Peacekeepers Without Helmets: How Violence Shapes Local Peacebuilding by Civilian Peacekeepers

• Published date: 01 April 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231178740
• Author: Allard Duursma,Hannah Smidt
• Date: 01 April 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2024, Vol. 57(5) 778–817

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231178740

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Peacekeepers Without

Helmets: How Violence

Shapes Local

Peacebuilding by Civilian

Peacekeepers

Allard Duursma

1

and Hannah Smidt

2



Abstract

While United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are increasingly de-

ployed during ongoing violent conf‌lict, they are also increasingly staffed with

civilian personnel tasked with peacebuilding at the local level. How does

violent conf‌lict affect civilian peacekeepers’peacebuilding efforts locally?

Shifting the research focus from military to civilian peacekeepers, we argue

that the latter have various incentives and the capacity to concentrate their

local-level peacebuilding efforts in violence-affected areas. We test our ar-

gument using novel, georeferenced data on peacebuilding by “Civil Affairs”

personnel of the peacekeeping operation in the Central African Republic.

Consistent with our expectation, violence positively correlates with civilian

peacekeepers’peacebuilding interventions both within and across localities.

Furthermore, mediation analyses suggest that this correlation is not merely

due to greater UN military deployments in violence-affected areas. Instru-

mental variable regression supports a causal interpretation: violence leads to

more efforts by civilian peacekeepers. These f‌indings inform expectations and

assessments of peacekeeping effectiveness.

1

ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

2

University of St. Gallen and University of Zurich, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Hannah Smidt, University of St. Gallen and University of Zurich, Müller-Friedberg-Strasse 6/8, St.

Gallen 9010, Switzerland.

Email: hannah.smidt@unisg.ch

Keywords

civil war, civilian components in peacekeeping operations, local-level

peacebuilding, non-state conf‌lict, united nations

Introduction

Civilian components of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations

(PKOs) are increasingly tasked with local peacebuilding activities

(UNDPKO, 2012;da Costa and Karlsrud, 2013;O’Bryan et al., 2017;Smidt,

2020a,2020b;Duursma, 2021). At the same time, PKOs are increasingly

deployed in countries with ongoing conf‌licts, where local outbreaks of vi-

olence are frequent (Karlsrud, 2015;Duursma, 2022a). This poses a dilemma

for unarmed civilian peacekeepers: assisting peacebuilding where local people

are in greatest danger has potentially the biggest impact, but it also increases

the risk of civilian peacekeepers to come under attack (Mahoney, 2015: 115).

How do civilian peacekeepers manage this dilemma? Do they step up local

peacebuilding activities in response to violent incidents or do they, alterna-

tively, scale back activities in violence-affected areas?

Existing peacekeeping literature has increasingly turned to examine local-

level processes (Fjelde et al., 2019;Ruggeri et al., 2017). However, these

studies tend to overlook the local activities of civilian personnel. Instead,

researchers focus on uniformed personnel, that is, UN military and police. One

robust f‌inding is that within-country deployments of uniformed peacekeepers

are driven by their organizational mission to reduce violence (Powers et al.,

2015;Ruggeri et al., 2018). Thus, uniformed peacekeepers are sent to the most

violence-affected areas. Yet, we cannot just extrapolate this f‌inding to civilian

peacekeepers. In contrast to UN police and military personnel, civilian

peacekeepers do not possess military means to protect themselves. Moreover,

their work relies on close interactions with domestic actors, which can make

them especially vulnerable to attack (UNDPKO, 2012;da Costa and Karlsrud,

2013;O’Bryan et al., 2017). A distinct inquiry of how violence affects civilian

peacekeepers’work is required.

Investigating how violence impacts peacebuilding efforts by civilian

peacekeepers is also crucial for understanding mission eff‌iciency and man-

aging expectations. This is because civilian peacekeepers are not only a

distinct category of personnel but also an important one. There are over

16,000 civilian peacekeepers, that is, the second largest staff category in PKOs

after military personnel and a “growing force”(United Nations, 2022).

Thereof, the civilian peacekeepers in the Civil Affairs section that are re-

sponsible for local peacebuilding are part of one of the largest sections in

PKOs. If such a signif‌icant proportion of peacekeeping personnel avoids

rather than manages risk, the mission’seff‌iciency in achieving mandated

Duursma and Smidt 779

peacebuilding goals likely suffers. Moreover, if civilian personnel shy back

from operating in violence-affected areas, their credibility and legitimacy as

peacebuilders may suffer (Fisher, 2017;Duff‌ield 2010)—and, consequently,

this can seriously hamper mission effectiveness (Whalan, 2013).

Furthermore, investigating how violence affects civilian peacekeepers’

peacebuilding efforts contributes to assessments of their effectiveness

(Mvukiyehe & Samii, 2017;Mvukiyehe, 2017;Smidt, 2020a,2020b;Julian,

2020, 105ff; Duursma, 2021;Duursma, 2022b). Several researchers f‌ind that

the activity of civilian peacekeepers indeed negatively correlates with vio-

lence. However, they fail to explicitly consider where and when civilian

peacekeepers conduct their peacebuilding activities in the f‌irst place (e.g.,

Smidt, 2020b;Duursma, 2021). If civilian peacekeepers eschewed peace-

building activities in violent environments, as some studies suggest (Fisher,

2017;Duff‌ield, 2010), we should not interpret the apparent negative corre-

lation between civilian peacekeepers’activity and violence (found in existing

research) as evidence that civilian peacekeepers help reduce violence.

Therefore, our results are important. They show that violence “attracts”

peacebuilding—and, hence, imply that previous studies likely under-

estimated rather than over-estimated civilian peacekeepers’benef‌its for re-

ducing violence.

We have a broad understanding of local peacebuilding to encompass all

efforts aimed at strengthening subnational political and social conditions that

enable peaceful relations among local actors. The Civil Affairs section is

widely seen as the most important unit for local peacebuilding efforts

(Bernstein & Kugel, 2017;Zahar & Mechoulan, 2017). Civil Affairs per-

sonnel are usually both male and female and both national and international

staff, and they are typically present throughout the entire host country, in-

cluding in remote locations. In addition to collecting information on local

developments, Civil Affairs off‌icers are tasked with different local-level

peacebuilding activities: conf‌lict management targeting armed groups, rec-

onciliation within and between communal groups, and support to the ex-

tension of state authority (UNDPKO 2012,22–23). Over time, the protection

of civilians has also become a core task of the Civil Affairs section (United

Nations, 2020; see, Online Appendix K for details on these peacebuilding

activities). Civil Affairs off‌icers are unarmed civilians and therefore do not

fulf‌ill any military tasks, though they do coordinate with the PKO’s military

force component.

We argue that civilian peacekeepers (from the Civil Affairs section)

generally increase their local peacebuilding activities in response to higher

levels of armed violence because they possess organizational incentives and

capacity to do so. Civilian peacekeepers face pressure from their

organization—that is, the UN Security Council, the UN Secretariat in New

York and the leadership at f‌ield-level mission headquarters—to focus their

780 Comparative Political Studies 57(5)