https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6965-5054
![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The 2010 Operational Concept for the Protection of Civilians (POC) has formalized the United Nations (UN) protection strategies into a three-tier structure: protection through dialogue and engagement (Tier 1), physical protection (Tier 2) and the establishment of a protective environment (Tier 3). Using a Naïve Bayes algorithm to classify 1,118 protection references in Security Council and General Assembly resolutions between 1990 and 2019, this article first systematically evaluates the impact of this policy. Has the three-tier approach shifted the traditional focus away from physical protection? Has the post-2010 period witnessed a surge in the prominence of holistic and long-term POC strategies? The findings reveal a notable increase in the frequency of protection mentions following the introduction of the Operational Concept. However, even in the final years of the observation period and in the context of five multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations, references to the physical protection cluster (Tier 2) outnumber mentions of Tiers 1 and 3. These findings hold policy relevance, as they stress the United Nations’ difficulty in integrating the diverse protection approaches outlined in the three-tier structure of the Operational Concept into a cohesive strategy
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the participants of the Network of European Peace Scientists (NEPS) conference in Bologna (2023) as well as the Reviewers and Editors of International Peacekeeping for their invaluable feedback.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Hellmüller, Tan and Bara, “What is in a Mandate?”. Last consulted in November 2023. This includes both peacekeeping operations and special political missions.
2 de Coning, Lotze and Stensland, “Mission-Wide Strategies.”
3 For instance, see S/RES/2007/1746.
4 For instance, see S/RES/2013/2100.
5 OIOS, Evaluation of Implementation, Effectiveness of United Nations Peacekeeping.
6 S/RES/1999/1270.
7 I want to acknowledge one of the anonymous Reviewers, whose comment was the source for a significant restructuring of the manuscript, which now features the Operational Concept at its centre.
8 Tier 1 was first defined as ‘protection through political processes’, but was then reformulated in 2015.
9 For exceptional works on the three-tier approach, see Gilder, “UN and Protection of Civilians”; Russo, “Protection of Civilians”; Rhoads and Welsh, “Close Cousins in Protection.”
10 For instance, see Uzonyi, Finding Soldiers of Peace: Three Dilemmas for UN Peacekeeping Missions.
11 OIOS, Evaluation of Implementation, Effectiveness of United Nations Peacekeeping.
12 A/RES/2015/70/357-S/RES/2015/682.
13 Allen, Rosen and Tarp, “Preparing for Protection”; Jacob, “Status of Human Protection”; Shesterinina and Job, “Particularized Protection.”
14 Day and Hunt, “Distractions, Distortions and Dilemmas”; Johnson, “Protection of Civilians”; Rhoads and Welsh, “Close Cousins in Protection.”
15 Fjelde, Hultman and Nilsson, “Protection through Presence”; Hultman, Kathman and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” Peacekeeping in the Midst of War.
16 Bove, Ruffa and Ruggeri, Composing Peace; Bove and Ruggeri, “Kinds of Blue.”
17 Haass and Ansorg, “Better Peacekeepers”; Ruffa and Rietjens, “Meaning Making”
18 Coleman, “Token Troop Contributions.”
19 Blyth and Cammaert, “Using Force”; de Coning, “UN Peace Operations”; Uzonyi, Finding Soldiers.
20 Giray, “Troop-Providers’ Ideational Commitment.”
21 Oestman, “Burden Sharing in UN Peacekeeping Operations.”
22 Donais and Tanguay, “Protection of Civilians.”
23 S/2001/331.
24 Hunt and Bellamy, “Mainstreaming the Responsibility to Protect,” 17.
25 Malone and Hagman, “North-South Divide.”
26 Stensland and Sending, “Unpacking Culture of Protection.”
27 OIOS, Effectiveness of United Nations Peacekeeping, 24.
28 DPO, Protection of Civilians (2020).
29 Ramcharan, Human Rights Protection, 121.
30 Holt and Berkman, “Impossible Mandate,” 36.
31 Lie and de Carvalho, “Culture and Concept,” 72.
32 OIOS, Effectiveness of United Nations Peacekeeping, 24.
33 OIOS, Evaluation of Implementation, Effectiveness of United Nations Peacekeeping.
34 Kullenberg, “Overlapping Agendas.”
35 S/PV.6216.
36 Mandates are ideated by the Security Council under consideration of the recommendations by the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C34) and the Secretary-General, operationalized by the DPO and the Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs (DPPA), funded by the richest members but executed by the personnel of the troop-contributing countries.
37 S/PV.6216.
38 S/2009/582.
39 DPO/DFS, Operational Concept (2010), 15.
40 Campbell and Di Salvatore, “Keeping or Building Peace?”; de Coning, “UN Peace Operations”; Duursma and Smidt, “Peacekeepers Without Helmets.”
