The Impact of Host-State Consent on the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping

ABSTRACT

This article examines how host-state consent affects the implementation of different sets of Protection of Civilians (POC) activities. Given the centrality of POC to UN peacekeeping, it is therefore important to understand the factors impacting its implementation. We argue that effectively conducting POC-activities – including supporting state capacity-building, human rights reporting, physical protection, and supporting dialogue – hinges on host-state consent. Based on an analysis of UNMISS and MINUSCA, this article provides support for our argument that the quality of host-state consent can significantly affect the implementation of UN peacekeepers’ POC-activities, but shows that such impacts are not necessarily uniform across different sets of efforts.

Introduction

Consent of the main parties to a conflict represents one of three core principles of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping, alongside impartiality and limited use of force (Rhoads 2016, Karlsrud 2017, Duursma 2021). Securing initial consent is a prerequisite for a UN peacekeeping operation (PKO) to deploy. The logic underlying the principle of consent stems from its function for conflict parties to demonstrate intention to resolve their differences through political process rather than on the battlefield, as well as acceptance of the role and functions of peacekeepers in promoting such a trajectory. In practice, UN PKOs are especially concerned with the consent of host-state governments. As a key peacekeeping-partner, it is now widely acknowledged that securing and also maintaining host-state consent can critically influence whether and how UN PKOs can implement core tasks (Johnstone 2011, Sebastián and Gorur 2018, Labuda 2020, Duursma 2021, Passmore et al. 2022). A recent study finds that the presence or absence of domestic consent to, and cooperation with, peacekeepers present is a critical condition for peacekeeping success (Pushkina et al. 2022). Such an effect should be particularly pronounced for consent of host-state actors and, we expect, carry observable implications for peacekeeping performance and mandate implementation. In view of contemporary UN peacekeeping’s multidimensional nature, it is also plausible – but rarely acknowledged – that consent impacts distinct sets of mission tasks differently.

This article examines the role of host-state consent for UN peacekeepers’ protection of civilians (POC) efforts. In the past two decades, POC has developed into a main UN PKO-objective. Civilian protection is both difficult to achieve in practice (Bellamy and Hunt 2021) and the area of work on which UN peacekeepers are likely to be most judged (see Bellamy in the conclusion of this special issue). A few studies highlight the importance of host-state consent for effective protection (e.g., Piccolino and Karlsrud 2011, Labuda 2020, Duursma 2021), but do not distinguish between different sets of POC-related activities. This is a significant omission given that POC in UN PKOs is multifaceted and encompasses a wide range of distinct efforts towards this aim – ranging from dialogue and monitoring to more direct military operations – that may be differently reliant on consent. We propose that the quality of a host-state’s consent should significantly influence a UN PKO’s ability to operate in relation to its POC-mandate, and set about examining how. Are there, for instance, specific areas of POC-work where consent is particularly decisive? Evidence that peacekeepers are better able to suppress anti-civilian violence perpetrated by non-state actors than state-sponsored perpetrators, for example, suggests that a mission may be reluctant to engage state-actors to maintain host-state consent, even when required in order to protect civilians from harm (Fjelde et al. 2019). Conversely, are there areas of POC-work where peacekeepers are better able to manage or bypass non-consenting governments?

We contribute to meeting this research gap by unpacking the relationship between host-state consent and different areas of POC-activities central to contemporary UN PKOs. To this end, we illustrate and contrast experiences implementing POC-efforts in two ongoing UN PKOs: the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). Both cases share important similarities but represent different host-state consent experiences. While MINUSCA has consistently operated with strong consent, UNMISS has during most of its deployment operated in a compromised host-state consent environment. Following common intuition, our starting proposition is that UN PKOs will struggle to operationalise their POC-mandates when host-state consent is compromised.

To evaluate this claim and uncover nuanced effects that may allow for theoretical refinement, we outline four areas of POC-efforts in UN PKOs that we subsequently investigate empirically in the context of each case: (i) supporting state-capacity to protect civilians; (ii) human rights monitoring and reporting; (iii) military and police operations to prevent violence, and; (iv) support for political dialogue. We purposively use a broad conceptualisation of POC because this is in line with the UN’s definition of POC as a wide set of ‘integrated and coordinated activities by all civilian and uniformed mission components to prevent, deter or respond to threats of physical violence against civilians’ (UN 2020a, p. 3). Notwithstanding a tendency to associate POC with ‘physical protection’ conducted by military personnel, POC is a considerably broader concept and ‘whole-of-mission’ responsibility (Sharland 2019), which our study reflects.

Findings from the two cases partly support but also qualify our overarching argument. In South Sudan, we find that UN peacekeeping efforts to support state capacity to protect civilians became virtually impossible owing to compromised host-state consent. Contrary to what we expected, however, peacekeepers could continue to report on human rights abuses even though state authorities obstructed their information-gathering and reporting efforts. Similar forms of obstruction made patrolling in those areas of the country where peacekeepers were most needed challenging. We find that in a stronger host-state consent environment in the Central African Republic (CAR), UN peacekeepers were able to engage constructively in all four outlined areas of POC-activities. Findings from both cases suggest that peacekeeping support to local – as opposed to national-level – peace processes make up an area of POC-activity that does not appear greatly affected by the quality of host-state consent, adding important nuance to our argument.

