What peacekeeping leaves behind: evaluating the effects of multi-dimensional peace operations in Africa

Peacekeeping today has become ever more complex reaching deep into conflict affected societies aiming to facilitate social, economic and political transformative processes in order to establish sustainable peace. However, most quantitative studies evaluate mission effectiveness only in terms of conflict abatement. This leaves a substantial assessment gap. Therefore this study explores the effects of multi-dimensional peacekeeping by using 12 governance indicators. The article finds that its ambitious goals have largely not been fulfilled. Although there are measureable effects on national security and political participation, in other areas such as personal safety, human development or public management the impact is minimal or non-existent. In order to explain variation across cases and indicators we are testing four intervening variables: the type of peacekeeping mission, the amount of resources allocated, the relative size of civilian and police units per missions and the relationship between personal safety and governance indicators.     

United Nations peacekeeping and terrorism: short-term risks and long-term benefits

ABSTRACT

Does the introduction of UN forces impact terrorism? We argue that at least initially, UN peacekeeping missions may significantly shift the local conflict bargaining process, creating incentives for terrorist and insurgent groups to increase their attacks against civilians. UN missions create a symbolic endpoint to initial negotiations, alter the balance of power between combatants, and may change the relationship between local combatants and the civilian population they rely on for support. We test this argument using monthly data from 12 African countries, analyzing the risk of terrorism at the local level. We find that the introduction of UN forces in an area significantly increases the short-term risk of terrorism, but longer missions in the country reduce this risk.     

NATO Regional peacekeeping center in Central and Eastern Europe: A proposal

Abstract

The article asks what the evolution of NATO–Swedish relations signifies for the understanding of the evolution of security communities. Given the astonishing evolution of NATO and Sweden as a community of practise, it is logical to imagine the two as forming part of the same security community. It could then be argued that common practise can bring about new security communities rather hastily. Analysing NATO's and Sweden's recent discourses on security, the author identifies a significant gap between a principally realist and a predominantly idealist discourse that indicates that the two parties do not share key characteristics of a security community – identities, values and meanings. However, if Libya is the case of the future, the discursive differences may fade and Sweden could more easily pursue its journey towards inclusion in NATO, not as a member of an Alliance, but as a member of NATO as a security community.     

Performance under ambiguity: International organization performance in UN peacekeeping

This article argues that ambiguity—indeterminacy between alternative interpretations of a phenomenon—is inherent in the peace operations field, and makes defining and assessing the UN’s performance problematic. Applying Gutner and Thompson’s framework for international organization performance (IOP) research to UN peacekeeping, it argues further that the relationship between process performance and outcomes in peacekeeping is irreducibly ambiguous, and that ambiguity has significant implications for efforts to measure and improve peacekeeping performance. To demonstrate this, the article reviews methods employed by the UN to measure its peacekeeping performance, arguing that the primary method employed—results-based budgeting (RBB)—is inherently unable to cope with the challenges of performance ambiguity. Its adoption and continued use despite its evident shortcomings are due to RBB’s legitimacy in the wider organizational field of international public management in which the UN Secretariat, and UN peacekeeping, perform. Finally, the article considers recent efforts to improve process performance in UN peacekeeping, and discuss the ways in which so-called ‘integration’ reforms central to such efforts are a means of reducing and managing the ambiguity inherent in peacekeeping.     

Beyond rwanda and kosovo: The interactive dynamics of international peacekeeping and Ethnic Mobilisation

Within the past few decades there has been a significant increase in multilateral interventions in ethnic conflicts in the name of peacekeeping. Most hope that these operations will assist in conflict resolution and reduce violence. However, recent examples indicate that this may not always be the case. This paper explores why international efforts to contain, curtail and resolve ethnic conflicts may not prove successful and even backfire. This enquiry is addressed by employing a cross-national comparative analysis of the involvement of peacekeeping operations in two recent ethnic conflict situations. A sociological model of mobilisation is systematically applied to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in Rwanda (1994) and NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) in Kosovo (1999) to determine whether international actors addressed the primary components that led to mobilisation of the contentious parties. This work argues that the key to successful peacekeeping is to address the primary components of violence. The paper synthesises conflict studies with work on social mobilisation theory and research on peacekeeping, offering both theoretical and policy-relevant contributions to understanding the nexus between effective peacekeeping and factors leading to violent mobilisation.     

Gender and the environment: Traps and opportunities

A growing debate about gender and the environment highlights women's roles in the use and management of natural resources, opening up important opportunities for development analysis and action. But there are traps in conceiving of women's roles in relation to the environment in a partial, narrow, or static way; of isolating them from men's roles; and of assuming a close link between women and ‘nature?s. An alternative approach examines dynamic gender-differentiated activities, rights, and responsibilities in the processes of natural resource management. A case study from the Gola forest, Sierra Leone shows how this approach can help to ensure sustainability and equity in the design of projects concerned with the environment.     

