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

Shanna Kirschner and Adam Miller

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2019, vol. 63, issue 9, 2043-2070

Abstract: Peacekeeping mitigates killing, but nonlethal violence also influences both positive 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 missions 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 programming 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.

Keywords: civil wars; conflict resolution; international peacekeeping; war crimes; sexual violence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002719831069 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:63:y:2019:i:9:p:2043-2070

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719831069

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().