This article examines the impact of host-state consent for the implementation of efforts related to a UN PKO’s POC-mandate. Better understanding these dynamics relies on, as we do here, tracing the specific influence of host-state consent, both theoretically and empirically. It also benefits from a comprehensive approach to protection. This approach both reflects POC in concept and practice, and also allows for uncovering differential effects across different areas of POC-implementation. As missions must adapt and calibrate their work to ensure that they can continue to deliver on their mandates also in challenging circumstances, this is an important contribution. Taken together, our analysis advances existing knowledge on the impact of consent for peacekeepers’ effective operations, and contributes to several interrelated strands of scholarship. First, we add to literature focusing on relationships between peacekeepers and conflict parties. Second, we contribute to a recent set of efforts within the peacekeeping literature to unpack what peacekeepers do in pursuit of their mandated aims. Finally, we contribute to the civilian protection literature by examining factors that may impact its effective implementation. Difficulties associated with the implementation of POC-mandates in all – even permissive – intervention-contexts warrants such an approach, with potential to contribute knowledge on policy-relevant problems.

Host-State Consent and POC in UN Peacekeeping

Conflict parties’ consent to a UN peacekeeping-presence is often depicted as central to intervention success (e.g., Pushkina et al. 2022), with consent from the host-state particularly indispensable (Sebastián and Gorur 2018, Labuda 2020). Yet initial acceptance to a mission’s presence – how consent is often conceived – does not provide a complete picture. Describing consent as both precarious and absolutely central to UN PKOs, Bellamy and Williams concseptualise consent as differently ‘variable, multi-layered and malleable’ (2010, p. 212, 282). Sebastián and Gorur offer host-state consent for UN PKOs as determined by three elements: first, acquiescence to the mission presence; second, acceptance of its mandate, and; third, commitment to the political process the mission is intended to support (2018, p. 11). Beyond initial acquiescence, consent arises as both dynamic and subjectively determined. From this perspective, whether a UN PKO enjoys consent is not only the outcome of a formalistic, legal process but also the result of how a PKO is perceived, in this case by the host-state government. This is important as initial consent may not reflect true acceptance of a mission’s presence – it may be given reluctantly or be disingenuous, to strategically leverage beneficial outcomes (cf. Yuen 2020), or change over time. Accordingly, we consider host-state consent to be determined by high-level government figures’ attitudes towards a mission’s presence and mandate, creating conditions for strong (positive attitudes) versus compromised (negative attitudes) host-state consent. Such attitudes and the resultant quality of host-state consent should, we expect, influence cooperation with peacekeepers’ on the-ground efforts.

While rarely documented in studies on consent, it is plausible that consent impacts diverse sets of peacekeeping activities differently. Given UN peacekeeping’s often multidimensional nature, this is a relevant omission. POC is not only a main priority-area for current-day PKOs, it also brings peacekeepers into unique forms of interrelation with the government. Under international law, the primary responsibility for protecting civilians always rests with the host-state (UN 2020a, p. 68). Mission activities related to POC should therefore be conducted with the host-state’s consent (Williams 2013). This would lead us to expect that conditions for cooperation between a UN PKO and its host-state counterpart should significantly influence a mission’s ability to implement its POC-mandate. Yet, governments often abscond their POC responsibility or lack the necessary capacity (Johnson 2019, p. 134), leaving peacekeepers to fill important protection gaps. More problematic still is that governments sometimes themselves pose a threat to civilians. UN peacekeepers’ POC-activities in such contexts should seek to limit the ability of government troops or proxy actors to threaten civilians.

As noted previously, we opt for a broad conceptualisation of POC that is in line with both UN concept and practice. Studying the impact of host state consent on POC-implementation requires a grasp of not only the use of military or police operations to ensure physical protection (Johnson 2019), but also tasks led by civilian mission-components. Based on an identification of POC-related tasks undertaken by UN PKOs from reports of the UN Secretary-General, we cluster these tasks into a framework consisting of four main categories of POC-activities: (i) supporting the state’s capacity to protect civilians; (ii) human rights monitoring and reporting; (iii) military and police operations to prevent violence, and; (iv) support for political dialogue. The UN, for its part, uses a three-tiered approach to implement POC-mandates. It categorises POC-activities under three rubrics: protection through dialogue and engagement (Tier I), provision of physical protection (Tier II), and establishing a protective environment (Tier III). Our focus on support for political dialogue relates to Tier I, our focus on military and police operations relates to Tier II, and our focus on supporting state-capacity relates to Tier III. Human rights reporting cuts across all three tiers because UN peacekeeping staff need to be aware of POC-needs in order to respond.¹ The remainder of this section outlines each of these four categories of POC-activities, and draws on existing literature to consider how host-state consent may intersect with the implementation of each.

Supporting the State’s Capacity to Protect Civilians

A central element of current-day UN peacekeeping is to strengthen host-state government capacity. Support to enhance and extend state capacity includes a range of efforts bridging different mission components that can support protection-efforts in three main ways. First, by amplifying available protection capacity. Peacekeepers’ resources are limited and if they can reinforce and effectively cooperate with state security forces, they can for instance engage in coordinated operations against groups threatening civilians and cover a wider area to deter violence (Gorur 2019). Second, by limiting the influence of non-state armed actors. The expectation is that with greater access to effective state institutions, communities will opt to rely on the state to administer justice and security, rather than on armed groups or use violence as a means to resolve conflict. Third, by reducing the risk of future violence. A strengthened government counterpart is expected to contribute to order and stability also in the longer-term, preventing any relapse into conflict. A related pathway to creating a more protective environment, is reducing risks that state actors themselves will perpetrate violence against civilians, including through civilian-led peacekeeping efforts to strengthen systems of accountability in the security, justice, and corrections sectors. The logic is that creating accountable state institutions will discourage and prevent state actors from targeting civilians, even if incentives to do so would remain (Zimmerman 2020).

