https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1782-6605
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ABSTRACT
How do United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions influence the use of conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) by armed non-state actors? This study argues efficacy is influenced by conditions that precede deployment and the composition of UN forces. Poor intragroup cohesion within rebel ranks incentivizes CRSV, putting peacekeepers in a precarious position upon deployment. UN police improve law enforcement capabilities, build relationships with local communities, and promote information diffusion mechanisms. As a result, UN police are associated with a decrease in CRSV, even in the most difficult environments.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Benson and Gizelis, “A Gendered Imperative”
2 Johansson and Hultman, “UN Peacekeeping and Protection from Sexual Violence”; Kreutz and Cardenas, “Women, Peace, and Intervention”. Other notable work by Nagel, “Talking to the Shameless” reveals that sexual violence makes governments more willing to submit to conflict management efforts. Kreutz and Cardenas, “Women, Peace, and Intervention” also find that sexual violence attracts the attention of regional organizations.
3 Kirschner and Miller, “Does Peacekeeping Really Bring Peace”
4 Johansson and Hultman, “UN Peacekeeping and Protection”
5 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”; Cohen, Rape During Civil War
6 Wood, “Rape as a Practice of War”
7 Cohen, Rape During Civil War, 23
8 Hoeffler and Reynal-Querol, “Measuring the costs”; Wood, “Multiple Perpetrator Rape during War”
9 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”; Cohen, Rape During Civil War
10 Cohen, Rape During Civil War, Chapter 2
11 Cohen and Nordás, “Sexual violence in armed conflict”
12 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”; Cohen, Rape During Civil War
13 Recent work by Nagel and Doctor, “Conflict-related Sexual Violence” finds that this may be a short-term solution, as an increase in cohesion because of sexual violence makes it more likely high-level officers will split from the core rebel organization knowing their subordinate battalions will follow.
14 Cohen, Rape During Civil War, 31–37
15 Cohen, Rape During Civil War
16 Carpenter, “Recognizing Gender-Based Violence”
17 See Nagel and Doctor, “Conflict-related Sexual Violence” for a discussion.
18 Cohen, Rape During Civil War, 37
19 Wood, “Rape as a Practice”
20 Cohen, Rape During Civil War, 42
21 Woldemariam, “Battlefield Outcomes and Rebel Cohesion”
22 Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars; Woldemariam, “Battlefield Outcomes and Rebel Cohesion”
23 Schubiger, “One for All”
24 Lidow, Violent Order; Tamm, “Rebel Leaders, Internal Rivals”
25 Weinstein, Inside Rebellion; Lidow, Violent Order
26 Sinno, Organizations at War; Asal, Brown, and Dalton, “Why Split”; Staniland, Networks of Rebellion; Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma; Day, “Survival Mode”
27 Mosinger, “Brothers or Others in Arms”; Doctor, “A Motion of No Confidence”
28 Wood, “Armed Groups and Sexual Violence”
29 Schubiger, “One for All”
30 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”
31 Arjona and Kalyvas, “Recruitment into Armed Groups”
32 Gates, “Membership Matters”
33 Eck, “Coercion in Rebel Recruitment”; Richards, “Forced, Coerced, and Voluntary”
34 McLaughlin, “Desertion and Collective Action”
35 Humphreys and Weinstein, “Handling and Manhandling”
36 Oppenheim et al., “True Believers”; Gates, “Membership Matters”
37 Stearns, Dancing in the Glory, 148
38 Johansson and Hultman, “UN Peacekeeping and Protection”; Kreutz and Cardenas, “Women, Peace, and Intervention”
39 Cohen and Nordás, “Sexual violence in armed conflict”
40 Haer, Faulkner, and Whitaker, “Rebel funding and child soldiers”
41 The data range from 0-3. The mean level of SV perpetrated by rebels in UN deployment countries is 0.284 (0.095 when no mission is present).
