Civilian protection in the light of underlying trends in peacekeeping operations

This paper looks at how the implementation of protection of civilians (PoC) by peacekeepers might be affected by underlying changes in UN peace support operations. It reviews some of the experiences – positive, negative, and mixed – of recent years. These include the Force Intervention Brigade’s action against the M23 armed group in the DRC; the failure to protect civilians in South Sudan in 2016 in particular; the formulation of a holistic policy on protection; and the saving of thousands of lives at PoC sites in South Sudan. It then considers some of the factors at work. These include the difficulty in host state relations (such as Mali); the cut in peacekeeping budgets and numbers; the shutdown of major operations such as UNAMID in Sudan’s Darfur region; handing over PoC sites in South Sudan sheltering more than 100,000 people; and the expected move away from new large-scale peacekeeping missions. Rather than naively attempting to predict the future, the paper assesses how some of these factors impact the way PoC is operationalised, internalised, diffused as a norm, understood, and resourced. It takes account of complexity theory, which recognises the many variables involved, and especially how these interact and sometimes behave as an open system.