Supporting the state’s capacity to protect civilians relies on close cooperation between a PKO and its host-state counterpart and can thus benefit greatly from strong consent. For instance, parties need to jointly determine where and how to extend state presence and capacity. It may also facilitate peacekeepers’ efforts to train security forces, as well as support efforts to strengthen the capacity of state institutions and rule of law (Labuda 2020, p. 6). Most governments welcome support that reinforces their authority, enables them to maintain control over territory, and undermines competing claims to legitimacy by non-state actors. Yet, with state authority and legitimacy frequently contested in these settings, this area of work requires constant negotiation between the mission and government, creating potential for tension (Zimmerman 2020). Civilian-led peacekeeping efforts for oversight and reform, further, requires a mission to balance the need for access and good relationships with the need to hold state actors accountable for a lack of progress or misconduct. Many of these activities are challenging absent host-state consent (Rayroux and Wilén 2014, p. 24, Sebastián and Gorur 2018, p. 25), and can be impeded by an unwilling government counterpart. Compromised host-state consent is thus likely to inhibit peacekeepers’ efforts to support a state’s capacity to protect civilians. Absent strong consent, moreover, civilian-led peacekeeping efforts to increase accountability within state forces are likely to face resistance.

Human Rights Monitoring and Reporting

UN PKOs’ work to promote and protect human rights has become increasingly pronounced in recent years (in Rhoads 2019, p. 292), intersecting with POC-objectives in at least three ways. First, missions monitor human rights violations through their civilian-led human rights sections, as well as through patrols and other reconnaissance activities conducted by uniformed components (Duursma 2018, UN 2020a, p. 36). This allows PKOs to understand where and how violence against civilians occurs and develop effective protection strategies in the short- and long-term. Second, missions analyse human rights violations to identify patterns and anticipate future threats to civilians, providing early-warning information to enable timely protection responses (Duursma 2017). Third, missions may use the information they gather on violations to produce reports, exert pressure, and publicly or privately advocate offenders to deter future threats to civilians. Host-states may thus have incentives to impede human rights-related activities.

We argue that host-state are particularly inclined to impede human rights-related activities when consent is compromised. Indeed, when high-level government figures perceive the presence and mandate of the peacekeeping operation in negative terms, they will be less inclined to cooperate with peacekeepers or even try to undermine their efforts. Crucially, governments typically also have the capacity to hamper peacekeepers’ human rights-related activities. Compromised consent may result in government actors constraining the freedom of movement of peacekeepers, preventing peacekeepers from accessing the sites where civilians face violence. Government actors can refuse to give peacekeepers permission to visit a certain area, obstruct patrols to certain areas, or in extreme cases even attack peacekeeping personnel (Lindberg Bromley 2018, 2022, Duursma 2019). Accounts from diverse intervention settings suggest that peacekeepers facing threats may take a more passive approach to their duties to mitigate risks. There is thus good reason to expect that host-state constraints imposed on peacekeepers’ freedom of movement would limit a PKO’s monitoring functions in support of POC. Government actors have also pursued a range of other tactics to curtail PKOs’ operations and monitoring efforts, including to withhold supplies or visas for staff and declaring UN peacekeeping staff personae non gratae (see Lanz 2015, Duursma 2021). Consequently, compromised host-state consent is likely to further exacerbate sensitivities and challenges associated with human rights monitoring, particularly where the state actively obstructs peacekeepers’ efforts to monitor violations as they occur.

Military and Police Operations to Deter and Interrupt Attacks

UN PKOs may provide more direct physical protection to civilians at risk through military and police operations. Such POC-efforts include various operations by uniformed components to limit or constrain opportunities to target civilians such as patrols, interpositioning, shows of military force, creation of safe areas, cordon and search operations, and detentions or arrests. Peacekeepers’ effective engagement in this area is thus expected to interrupt, prevent, or deter perpetrators from targeting civilians, and there is evidence that local-level PKO-deployments have this effect (Fjelde et al. 2019). It follows that actors intent on targeting civilians have incentives to prevent peacekeepers’ access; indeed, Duursma (2019) finds that obstructing or intimidating peacekeepers is likelier in areas where attacks against civilians are planned or underway.

Such operations may be conducted to protect civilians from non-state or state actors. As noted, operations targeting non-state actors are often conducted jointly or in coordination with state security forces (Labuda 2020). This in order to enable more effective protection operations that allow missions to cover a wider area than they could on their own (Gorur 2019). Such activities necessitate close cooperation between PKOs and host-states – such as intelligence-sharing, joint planning, the provision of technical and logistical support from the mission to the state security forces and the joint conduct of operations – thus reliant on strong host-state consent. If the host-state is unwilling or unable to cooperate with the mission on these operations, missions solely undertake operations on their own. Prevented from working together with state forces, a UN PKO will have more limited resources to mitigate risks and likely also have poorer intelligence on POC-related risks (Gorur 2019). In compromised consent contexts, then, military and police operations to protect civilians by peacekeepers will occur less frequently and are less likely to be conducted in the areas where protection may be most needed.

