Peacekeeping missions are multi-national military operations supervised by the United Nations Security Council and paid for by its member states. They vary in mandates from limited, such as ceasefire monitoring, to broad and ambitious undertakings like overhauling a national government. The size of a mission ranges from a few hundred to tens of thousands of troops and police. Almost 130 nations have contributed soldiers and police to UN peacekeeping operations since 1948.
The aims of peacekeeping are to protect civilians and contain violence, preserve and promote the implementation of an agreement and provide the space for peace-making. Peacekeeping’s primary challenges stem from the resurgence of identity-driven militias and criminal gangs in the global arena, as well as the growing complexity of conflict. Today, the bulk of armed violence is not between clearly identifiable opposing armies but rather among loosely-defined factions such as herders and farmers who compete for land and water in contested territories.
In our model, a PKO with a transformational mandate reduces the risk of conflict in the country in which it is deployed by close to one-fifth at its peak deployment. This effect persisted even after the PKO had left. This simulated result is similar to the observed impact of MONUSCO in the DRC, where we show that a large peacekeeping operation (scenario S3) reduces conflict by two-thirds compared to a scenario with no PKO. In both scenarios, the impact is augmented when the PKO is deployed rapidly after a conflict outbreak.