42 Using data from Haer, Faulkner, and Whitaker, “Rebel funding and child soldiers”
43 Kirschner and Miller, “Does Peacekeeping Really Bring Peace”
44 Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping”
45 Sebastian, The Role of Police
46 Durch et al., Understanding Impact of Police
47 Such as Sebastian, The Role of Police
48 Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “Beyond Keeping the Peace”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping Dynamics”; Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing”
49 Di Salvatore, “Peacekeepers Against Criminal Violence”
50 Johansson and Hultman, “UN Peacekeeping and Protection”
51 Beadle and Kjeksrud, “Military planning”; Sebastian, The Role of Police
52 See Townsen and Reeder, “Where Do Peacekeepers Go” for more on this distinction. Also see Powers, Reeder and Townsen, “Hot Spot Peacekeeping” for more on local deployment patterns.
53 Sunshine and Tyler, “The Role of Procedural Justice”; Fagan and Tyler, “Legal Socialization”; Kochel, Parks, and Mastrofski, “Examining Police Effectiveness,” 901
54 Arjona and Kalyvas, “Recruitment into Armed Groups”
55 Reeder, “The Spatial Concentration”
56 Reeder and Polizzi, “Transforming Zones of Exclusion”
57 Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping”
58 Tull, “The Limits and Unintended Consequences”
59 Di Salvatore, “Peacekeepers Against Criminal Violence,” 844
60 Beadle and Kjeksrud, “Military planning”; Sebastian, The Role of Police
61 Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson, “Protection Through Presence”; Phayal, “UN Troop Deployment”; Reeder, Hendricks, and Goldring, “All Peacekeeping is Local”
62 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”
63 Woldemariam (Citation2016) finds that military losses and gains can, under some circumstances, both lead to a reduction in cohesion, making fragmentation more likely. This finding is not inconsistent with what we propose here: we predict fewer battles. Thus, there is no loss nor gain influencing behavior; rather, we expect the loss of battlefield opportunities to matter.
64 Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection”; Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon, Peacekeeping in the Midst; Kathman and Wood, “Stopping the Killing”
65 Beardsley, “Peacekeeping and the Contagion”; Beardsley and Gleditsch, “Peacekeeping as Conflict Containment”
66 Fortna, “Inside and Out”; Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace”
67 Kreps, “Why Does Peacekeeping”
68 Ruggeri, Gizelis, and Dorussen, “Managing Mistrust”
69 Doctor, “A Motion of No Confidence”
70 Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars
71 United Nations Environment Programme, “Addressing natural resource risk,” 46
72 United Nations, “Security Council Adopts Resolution 2162”; United Nations, “Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2260″
73 We estimate a model interacting UN forces with each of these factors (see Appendix B). This reveals several important patterns outside the scope of this study that warrants attention by others in the future. To highlight a few (see model in Appendix for more): UN police are associated with increased levels of CRSV when facing stronger rebel groups, those with a political wing, and those operating in countries with higher levels of female civil liberties. UN troops, on the other hand, are associated with a reduction in CRSV when facing stronger rebel groups and in countries where norms have been established via existing female civil liberties.
74 Gledistch et al., “Armed Conflict”
75 As proposed by Cohen and Nordás, “Sexual violence in armed conflict”
76 This sample size is the total minus observations dropped because of missing values in the independent and control variables. Note that we also estimate a model only using conflict years and find results similar to those presented here. This model can be found in Online Appendix A.
77 Cohen and Nordás, “Sexual violence in armed conflict”
78 See https://www.providingforpeacekeeping.org/contributions/ for more information.
79 Because the data are monthly, we take the mean value deployed throughout the year.
80 Haer, Faulkner, and Whitaker, “Rebel funding and child soldiers”
81 Beber and Blattman, “The Logic of Child”
82 An ordinal variable coded according to the power of rebels relative to government using Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan, “It Takes Two”: much weaker (1), weaker (2), parity (3), stronger (4), much stronger (5). In our data, 467 rebel-months were much weaker (41.1%), 550 weaker (48.4%), 89 at parity (7.8%), 24 stronger (2.1%), and 5 much stronger (0.4%).