When state actors themselves commit violence against civilians, or support militias that do, the implications for host-state consent are quite different. The UN’s POC handbook notes that ‘threats to civilians posed by elements of state security forces or their proxies are one of the biggest POC challenges faced by missions’ and may be ‘manifested in threats against or other restrictions on the mission, movement restrictions (violations of Status of Forces Agreements) or attacks against peacekeepers’ (UN 2020a, p. 18). UN peacekeepers are required by the principle of impartiality to protect civilians even if the attackers are government forces (UN 2020a, p. 18). That said, the use of force by peacekeepers to repel attacks by state actors is very rare. Not only do state security forces often outmatch peacekeepers in terms of military capacity, such interventions may also result in a withdrawal of host-state consent and thus the expulsion of the mission (UN 2020a, p. 129). Taken together, military and police operations to protect civilians by peacekeepers are likely to be more limited in contexts where host-state consent is compromised.

Support for Political Dialogue to Prevent Attacks

Sustaining a peace process appears to be one of the most impactful contributions a mission can make to civilian protection (Williams 2013). Dialogue-efforts that UN PKOs undertake range from local-level to high-level diplomatic engagement, such as to help broker a national-level peace agreement. Such involvement is based on the logic that UN PKOs have the capacity, legitimacy, and leverage to support actors and communities to resolve their grievances peacefully through dialogue, instead of violence. Peacekeepers often support dialogue or mediation meetings, serving a range of roles from facilitation through logistical or technical support, to more active uses of their diplomatic leverage and persuasive power (Howard 2019). Civilian-led community-level inter-group dialogues, for instance, show promise for mitigating violent community conflict (Smidt 2020). Evidence further suggests that local-level mediation efforts with international involvement tend to be particularly effective (Duursma 2020, 2022b).

The relationship between political dialogue and host-state consent depends in part on the level at which the dialogue is taking place. In the context of dialogue pertaining to national-level peace agreements, a government actor typically plays a central role and host-state buy-in can matter greatly for whether peacekeeping staff become involved. Mediation is always based on the conflict parties’ consent to the involvement of the third-parties (Duursma 2014). When high-level government figures have a negative perception about the presence and mandate of a PKO, they are likely to refuse the participation of peacekeeping staff in the mediation process.

Host-state governments’ role in local-level peace processes, in contrast, is more varied. The utility of involving state actors in political dialogue on the local-level may vary, depending for instance on a state’s level of influence in the area. In practice, local agreements are often reached without national-level government involvement. Still, peacekeepers often prefer to involve local-level authorities where possible, to legitimise local agreements and to generate buy-in both from authorities themselves and the wider population. Moreover, involving local authorities in local peace processes also contributes towards the broader goal of bolstering state authority. This becomes more challenging when host-state consent is compromised (O’Bryan et al. 2017, p. 4, Duursma 2020), as local state authorities are likely to receive instructions to not cooperate with the peacekeeping mission. Absent their involvement, however, governments may perceive such processes as threatening or challenging their sovereignty. It is therefore likely that an absence of host-state consent will impede political dialogue efforts pertaining both to local-level and national-level political processes.

Having outlined four broader types of POC-efforts undertaken by UN PKOs and our initial expectations for how each relates to host-state consent, we move to our empirical analysis.

The Effect of Host-State Consent on POC-Activities in South Sudan and the Central African Republic

We analyse the impact of host-state consent on UN peacekeepers’ protection of civilians efforts in two cases: the ongoing UN PKOs in South Sudan (UNMISS) and in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). We focus on the period from when the missions were formed up until 2020. We select these two cases following a diverse case logic (e.g., Seawright and Gerring 2008, pp. 300–301), aiming to maximise variance on variables of interest – in this case, quality of host-state consent – with the overarching aim to better understand whether and how host-state consent may influence peacekeepers’ protection efforts. UNMISS and MINUSCA share important characteristics. Importantly, both form part of the same generation large-scale multidimensional UN operations that places heavy emphasis on civilian protection, and deployed to contexts characterised by weak state capacity and ongoing violence against civilians. But whereas MINUSCA is typically depicted as enjoying strong host-state consent between its formation in 2014 and 2020 (Sebastián and Gorur 2018, UN 2020a), UNMISS operated in a context of compromised consent from the start of the civil war in 2013 until 2020 (Johnson 2016, Day et al. 2019).

For purposes of analysis, we start with a binary conceptualisation of host-state consent and present two stylised forms it can take (strong or compromised). This allows us to combine the richness of case studies while also learning from two contrasting consent environments. It also enables us to trace any impacts of consent quality across several areas of POC-implementation, allowing for uncovering both nuanced and differential effects. We nevertheless acknowledge that host-state consent in reality runs along a spectrum that can range from strong cooperation to full-blown resistance, and nuance this distinction in our final discussion. Moreover, consent often fluctuates over the course of a mission’s deployment (Sebastián and Gorur 2018). Indeed, UNMISS was seen as having strong host-state consent when it first deployed in 2011, while the Central African government’s consent for MINUSCA deteriorated sharply after 2020. The categorisation of MINUSCA as a strong consent case and UNMISS as a compromised consent case should therefore be understood as describing a snapshot in time for each mission. We set out to illustrate and contrast different host-state experiences and consider these two cases well-suited for this purpose.