Gender and evidence-based planning: the CIET methods

Epidemiological combined with experiential evidence from communities can produce important and sometimes surprising insights into gender relations, to inform policies that address changing needs. CIET has standardised a community-based cross-design for the gender-sensitive collection and analysis of three types of evidence: impact, coverage, and costs. Five steps help to ensure that women's voices are heard in planning. Gender-stratified analysis of existing data is a starting point. Stratification of all responses by sex of the respondent prevents a numerical bias in favour of men translating into a gender bias in the analysis. Female focus groups inform survey design, interpretation, and appropriate strategies for change. Gender is a factor in risk and resilience analysis. Finally, gender-sensitive logistics ensure women's equal participation. First-order outputs include actionable gender data to advocate in favour of women. Second-order outputs include an enabling environment for equitable development, challenging the gendered patterns of economic marginalisation.     

Gender lost and gender found: BRAC's Gender Quality Action-Learning Programme

This article describes and analyzes the BRAC Gender Quality Action-Learning (GQAL) Program. BRAC aims to bring about organizational change and improve program quality through issue analysis, action planning, and implementation with an understanding of gender. During the 1990s, BRAC increased the number of women staff and set up a women's committee. In 1993, it piloted a gender training program. By 1994, BRAC did not know what the real problems were. A needs assessment was carried out among 400 staff in various program types and levels and revealed 3 empowerment issues. An intuitive understanding did not translate into creative solutions. Staff preferred non-confrontation in dealing with women's subordination in the family and community. Staff strongly believed in training as a way of changing behavior and values. BRAC is an organization in transition. The goal is changing the relationship between men and women. BRAC needs multiple perspectives of men and women staff and primary stakeholders. BRAC is gendered. Quantitative targets must be balanced with quality improvements. Quality occurs by analyzing the process and outcomes of programs. The GQAL program and cycle began in 1995. The GQAL outcome was improved working and democratic relationships and more open communication. Success was based on, for example, a field-based learning intervention, followed by trained facilitators, and innovative and tested methodology. Constraints were the perceived lack of top management support in some programs, frequent transfers of staff, and natural disasters. The authors identify future issues.     

Cutting to Gender: Teaching Gender in International Relations

Female genital mutilation (cutting or surgery) (FGM) is an issue that epitomizes the changing nature of incorporating gender in teaching International Relations. Put simply, by increasing our attention to issues of concerns to women, like FGM, in International Relations classrooms and texts we begin to recognize the importance of these to the study of International Relations (IR). Yet without paying attention to how these issues reflect on the nature and directions of International Relations, we run the risk of sensationalizing or trivializing complicated issues like FGM and limiting our understanding of the interplay between gender, race, class, ability, and International Relations. This article explores several different approaches used to incorporate gender in International Relations teaching, including some analysis of texts, including: "see no evil, hear no evil and teach no evil,""add women and stir," multiple paradigms, and creating gendered IR. It suggests that until we use an integrative and transformative approach to gender in our teaching, we will continue to marginalize gender concerns. In the final section, the article discusses the challenges of resources and cultural narrowness and challenges to pedagogy when incorporating gender in International Relations teaching.     

Gender and development: a SAFE recipe

It is argued that an alternative strategy to women's involvement in development is the development of a whole "new dish, prepared, baked, and distributed equally" rather than acquisition of a "bigger piece of the pie." The issues of gender and development (GAD) involve women gaining power and control of the decision making processes. Past development has been too much of a "fixed menu" approach. Feminist development involves the satisfaction of the strategic needs of women, an agenda-setting direction, flexibility, and empowerment (SAFE). Strategic gender needs were conceptualized first by Maxine Malyneaux. Within women's defined roles, there are needs for access to adequate and clean water supplies, nutrition, health care, and income. Women in development (WID) approaches are strong in serving practical needs. The SAFE approach combines both the strategic and practical needs of women. Some argue that a focus on strategic and/or practical needs should be conceptualized in terms of changing women's position within a structurally unequal set of social relations. Some emphasize autonomy. The basic concepts of strategic needs is viewed as including the change in women's status and movement toward autonomy. Aid agencies and development groups have been mainstreaming WID and GAD over the past decade by integrating women and women's needs into administration, decision making, and the project cycle. Gender issues could be built into existing development paradigms or could change the existing development agenda with a gender perspective. It is argued that an agenda-setting approach is needed in order to assure that the strategic needs of women are incorporated. Flexibility and adaptation of approaches means that WID and GAD can be adjusted to all cultures. It is cited by Buvinic and Moser that welfare, equity, anti-poverty, efficiency, and empowerment are five ethical policy approaches. The policy approach of SAFE is that of empowerment or the knowledge and exercise of influence, power, and leadership in some or all social relations.     

Gender in education: policy discourse and challenges

This article examines the socio-economic and cultural milieu of girls in Bangladesh and how it erodes the benefits of education. Laws and rules, even basic human rights, are unknown to many women. Economically active women too are affected by cultural norms and social taboos which reinforce their helplessness. Gender discrimination, especially for women, and inequity, physical, and verbal abuse persist. Women's empowerment is resisted by some women, and this poses a barrier to girls’ education, as evident from a rights perspective. Women's subordination to men is conditioned by a whole range of traditional practices embedded in the family and kin-group. Women's scope of work is mostly limited to domestic chores and care: education investment, borne out of the instrumentalist approach, is rendered ineffective as it is quite dependent upon socio-economic status and concomitant social structure. Education investment must uphold a capabilities approach to achieve sustained outcomes in education.