83 Coded 1 if rebels control territory; otherwise, coded as 0 using Cunningham, Gleditsch, and Salehyan, “It Takes Two”. Of the 1136 rebel-months in our sample, 438 involved the control of territory by rebels (38.6%).
84 Coded 1 if rebels have a centralized command structure in place; otherwise, coded as 0 using Cunningham, Gledistch, and Salehyan, “It Takes Two”. This was the case in 1023 of rebel-months (90.1%).
85 Coded 1 if rebels are affiliated with a political wing; otherwise, coded as 0 using Cunningham, Gledistch, and Salehyan, “It Takes Two”. An affiliation is observed in 420 of 1136 rebel-months (37.0%).
86 Coded 1 if a government of a foreign state supports rebels; otherwise, coded as 0 using Cunningham, Gledistch, and Salehyan, “It Takes Two”. Rebels enjoyed support in 637 of 1136 rebel-months (56.1%).
87 Weighted average of indicators that encompass clean elections, freedom of expression, elected officials, suffrage, and the five-way multiplicative interaction between these indices, from Coppedge et al., “V-Dem”.
88 Women civil liberties index as found in the V-Dem project, encompassing freedom to domestic movement, the right to private property, freedom from forced labor, and access to justice.
89 Natural log of GDP per capita from Bolt and Luiten van Zanden, “The Maddison Project”; Coppedge et al., “V-Dem”.
90 Coded as 1 if 25 or more battle deaths observed; otherwise, coded as 0.
91 Coded 1 if the UNSC resolution is biased towards rebels; otherwise, coded as 0. This information is from the replication files made available by Benson and Kathman, “United Nations Bias”. Accounting for bias is important, as recent research suggests intervention that provides more troops to governments leads rebels to perpetrate sexual violence, per Johansson and Sarwari, “Sexual violence and biased”.
92 Iacus, King, and Porro, “Causal Inference”
93 6 observations were dropped because they were not matching in the CEM processing.
94 Discrete predictors are held constant at their proportions.
95 Using data from Cohen and Nordás, “Sexual violence in armed conflict”
96 Seawright and Gerring, “Case Selection Techniques,” 297
97 Weinsten, Inside Rebellion
98 Marks, “Sexual Violence Inside Rebellion,” 365
99 This was a dramatic departure from RUF policy that rape was punishable by execution. Yet, this appeared to only be the case RUF-controlled areas and not in active war zones, per Marks, “Sexual Violence Inside Rebellion”.
100 Marks, “Sexual Violence Inside Rebellion”
101 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Witness to Truth,” Appendix 1
102 Olonisakin, “United Nations Mission”
103 United Nations Security Council, “Eighth Report”
104 McGreal, “Panic Usurps”
105 Marks, “Sexual Violence Inside Rebellion,” 373
106 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”; Cohen, Rape During Civil War
107 Human Rights Watch, “We’ll Kill You”
108 Neudorfer, “Reducing Sexual Exploitation”; Kovatch, “Sexual exploitation and abuse”
109 Awori, Lutz, and Thapa, “Final report”
110 Lefkow, Trapped Between Two Wars; Amnesty International, Côte d'Ivoire; Hudson, “Peacebuilding Through a Gender Lens”; Salihu, Annual Review
111 United Nations Security Council, “Fourth progress report,” 80
112 Novosseloff, “United Nations Operations”
113 Novosseloff, “United Nations Operation,” 712; Novosseloff, The Many Lives
114 Salihu, Annual Review; United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General, 43
115 Novosseloff, “United Nations Operation,” 711
116 Kirschner and Miller, “Does Peacekeeping Really Bring Peace”
117 Johansson and Hultman, “UN Peacekeeping and Protection”
118 Cohen, “Explaining Rape During Civil War”; Cohen, Rape During Civil War
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Bryce Wesley Reeder
Bryce W. Reeder (PhD, University of Illinois) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. His research centres on political violence, conflict management, and the consequences of armed conflict for civilian populations. [email protected]
Rachel Dicke
Rachel Dicke (PhD, University of Missouri) is a Policy Consultant in the Institute of Public Policy (IPP) housed in the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. [email protected]