As noted in the introduction, we understand host-state consent as attitudes towards a mission’s presence and mandate held by high-level government figures that subsequently shape the buy-in of and cooperation with peacekeepers’ on-the-ground efforts. It should, however, be noted that the way a peacekeeping operation is formed influences the level of acceptance of the mission’s mandate. Accordingly, we also pay attention in the two cases studies to how the mandates of UNMISS and MINUSCA were established and – if relevant – changed, although our predominant focus is on the acceptance of the mission’s mandate once the PKO has been established.

For each case, we draw on a range of primary and secondary source-materials to highlight the interaction between host-state consent and missions’ POC-efforts. Secondary materials reviewed include UN-documents, NGO-reports, academic studies, policy-briefs and news media sources. We have used published testimonials by well-placed UN-officials and on-site author interviews conducted in each mission-setting – with both peacekeeping practitioners and other experts – to inform, corroborate and nuance evidence from other empirical data as well as our wider take-aways. We turn now to our selected cases, and describe how host-state consent has affected POC implementation in relation to each broader set of POC-activities.

Compromised Host-State Consent for UNMISS in South Sudan

South Sudan’s independence in mid-2011 marked the start also of UNMISS. Since there was no major, national-level conflict in South Sudan at time of independence, the UN initially prioritised supporting the capacity of the new state. However, faced with the outbreak of full-blown civil war in 2013, the UN had to shift its priorities. In December 2013, two factions within the Presidential guard clashed in the capital, Juba. One faction consisted mainly of Dinka fighters loyal to President Salva Kiir, while the other consisted mainly of Nuer fighters loyal to the former vice president, Riek Machar. Kiir had already in July 2013 ousted Machar from the government and in mid-December he accused Machar of attempting a coup d’état, an accusation that later proved to be unsubstantiated. The accusation is widely seen as a pretext for cracking down on Machar and pushing all Nuer troops out of Juba (Johnson 2016, Day et al. 2019). Armed clashes between the conflict parties quickly spread to other areas including Bor, Malakal, and Bentiu, with both sides engaging in systematic attacks on civilians. Forces loyal to Machar subsequently formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army – In Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) to fight the government forces (Johnson 2016, Vertin 2018, p. 2). A peace process was quickly initiated by Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), but made little progress.

Relations between UNMISS and the South Sudanese government were initially good. As the UN Security Council provided UNMISS with a mandate to build state capacity, UNMISS was seen by most South Sudanese leaders as helping the country transition from being part of Sudan to an independent, functioning state (Day et al. 2019). However, relations between UNMISS and the government deteriorated significantly when the civil war broke out in December 2013. Civilians fleeing the violence sought protection from the mission, and UNMISS leadership decided to shelter hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians at UNMISS bases; this unique arrangement became known as ‘POC sites’. South Sudanese government officials claimed that UNMISS was hiding rebels with weapons in the POC sites (Johnson 2016, p. 211, Briggs 2017). Illustrative of these tensions was a speech given by President Kiir shortly following the outbreak of the civil war:

I think the UN wants to be the Government of South Sudan and they fell short of naming the chief of the UNMISS as the co-president of the Republic of South Sudan […] And if that is the position of Ban Ki-moon, they should make it clear that the UN wants to take over South Sudan. (Johnson 2016, p. 210)

In May 2014, the UN Security Council decided to equip UNMISS with a new mandate that suspended the mission’s support to the state and instead focused its efforts on POC, human rights monitoring, and creating a conducive environment for humanitarian assistance (Sebastián and Gorur 2018, p. 27). This marked a fundamental shift in relations between UNMISS and the host government. It was clear that the implementation of this new mandate would result in even more tensions, but protecting civilians in a more difficult context was seen as preferable to not protecting civilians at all (Johnson 2016, pp. 207–215). As the following sections show, operating in a context of compromised consent inhibited UNMISS from engaging in POC-activities in important ways.

Supporting the State’s Capacity to Protect Civilians

At independence, South Sudan was governed by a militarised, corrupt ruling class. Nearly all state revenue was consumed by the military-political patronage system, leaving little for public services, development, or institution building (Day et al. 2019, p. 44). This presented significant challenges for the mission’s efforts to support state capacity to protect civilians, but it still undertook capacity-building efforts in the South Sudanese security, justice, and corrections sectors initially. For instance, UNMISS supported the transition of several tens of thousands of former Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) soldiers to the police services. The South Sudan Police Service (SSPS) had an estimated size of 50,000 by the end of 2011. Yet, most officers within this police force took a militaristic approach to policing (de Waal 2017, p. 188), and with levels of pay far lower than in the army, misconduct and bribery were rampant. The prisons service was plagued by similar problems. While UNMISS and the broader international community succeeded in creating bubbles of institutional integrity within the security and justice sectors, the system as a whole was entirely resistant to reform (de Waal 2017, p. 188).

The outbreak of the war and the government’s open defiance of the mission’s effort to protect civilians, led the Security Council to alter UNMISS’s mandate to suspend all support to the state in May 2014, which meant halting capacity-building efforts. This was seen as a necessary step to ensure the mission was not providing material support to a conflict party engaged in deliberate violence against civilians (Day et al. 2019, p. 16). Support to the South Sudanese security forces was suspended as these were targeting civilians. Moreover, because the government was now an active party to a civil war, state building support was seen as compromising the mission’s impartiality. In short, the government’s negative perceptions of UNMISS, an open defiance of POC efforts, and the outbreak of the war made it impossible for the mission to support state-building efforts (Labuda 2020, p. 9).

