Public Support for UN Missions and Attacks on Peacekeepers: Evidence From the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Giray Burak ()
Additional contact information
Giray Burak: Department of Political Science, University of Houston, Houston, USA

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2022, vol. 28, issue 4, 305-332

Abstract: UN peacekeepers are often targeted by rebel groups. The violence they experience hinders the functionality of peacekeeping operations, constituting a major problem for the UN. What conditions make these attacks more likely? How does the local support for UN peacekeeping operations affect the violence against peacekeepers? Using an original data set that includes local trust sentiments towards MONUSCO’s peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from October 2014 to December 2020, this study finds that peacekeepers are attacked more often when they lack local support. In the absence of local support, peacekeepers become vulnerable as they can no longer gather intelligence about rebel activities from the locals and the increased distrust for peacekeepers gives propagandist benefits to rebel groups. This study suggests to the UN that it needs to employ strategies in peacekeeping operations that would legitimize the presence of peacekeepers and cultivate more strengthened civil-military relations.

Keywords: UN peacekeeping; violence against peacekeepers; local support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D83 F5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2022-0028 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:pepspp:v:28:y:2022:i:4:p:305-332:n:2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/peps/html

DOI: 10.1515/peps-2022-0028

Access Statistics for this article

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso

More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().