The adverse economic effects of armed conflict are widely recognized. Conflict destroys infrastructure, hampers agricultural activities and deters investments crucial for economic development. The international community’s primary tool to halt conflict and build peace is the deployment of peacekeeping operations. While the effects of peacekeeping interventions on a wide range of political and security outcomes are widely studied, less attention has been afforded to the socio-economic impacts associated with peacekeeping deployment. Critical from an economic as well as humanitarian perspective, such impacts also matter for the sustainability of peace, as socio-economic grievances may motivate local populations to take up arms again. This study contributes to filling this gap by assessing the local effects of peacekeeping on food security. Current-day United Nations (UN) peacekeepers engage in a wide range of activities to promote peace and stability in the short- and long-term. We hypothesize that peacekeepers’ presence may contribute to increasing food security and resilience, including by contributing to security necessary for agricultural production, market access and facilitating the implementation of aid projects. We test these expectations at the sub-national level, using novel peacekeeping deployment data combined with data from household surveys.