41 DPO/DFS, Operational Concept (2015).
42 DPO, Protection of Civilians (2020).
43 DPO, Protection of Civilians (2023).
44 DPO/DFS, Operational Concept (2015), 8.
45 DPO, Protection of Civilians (2023), 10.
46 Shesterinina and Job, “Particularized Protection.”
47 For examples, see Hunt and Zimmerman, “Counter-Terrorism and Peace Operations”; Kjeksrud et al., “Protecting Civilians”; Williams, “Protection, Resilience and Empowerment.”
48 Rhoads and Welsh, “Close Cousins in Protection.”
49 Russo, “Protection of Civilians.”
50 Gilder, “UN and the Protection of Civilians.”
51 Beadle, “Protection of Civilians in Theory”; Lidén, “Protection of Civilians and Ethics.”
52 Kjeksrud and Ravndal, “Emerging Lessons”; Willmot and Sheeran, “Protection of Civilians.”
53 Rhoads and Welsh, “Close Cousins in Protection,” 612.
54 Ibid., 616.
55 All figure and table indications preceded by ‘A’ refer to the online appendix. Essentially, the supplementary analysis demonstrates that while protection in UNGA resolutions represents a minority category in absolute terms (only 9.1% of the references related to the tiers from the Operational Concept), the classification among the three tiers is normally distributed.
56 Hanania, “The Humanitarian Turn at the UNSC.”
57 Shesterinina and Job, “Particularized Protection.”
58 This terminology is derived from Findley and Teo, “Rethinking Third-Party Interventions.”
59 Everett, Humanitarian Hypocrisy, 22.
60 Sundberg and Melander, “UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.”
61 Butcher et al., “Targeted Mass Killing Data Set.”
63 Hanania, “Humanitarian Turn at UNSC.”
64 S/RES/1999/1265.
65 This means that while protection mentions have become more common, also the mean length of the resolutions has increased.
66 Lantz, Machine Learning; Lowd and Domingos, “Naive Bayes Models.”
67 Grimmer, Roberts and Stewart, Text as Data.
68 Kim et al., “Techniques for Naive Bayes”; Xu, “Bayesian Naïve Bayes.”
69 Nwanganga and Chapple, Practical Machine Learning.
70 This difference between the tiers is caused by the different scopes of the individual categories (Tiers 1 and 3 include a broader array of activities than Tier 2).
71 Coleman and Williams, “Peace Operations”; Kenkel and Foley, “Responding to Crisis.”
72 The Assistance Mission in Afghanistan based on Hellmüller, Tan and Bara, “What Is in a Mandate?”
73 Autesserre, “Crisis of Peacekeeping”; Kenkel and Foley, “Responding to Crisis”; Osland and Mateja, “UN Peace Operations.”
74 Shesterinina and Job, “Particularized Protection.”
75 Proven by mentions of the protection variants in the 1990s and 2000s.
76 The only exception to this rule is the correlation between Tier 1 and Tier 2. The correlation coefficient was 0.72 for 1990-2009 and 0.71 for 2010-2019.
77 This percentage share refers to the total number of references, including ‘International law’ and ‘Thematic resolutions’.
78 Measured based on the difference between each tier’s value in 2010 and the post-2010 peak.
79 For generations on peacekeeping, see Everett, Humanitarian Hypocrisy.
80 DPO/DFS, Operational Concept (2020), 4.
81 Gilder, “UN and the Protection of Civilians.”
82 Hellmüller, Tan and Bara, “What Is in a Mandate?”
83 Kullenberg, “Overlapping Agendas.”
84 Beadle, “Protection of Civilians in Theory”; Lidén, “Protection of Civilians and Ethics.”
85 DPO, Protection of Civilians (2023), 9.
86 Campbell and Di Salvatore, “Keeping or Building Peace?”; de Coning, “UN Peace Operations and Changes”; Duursma and Smidt, “Peacekeepers Without Helmets.”
87 For the CAR, resolutions on the Mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) have been included. For the DR Congo, S/RES/2006/1653 on the Great Lake Region has been included. Resolutions on the Interim Security Force for Abyei have been coded both for Sudan and South Sudan.
88 Clayton, Dorussen and Böhmelt, “United Nations Peace Initiatives”; Day and Hunt, “Distractions, Distortions and Dilemmas”; Howard and Dayal, “Use of Force”; Uzonyi, Finding Soldiers.
89 Campbell and Di Salvatore, “Keeping or Building Peace?”
90 Beadle, “Protection of Civilians”; Lidén, “The Protection of Civilians and Ethics.”
91 For a case where this compatibility is questioned, see Hirschmann, “Cooperating with Evil? Accountability in Peace Operations and the Evolution of the United Nations Human Rights Due Diligence Policy.”
92 DPO, Protection of Civilians (2023).
93 Oksamytna and Lundgren, “Decorating the ‘Christmas Tree’.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrea Knapp
Andrea Knapp is a Ph.D. candidate in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna (Italy). Her research focuses on peacekeeping, decision-making in international organizations (particularly the United Nations and NATO) as well as norm theory.