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Chair: Dr Kseniya Oksamytna, Department of War Studies, King’s College London
Speakers:
- Dr Jessica Di Salvatore, University of Warwick
- Dr Magnus Lundgren, University of Gothenburg
- Dr Hannah Smidt, University of Zurich
UN peacekeeping has become a central instrument of international conflict resolution. Contemporary peacekeeping operations are asked to undertake a wide variety of different tasks, such as supervising elections, reforming security institutions, monitoring human rights, mainstreaming gender, assisting with the management of natural resources, and reconciling communities. The UN Security Council sets out these tasks in its resolutions when it authorises and extends peacekeeping missions. During the Cold War, mandates were just a paragraph or two, yet nowadays they are often longer than ten pages.
To understand the complexity of peacekeeping mandates, we have coded resolutions on 27 UN peacekeeping operations in Africa in the 1991-2017 period, including initial and revised mandates. We record 39 distinct tasks and further distinguish between three modalities of engagement (monitoring, assisting, and securing) and whether the task is requested or merely encouraged. You can find the data paper here.
In this talk, we will discuss our motivation behind data collection, the process of dataset construction, interesting patterns in the data, and the ways in which the data help us assess the UN’s effectiveness in protecting civilians.
Bios
Dr Jessica Di Salvatore is Associate Professor in Political Science and Peace Studies at the University of Warwick. Dr Di Salvatore’s current research agenda concerns the political, economic and social impact of UN peace operations and their contribution to state-building and post-conflict development. Her most recent publication is ‘Tangled Up in Blue: The Effect of UN Peacekeeping on Nonviolent Protests in Post-Civil War Countries’ (with Margherita Belgioioso and Jonathan Pinckney), International Studies Quarterly (2020).
Dr Magnus Lundgren is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. His primary research interests are international organisations, armed conflict, and multilateral negotiations. His most recent publication is ‘Only as Fast as Its Troop Contributors: Incentives, Capabilities, and Constraints in the UN’s Peacekeeping Response’ (with Kseniya Oksamytna and Katharina Coleman), Journal of Peace Research (2020).
Dr Hannah Smidt is the Head of the Research Area ‘International Security, Peace and Conflict’ at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on political violence and repression, democratisation processes, and UN peacekeeping. Her most recent publication is ‘Keeping Electoral Peace? Activities of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Their Effects on Election-related Violence’, Conflict Management and Peace Science (2020).
At this event
Visiting Research Fellow on ESRC-funded project ‘Democratization and UN Peacebuilding’