Human Rights Monitoring and Reporting

With the outbreak of civil war in December 2013, the South Sudanese government began to perceive UNMISS and the mandate of the mission more negatively as it was seen as limiting the ability of the government forces to effectively fight the rebellion and crack down on the opposition. The South Sudanese government therefore began to severely restrict the movement of UNMISS peacekeepers (Johnson 2016, pp. 207–215, Sebastián and Gorur 2018, p. 23). Such restrictions impeded several areas of the mission’s work, including to obstruct UNMISS from collecting critical human rights information. Government officials started to deny UN officials access to huge parts of the country by limiting the mission’s freedom of movement over land and via air (UN 2014: paragraph 67). Government forces used numerous checkpoints to deny UNMISS access to hot-spots and potential sites of human rights abuses (Rhoads 2019, p. 293).

In addition to restricting access, the South Sudanese government has also tried to intimidate UNMISS staff from monitoring human rights abuses. UN officials investigating violations have been harassed and detained by elements of the government (Rhoads 2019, p. 292). The government also expelled human rights officers or key UN staff (Sebastián and Gorur 2018, p. 24, 26). These actions were clearly aimed at making UN staff self-censor what they publicly reported.

However, the many restrictions placed on UNMISS by the South Sudanese authorities did not stop the mission from reporting on human rights abuses altogether. In May 2014, for instance, UNMISS released a public report on grave violations of human rights committed by both sides since mid-December 2013 (UN 2014: paragraph 40). Since 2018, moreover, UNMISS took a more public approach in its human rights reporting, showing that a UN peacekeeping mission can report on human rights even with compromised host-state consent (Day et al. 2019, p. 14). Notwithstanding South Sudanese state authorities’ efforts to obstruct peacekeepers by making information-gathering and reporting as difficult as possible, UNMISS was able to continue its POC-efforts in this area.

Military and Police Operations to Deter and Interrupt Attacks

UNMISS’s decision to shelter and protect displaced civilians at its bases (more than 200,000 at its peak) has undoubtedly saved many lives (Day et al. 2019, p. 64), but has also constituted a major source of tension between UNMISS and the government. Johnson notes that ‘Patrols were interfered with, movement was denied, and in Bor there no fewer than four attempts by SPLA soldiers to gain forced entry into the base’ (Johnson 2016, p. 211). With the exception of the POC site in Malakal, by far the most of these displaced people residing in the POC sites are Nuer, the ethnic group that makes up the bulk of the fighters in the SPLM/A-IO. This has spurred repeated accusations of UNMISS taking sides because it protects ‘opposition strongholds’ or even ‘rebel havens’ (Rhoads 2019). Government obstruction of this set of POC-activities has included attacks on POC sites, thus also posing direct threats to civilians (Briggs 2017).

Government actors have also obstructed UNMISS’s efforts to protect civilians outside the POC sites, where the majority of civilian fatalities have occurred. Former SRSG Johnson notes how it became clear soon after the war had broken out that national and local governments ‘regularly refused to permit UNMISS from carrying out patrols, typically in areas in which the security forces were conducting operations’ (Johnson 2016, pp. 207–21). This level of obstruction has continued throughout the war. Day et al. (2019, pp. 63–64) highlight the ‘continuing obstructions of freedom of movement by the Government’ noting that ‘prevention of access has often occurred in precisely the areas where the Mission was attempting to respond to protection threats’. The blanket restriction on night travel imposed by the government made it impossible for UNMISS to act at some of the most crucial moments (Day et al. 2019, p. 70).

UNMISS staff have not simply accepted these obstructions. South Sudanese government forces began an offensive in the Upper Nile state in early 2017, but refused UNMISS peacekeepers access to the conflict zones in which they targeted civilians. In response, commanders in the field camped outside checkpoints and negotiated access (Duursma 2021). In addition, UNMISS staff have responded with public pressure to restrictions on freedom of movement of peacekeepers (Sudan Tribune 2017). Taken together, compromised host-state consent has indeed led to obstructions, which, have seriously hampered the ability of UNMISS to effectively to engage in military and police operations to deter attacks on civilians. It should, however, be noted that UNMISS staff have sought ways to manage this compromised host-state consent and offset some of its impacts.

Political Dialogue to Prevent Attacks

Following the outbreak of armed violence in December 2013, an international mediation effort led by IGAD was initiated, with UN and AU support. The UN’s role in the peace process was soon marginalised, because the government saw – or claimed to see – the UN as a biased third-party (Vertin 2018, p. 12). The IGAD-led mediation process eventually led to the conclusion of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) in Addis Ababa in August 2015 (Vertin 2018, p. 12).

The UN became more directly involved in mediation efforts from October 2017 onwards, when it was apparent that the ARCSS had failed. The third-parties involved in the renewed peace process were referred to as IGAD Plus and included IGAD, the UN, AU, five African countries, the Troika (the US, UK, and Norway), the EU, and China. Yet, South Sudanese government resistance against the UN continued, which explains why UNMISS continued to play a marginal role in the peace process. Commenting on the role of the UN in the peace talks, a UNMISS official noted how the mission ‘is at the bottom of the political food chain’ (Rhoads 2019, p. 296). This resulted in an odd situation in which the conflict parties concluded the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) on 12 September 2018 without much involvement from UNMISS, even though UNMISS is the most important implementing partner because of its on-the-ground presence.

