The UN’s Local Peacekeepers: Contributions and Challenges of UN National Staff

• In Event: Challenges in UN Peacekeeping

Abstract

The recent ‘local turn’ in peacekeeping scholarship has cogently highlighted how the disjuncture between international peacekeepers and local actors and dynamics can undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of UN peace operations. Yet not all UN peacekeepers are international. Over 60% of civilian employed in UN peace operations are locally recruited “national staff,” who work in a wide range of roles including support (drivers, clerks…), substantive (community liaison assistants…) and specialized professional (legal affairs officers, doctors, protocol officers…) functions. Drawing on over 150 interviews with local and international UN peacekeepers, primarily in the DR Congo (MONUSCO), Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and Western Sahara (MINURSO), this article highlights the key role national staff play as a formal and informal interface between UN operations and local populations. It also analyzes the challenges that national staff members’ positioning at the intersection between, on the one hand, local social and political dynamics and, on the other hand, UN organizational structures and mission hierarchies create for both the staff and the peace operations they work in.

Author

• Katharina P. Coleman, University of British Columbia