vision document A new partnership agenda, the DPKO
and OCHA jointly commissioned an independent study aimed at drawing practi-
cal lessons from mission experience to date. Its major findings were that the expec-
tations the UNSC placed on missions to protect civilians were not being met owing
to policy, planning and preparedness shortcomings, and hence POC efforts were
beset by planning, mandating and resourcing issues. This was closely followed by
the passage of the landmark Security Council Resolution 1894 (2009) on POC in
armed conflict. In parallel, a range of workshops and policy development processes
were undertaken to draw together the knowledge and expertise developed on these
topics, and within the UN Secretariat, at the behest of the UN General Assembly’s
C-34 committee on peacekeeping and the Security Council,59 a process of
57
Alison Giffen, ‘Community perceptions as a priority in protection and peacekeeping’, in Civilians in conflict:
issue brief no. 2 (Washington DC: Stimson Center, 2013).
58
JPTs are composed of staff from the Human Rights Component and the Civil Affairs Section, accompanied
by UN military, police and—as relevant—DDR, Political Affairs, Joint Mission Analysis Center ( JMAC) and
Gender staff.
59
Through, respectively, A/63/19 (23 Feb.–20 March 2013) and Security Council Resolution 1894, 11 Nov. 2009.
1293

consolidating institutional knowledge, and developing the necessary frameworks,
tools and mechanisms to guide, train and measure POC efforts was undertaken.
This upsurge of interest and activity informed and precipitated a number of
reforms within the UN system and saw the development of policies, doctrine
and training to support the preparation of peacekeepers and the implementation
of mandates. Chief among these was the production of a concept note and an
operational concept at DPKO/DFS. The former laid out the dilemmas, emerging
practices and lessons learned from practice to date. The latter clarified what POC
means in the context of peacekeeping and provided a three-tiered framework for
operationalizing POC mandates in the field. This propagated the evolution of
the POC concept and its continued institutionalization,60 culminating in 2015
when DPKO/DFS released a new policy on the protection of civilians in its field
missions.61 The new policy includes important clarifying definitions, an updated
operational concept and guidance on phased response and implementation of
these complex mandates. In doing so it provides much-needed direction to peace-
keepers in the field.
The guidelines identified three ‘tiers’ of protective action, encompassing protec-
tion through engagement and dialogue (Tier I), the provision of physical protec-
tion (Tier II)—which includes a range of military tasks62—and supporting the
creation of a protective environment (Tier III). This structure was complemented
by new guidelines for military components on implementing POC, including
acute attention to interpreting rules of engagement and use of force.63
Collectively, these documents comprise an emerging architecture of guidance
and doctrine for POC in UN peace operations. However, the demand for refined
mission concepts, guidance on holistic planning and implementation, and prepa-
rations for deployment of capable personnel remains as peacekeepers continue to
achieve mixed results in meeting current expectations and face new challenges in
the field.
To summarize, the innovations described above have gone some way to over-
coming, or at least mitigating, the challenges faced by field missions attempting to
stabilize countries and protect civilians with increasingly robust postures. Notewor-
thy advances have been made in the areas of policy and guidance, force sustainment
and deployment, and the application of force enablers. However, significant gaps
remain.
60
See e.g. ‘DPKO/DFS protection of civilians resources and capabilities matrix’ (Feb. 2012); ‘DPKO/DFS
framework for drafting comprehensive protection of civilians strategies’ (undated); ‘DPKO/DFS compara-
tive study on protection of civilians coordination mechanisms’ (2012); ‘DPKO/DFS–OHCHR lessons learned
report on the Joint Protection Team mechanism in MONUSCO’ (2013); ‘DPKO/DFS lessons learned note on
civilians seeking protection at UN compounds’ (2015).
61
DPKO/DFS, ‘The protection of civilians in United Nations peacekeeping’, DPKO/DFS policy, ref. 2015/07
(New York, 2015).
62
For example, building situational awareness, ensuring visibility, liaising with local security forces and non-
state actors, ensuring preventive force deployment and posture, providing physical protection around UN
bases, establishing buffer zones, ensuring freedom of movement/route security, defending protected areas
(e.g. refugee/IDP camps), supporting deployments of human rights staff, deterring attacks through shows of
force, interpositioning of forces, and direct military action against armed actors threatening civilians.
63
DPKO/DFS, ‘Protection of civilians: implementing guidelines for military components of United Nations
peacekeeping missions’ (New York, 2015).
1294

Bridging the gaps

The UN peace operations bureaucracy, member states and the epistemic commu-
nity supporting the endeavour continue to face a number of deficits that limit the
effectiveness of field operations. This section identifies several reforms that could
address some of the outstanding issues.
Policies, strategies and concepts