Given its limited role in the R-ARCSS process, UNMISS has placed greater emphasis on supporting political dialogue at the local level, where the lack of host-state consent has generally not dissuaded local state officials from cooperating with UNMISS in local peace initiatives. Day et al. note how there are reports of ‘hundreds of incidences where the Mission had helped to broker local-level agreements – including between former belligerents in the civil war – with consequent reductions in violence. South Sudanese citizens often pointed to local engagement as the most tangible effect of the Mission’ (2019, p. 13, 15). Thus, lacking consent prevented UNMISS from serving a meaningful role during the national-level peace process. Yet, contrary to our expectations, UNMISS was still able to greatly contribute to local-level peace processes.

Strong Host-State Consent for MINUSCA in the Central African Republic

In December 2012, the so-called Séléka launched a rebellion in the northern part of CAR; by March 2013 they had managed to take control of the capital Bangui (Lombard 2016, p. 9). With many Séléka fighters engaging in the mass killing of Christians, self-defence militias formed, fighting under the banner of the anti-Balaka alliance (Lombard 2016, p. 18–19). Unable to control its fighters, Séléka was in September disbanded by its leader. Subsequent conflicts between numerous different factions of the ex-Séléka the anti-Balaka, the Central African Armed Forces (FACA) and unaligned groups, as well as widespread attacks on Christian and Muslim civilians, led to the deployment of a French intervention force and an African Union (AU) mission in December 2013 and January 2014, respectively. In April 2014, the UN Security Council authorised MINUSCA.

With most of the territory controlled by non-state armed groups and the state under critical threat, the MINUSCA has been an essential partner to the CAR government, trying to stabilise the country and restore state authority (Karlsrud 2017). The UN Security Council agreed with the CAR government that the UN peacekeepers would help stabilise the country. As a result, MINUSCA has generally enjoyed strong host-state consent. Some political friction between the mission and the CAR government has emerged at times, for example following elections in 2015, but Sebastián and Gorur note in this regard how the government ‘remains dependent on the international community to consolidate its power and prevent the state from collapsing or breaking up, and so the mission can be said to still enjoy relatively strong consent’ (Sebastián and Gorur 2018, p. 19). The government’s dependency on MINUSCA for its survival was once more illustrated in December 2020 when, after former President Francois Bozizé had been blocked from running in elections, a collection of armed groups launched an attack on government forces. MINUSCA was instrumental in preventing this rebellion from posing a real threat to the government (ICG 2020).

Supporting the State’s Capacity to Protect Civilians

Providing support to create a viable and legitimate state in CAR is one of MINUSCA’s top priorities (Gorur 2019, Zimmerman 2020). With the benefit of relatively strong political will on the part of the CAR government, MINUSCA has supported the drafting of legislation on human rights, institutional reform of the police and the army, and deployments of state officials to areas previously abandoned due to conflict and even to areas where the state had never been present (Labuda 2020, p. 9). However, restoring and extending state authority has proven challenging in a country where the government up until late 2020 only controlled around 25 per cent of the territory (Duursma 2022a). Following the election of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra in early 2016, MINUSCA formulated a strategy for extending state authority based on providing services and redeploying civil servants. This required MINUSCA, alongside French military Operation Sangaris, to engage in counterinsurgency operations to remove armed groups from government positions and facilities, such as official residences of prefects (Zimmerman 2020). Non-state armed groups have repeatedly resisted these efforts. Partly as a result of these type of security challenges, some state authorities have been reluctant to be deployed away from Bangui and posted in more remote areas, delaying the extension of state authority.

Even where the government is present, it often has little capacity to protect civilians and local authorities and therefore regularly rely on MINUSCA. MINUSCA POC-activities have, however, often been carried out jointly with government and police forces. To guide cooperation with MINUSCA, the government in consultation with MINUSCA adopted in 2017 a National Defense Plan, National Security Policy, and National Security Sector Reform Strategy, providing a political framework for MINUSCA to be able to engage with the reformed army (Zimmerman 2020). Indeed, MINUSCA has cooperated with the CAR authorities on security matters under the POC-rubric, for instance through joint operational planning and joint patrols. MINUSCA has also progressively established a variety of POC-coordination mechanisms with CAR authorities, including regular meetings between the SRSG and the Head of State and periodically the Government of CAR Security Committee (UN 2020a, p. 68). In addition, the MINUSCA Force, UNPOL, international security forces, and the national army of CAR meet weekly in the Comité Conjoint Technique (CCT), under the leadership of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Interior. These meetings serve to share information and coordinate security operations, which has made POC-activities by both government forces and MINUSCA more effective (UN 2020a, p. 68).

Such and other efforts have been in large part possible due to the supportive context MINUSCA operates in, yet efforts have at times been hampered by a lack of state capacity. MINUSCA’s POC-efforts have therefore included activities to improve the accountability of the state security sector. The mission has for instance supported the government to develop a new military justice system, which was made operational in 2020 (UN 2020b: paragraph 55). It has also monitored and reported on human rights violations by the state in order to prevent and deter future violations. In sum, due to the strong host-state consent it enjoys, MINUSCA has been able to work closely with the government to undertake systematic efforts aimed at institutional reform. Nevertheless, capacity-gaps and continued human rights violations committed by state actors indicate that significant work remains (UN 2020b: paragraph 65).

Human Rights Monitoring and Reporting

In CAR, MINUSCA’s Human Rights section has worked together with state authorities to collect information on human rights issues. For instance, in February 2016, together with the Civil Affairs section and UNPOL, human rights officers from the Bossangoa field office met with approximately thirty Regional Directors of various public services to start assessing the impact of the recent deployment of public and civil servants to Ouham. This meeting also focused on setting up a data collection mechanism on human rights abuses (internal UN document, 3 February 2016). Local leaders often have access to highly relevant information on POC-related issues, meaning information-sharing initiative like these – which are possible due to strong host-state consent – greatly benefit MINUSCA’s POC-capacity.

