Does Peacekeeping Really Bring Peace? Peacekeepers and Combatant-perpetrated Sexual Violence in Civil Wars

• Date: 01 October 2019
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719831069
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Does Peacekeeping

Really Bring Peace?

Peacekeepers and

Combatant-perpetrated

Sexual Violence

in Civil Wars

Shanna Kirschner

1

, and Adam Miller

2

Abstract

Peacekeeping mitigates killing, but nonlethal violence also influences both posi-

tive peace and stability. We evaluate peacekeepers’ effect on one such type of

abuse, sexual violence. We posit that peacekeepers raise the cost of abuses and

foster institutional and cultural changes that curb violence. We find that mis-

sions both reduce the chance of any violence and limit its prevalence; larger

deployments and multidimensional missions are more effective. Governments

curtail violence more quickly than rebels do in response to military contingents;

rebels are especially responsive when missions include large civilian components.

These findings contribute to our understanding of peacekeeping in three primary

ways: we expand the evaluation of peacekeeping to consider nonlethal violence;

we draw attention to mission size, capacity to use force, and civilian-led pro-

gramming as determinants of effectiveness; and we demonstrate how addressing

nonlethal violence requires similar tools as lethal violence but is further enhanced

by specific civilian-led initiatives.

1

Department of Political Science, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, USA

2

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Shanna Kirschner, Department of Political Science, Allegheny College, 520 N. Main St., Meadville,

PA 16335, USA.

Email: skirschn@allegheny.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2019, Vol. 63(9) 2043-2070

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719831069

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Keywords

civil wars, conflict resolution, international peacekeeping, war crimes, sexual

violence

Peacekeeping reduces death and destruction. But can peacekeepers also alleviate

other suffering? In this article, we explore whether peacekeeping mitigates nonlethal

violence. Better understanding how peacekeeping limits forms of violence other

than killing illuminates its broader impact on the quality of life, clarifies its effects

for individuals other than military-aged men, and informs evaluations of peace-

keepers’ influence on long-term peace and reconciliation.

We focus on a particularly common form of abuse in this article: sexual violence

(SV), and we demonstrate that United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions signif-

icantly reduce combatant-perpetrated SV. We argue that they do so by raising the

costs of violence and by supporting institutional and cultural shifts that deter vio-

lence. While SV, including rape, assault, forced marriage, and forced prostitution,

declines sharply when peacekeepers deploy, missions do not equally improve the

quality of life. More robust missions with larger deployments and military troops are

especially effective, but small numbers of civilian peacekeepers also can control SV

under many conditions. Perpetrators respond to security-focused and civilian initia-

tives differently. While peacekeeping troops and civilians attached to the mission

effectively curb both rebel- and government-perpetrated SV, civilians have a larger

effect on rebel behavior. The government, however, is more likely to respond to

military deployments including troops, police, and observers. Because SV has par-

ticularly devastating short- and long-term effects on both individuals and societies,

peacekeepers thus substantially improve the quality of life for millions of people and

bolster the chances of long-term social reconstruction by curtailing abuses.

In the following sections, we delineate how literature on peacekeeping and killing

affects our expectations regarding nonlethal violence. While we test our argument

quantitatively, we employ evidence from Liberia in this section to explore mechan-

isms through which peacekeepers can affect SV. The Liberian conflict began in 1989

and was notorious for the extreme brutality all factions employed against civilians. A

1997 cease-fire collapsed two years later; by the time of the final peace accords in

2003, war had displaced about half the population and killed nearly 300,000. While

precise estimates vary widely, there is no doubt that both government and rebel

forces employed widespread SV (Bacon 2015; Bastick, Grimm, and Kunz 2007;

Cohen and Green 2012).

1

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) deployed

in October 2003 and rapidly grew to include 15,000 troops, 1,500 civilian personnel,

and 1,115 civilian police. Liberia is a particularly rich case to explore mechanisms

linking peacekeeping and nonlethal violence. On the one hand, the mission is

unfortunately notable for the abuses perpetrated by international personnel. Thus,

despite being a case in which international forces might not credibly impact

2044 Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(9)