The Civilian Side of Peacekeeping: UN Civilian Personnel and Human Rights

• In Event: New Directions in the Study of UN Peacekeeping

Abstract

How does the civilian personnel in United Nations peacekeeping operation (UN PKOs) affect human right standards? Our knowledge about the impact of civilian staff on protecting human rights standards is inconclusive and the precise mechanisms have remained unexplored. I propose that civilian personnel can affect human rights practices in two ways. First, due to various soft forms of interactions with the perpetrators of human rights violations such as dialogue and advocacy, the civilian staff contributes to reducing the incentives to inflict harm on civilians. Second, civilian personnel are involved in capacity-building activities to strengthen control over the combatants, which in turn decreases opportunistic violence. By using novel data and relying on advanced quantitative methods, I explore how the number of civilian personnel and the presence of international and local staff impact human rights practices in the host country.

Author

• Sabine Otto, Uppsala University