At the macro level, it would seem prudent for the UNSC to engage in deeper
reflection on how it expects its protection mandates to be implemented, the
potential unintended consequences of more frequent and more robust POC, and
precisely what capabilities would be needed to achieve these effects, including
from where they could be secured. In addition, a more systematic evaluation is
needed to determine when a peace operation is appropriate and has a comparative
advantage to contribute to POC, and when and how to leverage complementary
multinational, regional and bilateral initiatives (at the tactical, operational and
strategic levels) as part of stabilization efforts (as seen in Côte d’Ivoire and more
recently in the DRC and Mali).
Moreover, some argue that, given disagreement over exactly what ‘stabilization’
means and what obligations it confers, there is a need to develop a definition and
doctrinal foundation for stabilization in the UN peace operations architecture.64
Establishing whether stabilization contradicts the principles of peacekeeping is a
precursor to delineating the relationship between the two concepts in ways that go
beyond the ad hoc. Such a reflection on the strategic purpose of missions should
also consider how to make the transition from a stabilization posture to a peace-
building focus, and how drawdown/withdrawal can be conducted without jeopar-
dizing POC (with reference, for example, to South Sudan).
Guidance
It is vital that lessons are identified from evolving practice in the field and captured
in institutional memory in ways that can inform future missions and mandate
implementation. Such organizational learning should result in the further elabora-
tion of good POC practices and wisdom on the application of coercive measures
in order to realize civilian protection goals. The UN’s 2015 policy on POC and
the updated operational concept highlight a number of areas that require further
development in this respect.
Regarding Tier 1 dialogue and engagement to mitigate escalation of threats to
civilians, it is important for the UN to continue its efforts towards enhancing the
capacities and work of the civilian dimensions of missions.65 Inter alia, the Civil
64
Cedric de Coning, ‘Do we need a UN stabilisation doctrine?’, Complexity 4 Peacebuilding, 2014, http://cedric-
deconing.net/2014/11/27/do-we-need-a-un-stabilisation-doctrine/, accessed 2 Oct. 2015; Mateja, ‘Between
doctrine and practice’, pp. 366–7.
65
E.g. Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict: independent report of the Senior Advisory Group (New York: UN, 2011).
1295

Affairs section within a peace operation is at the centre of mission POC strategies
and will be vital to missions’ ability to adopt more inclusive approaches, including
engaging non-state actors—armed and unarmed.
In relation to Tier 2, there is a need to continue to improve guidance and
training for peacekeeping to render peacekeepers better informed about and
more effective at undertaking physical protection activities. The development of
guidelines for the military component of POC, including understandings of the
use of force with respect to POC, are a good example of this.66 However, these
developments must inform new mission concepts of operations (CONOPs), rules
of engagement and memorandums of understanding between the UN and troop-
contributing countries if they are to overcome the inertia that limits the utility
of force in achieving POC objectives. Furthermore, similar guidance including
directives on the use of force (DUFs) is required and should be promulgated for
the police (in particular for Formed Police Units)67 and those other elements in
the field that may not employ force themselves but do need to work effectively in
partnership with or under the same umbrella as those who do.
The protective environment that is to be pursued under the third tier requires a
range of improvements in the use and practice of peace operations. First, in order
to help reach agreement on a ‘peace to keep’, the UNSC must participate more
actively in, and take a firmer stance during, mediation and negotiation of the
peace agreements that should eventually frame and undergird the peace operations
it authorizes. This might mean an enhanced role for the Department of Political
Affairs vis-à-vis regional arrangements. More effective peacemaking can help to
create the conditions that enable the early peacebuilding in which missions are
increasingly engaged and on which they depend for their exit strategies. Second,
there is a great deal of potential to improve the effectiveness of these early peace-
building efforts, such as DDR and security sector reform and of transitional
justice processes under the auspices of UN peace operations. In the first instance,
there is much to be gained by improving the relationship between peacekeeping
and peacebuilding actors, including that between DPKO missions and the Peace-
building Commission, Fund and Support Office.68 Furthermore, learning lessons
from previous experience of attempting to (re)build state institutions and stable
political orders must be a priority in pursuing the creation of protective environ-
ments that genuinely respond to need.
This speaks to the more general need to continue to work at better coordina-
tion mechanisms that enable and do not hamper the efforts of the myriad actors—
UN and otherwise—who are part of the protection endeavour. While there is
utility in force for protection, the military is a tool and a component part rather
than a strategy in and of itself. It is vital therefore that guidance and systems are
66
DPKO/DFS, ‘Protection of civilians: implementing guidelines for military components of United Nations
peacekeeping missions’.
67
Sofia Sebastian, ‘The role of police in UN peace operations: between peacekeeping and civilian protection’,
brief (Washington DC: Stimson Center, 3 Sept. 2015).
68
See UNSCR 2086 (2013); The challenge of sustaining peace, report of the Advisory Group of Experts, Review of
the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture (New York: UN, 2015), p. 49.
1296

developed to facilitate the interoperability of the military with the police and the
many civilian entities in the mission area—in particular, those in the mission’s civil
affairs and human rights components as well as the broader array of protection
actors in the Global Protection Cluster. The JPT concept provides a template for
further work in this area and is an example of something that should be clearly
elaborated and codified in doctrine and guidelines on POC.
The whole POC concept and the doctrine related to its implementation must
also take into account the emerging needs relating to stabilization missions. Much
of what is required overlaps with other mission types, but many elements do
not. Such guidance should therefore address the unique demands of stabilization
operations in terms of command and control, logistical support and equipment,
planning considerations and more forward-leaning rules of engagement.
Safety and security

Given that many missions work in hostile environments, one area that needs
further work is how to enhance civilian protection without heightening the
vulnerability of peacekeepers and those deployed in their midst. In view of the
limitations on access and coverage of military and police peacekeepers, supporting
and building the capacity of local and community-based self-protection strate-
gies and mechanisms is one way missions can support better outcomes. Further-
more, employing more sophisticated technologies and methods of gathering and
handling information, embracing modern technology such as unmanned aerial
vehicles,69 and using advanced intelligence capabilities such as the ‘All Sources
Information Fusion Unit’ developed in the context of MINUSMA in Mali can be
a significant force enabler in situations of asymmetry.70
It is unhelpful if efforts to reduce the risks facing peacekeepers make them
even less inclined to interpret and act upon their POC mandate proactively. It is
therefore essential that proactive and robust POC mission postures are placed at
the centre of ongoing discussions about improving the safety and security of UN
personnel in the field.71
Capacity
The UN’s force generation capability continues to struggle to meet demand. While
efforts to improve safety and security will help, the reluctance of some traditional
troop and police contributing countries (T/PCCs) to provide peacekeepers for
missions deploying to hostile environments with forward-leaning postures make
it critical that the UN peace operations bureaucracy redouble efforts to broaden,
69
John Karlsrud and Frederik Rosen, ‘In the eye of the beholder? The UN and the use of drones to protect
civilians’, Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2: 2, 2013, pp. 1–10.
70
See John Karlsrud and Adam C. Smith, Europe’s return to UN peacekeeping in Africa? Lessons from Mali (New York:
International Peace Institute, 2015), p. 11.
71
Haidi Willmot, Scott Sheeran and Lisa Sharland, Safety and security challenges in UN peace operations (New York:
International Peace Institute, 2015).
1297

deepen and diversify the base for peacekeeping.72 While sufficient supply of
personnel is vital to realizing authorized troop and police ceilings, this must be
balanced by the need for suitably trained and capable troops, police and civilian
experts capable of implementing the complex mandates issued by the Council.
As well as finding new T/PCCs, it will be important for the DPKO to re-engage
west European contributors in the aftermath of major deployments in the Inter-
national Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan. Recent examples, such
as that of the Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian participation in Mali, suggest that
there is significant utility in encouraging the contributions of niche assets and
force multipliers from the advanced militaries of countries such as these.73
Monitoring and evaluation

If the success of UN peace operations is ultimately judged by how well they
protect civilians, then it is important that missions develop meaningful measures
of impact, based on realistic expectations of what is achievable, in order to
demonstrate and substantiate their performance. This is also central to holding
peacekeepers accountable for inaction regarding what is reasonably expected of
them under POC mandates. While the quantitative measures commonly used in
mission reporting do some work to this end, there is a need to go beyond counting
victims and towards ways of ascertaining how affected populations feel about their
security and how it is changing in order to determine whether peace operations
are doing a good job and meeting people’s expectations.
Conclusion
The context for and nature of UN peace operations have changed dramatically in
recent years. Transformations in the type of mission environments, the primary
objectives at stake and the modalities employed to achieve them raise a number of
serious challenges that jeopardize the status quo and could pose existential threats
for the peacekeeping endeavour in the future. In seeking to come to terms with
these challenges, we have argued that the UN peace operations bureaucracy should
focus on addressing key gaps relating to appropriate mission concepts/strategies,
guidance, capacity, safety and security of personnel, and monitoring and evalua-
tion. Furthermore, there is a need for systematic research identifying the outcomes
and consequences of the new UN peace operations to support guidance for their
future use that recognizes the (unintended) consequences of change towards more
robust civilian protection and stabilization missions. Without significant progress
on the critical issues around the use of force and civilian protection, the UN will
continue to struggle to bridge the gap between the expectations attached to its
peace operations and their capacity to satisfy them.
72
Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, ‘UN force generation: key lessons and future strategies’, in Bellamy
and Williams, eds, Providing peacekeepers.
73
Karlsrud and Smith, Europe’s return to UN peacekeeping in Africa?, pp. 4–5.
1298

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Twenty-first century UN peace operations:

protection, force and the changing

Today, United Nations peace operations are deployed in greater numbers to

International Affairs 91: 6 (2015) 1277–1298

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The changing nature of UN peace operations

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The ‘robust turn’

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Peace operations as stabilization

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Challenges for UN peacekeepers

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Reacting to change: the nature and effectiveness of UN responses

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Innovative protection approaches

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Whole-of-mission POC efforts

Development of policy, guidance and training

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Bridging the gaps

Policies, strategies and concepts

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Safety and security

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Monitoring and evaluation

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