MINUSCA also receives information from the national army or police in areas where these government security actors are deployed. For instance, a Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) that went from the Bria field office to Bongou in July 2017 met with the Gendarmerie in this area to collect information between Sara and Banda elements linked to the ex-Séléka and anti-Balaka, respectively. It was reported that fighting between these groups pushed the population to abandon their villages. Human rights violations such as killings, torching of houses and extortion were also reported (internal UN document, 19 July 2017). This example illustrates how strong host-state consent not only means the absence of active obstruction, but that it may also translate into an information-sharing environment that allows for actionable intelligence on basis of which peacekeeping staff can plan and execute their activities, thus further promoting POC-efforts.

Military and Police Operations to Deter and Interrupt Attacks

Originally deployed when attacks against civilians were widespread and the risk of mass atrocities was high, MINUSCA has throughout its deployment used force robustly to prevent and interrupt attacks against civilians (Karlsrud 2017). UN PKOs in other settings often engage in joint military and police operations with state forces against armed groups to protect civilians, but the extremely low capacity of the security sector in CAR meant that there was little opportunity for such cooperation initially (Lombard 2016). Instead, MINUSCA initially put greater focus on operations conducted alongside the French military operation Sangaris. MINUSCA’s military and police operations included numerous robust actions to protect civilians from attacks by armed groups. MINUSCA also established military presence in a number of locations to deter armed attacks, used military or police to protect high-profile targets (such as politicians), provided military escort to humanitarian convoys to prevent attacks, and even made arrests (Labuda 2020, p. 3).

Although MINUSCA was given an unusual mandate empowering it to make arrests, a lack of state capacity to support these activities – for example by producing arrest warrants or by processing those arrested through the criminal justice system – limited MINUSCA’s use of this authority. Since MINUSCA’s deployment, however, the government and the international community have worked closely together to improve the effectiveness of the Central African security sector, as discussed above. As state security capacity has gradually strengthened, MINUSCA’s military and police components have had some opportunities to engage in joint operations with the Central African military, gendarmerie, and police. Yet, the fact that security sector capacity of the Central African state remains very weak has constrained the effectiveness of MINUSCA’s military and police operations to protect civilians.

Political Dialogue to Prevent Attacks

MINUSCA initially deployed in haste to protect civilians from atrocities and prevent the collapse of the Central African state, without a peace agreement being in place. A political process thereafter took shape in the form of the African Initiative for Peace and Reconciliation in the Central African Republic, a process led by the AU with MINUSCA playing only a supporting role. Despite this, the mission has helped advance several political processes with the goal of protecting civilians. These include the holding of the 2015 Bangui Forum, the signing of the 2019 Accord for Peace and Reconciliation in the Central African Republic, and numerous local-level political agreements brokered between armed groups, local communities, and local state officials.

While MINUSCA’s support was vital to the Bangui Forum, an inclusive national dialogue held between 4 and 11 May 2015 that led to the signing of the Republican Pact, the UN has played a secondary role in the African-led peace process aimed at resolving the many conflicts between non-state armed groups in CAR. The UN was excluded from subsequent peace talks because the AU wanted to ensure African ownership over the peace process. It was only when the African Panel of Facilitators began its mediation effort in September 2017 that MINUSCA was granted an observer status to attend the peace talks (Zahar and Mechoulan 2017, p. 3).

MINUSCA has played a much more prominent role in local peace processes and supported local mediation initiatives throughout CAR (Zahar and Mechoulan 2017, UN 2019, Duursma 2022b). Crucially, MINUSCA and local authorities have typically worked closely together in these local peace processes (UN 2019). To this end, MINUSCA has facilitated the involvement of national-level politicians to support local peace processes. Zahar and Mechoulan note how the UN mission in CAR has capitalised on its logistical infrastructure by supporting the engagement of parliamentarians and members of government to become involved with and provide support for local mediation initiatives (Zahar and Mechoulan 2017, p. 39). Contrary to our expectations, strong host-state consent has not helped MINUSCA to effectively implement its support of political dialogue on the national level, although that was largely a result of exogenous factors. On the local level, however, MINUSCA has been able to effectively support peace processes.

Concluding Discussion

Based on an analysis of UNMISS and MINUSCA, this article provides support for our argument that the quality of host-state consent can significantly affect the implementation of UN peacekeepers’ POC-activities, but shows that such impacts are not necessarily uniform across different sets of efforts. Comparing the experiences of UNMISS and MINUSCA reflects an overall picture of how peacekeepers’ capacity – already thinly-stretched – to protect civilians becomes severely constrained in a compromised host-state consent context. Specifically, UNMISS greatly struggled to conduct different POC-activities as a result of compromised host-state consent. For MINUSCA, consistently experiencing strong host-state consent, Zimmerman notes that MINUSCA’s surprising level of success in achieving at least some of its mandate is ‘due in no small part to its ability to work closely with the new CAR government’ (2020, p. 11).

In South Sudan, UNMISS lost its capacity-building mandate because South Sudanese government forces were committing human rights abuses against civilians. Human rights reporting and military operations alike have been undermined through restrictions placed on the freedom of movement of peacekeepers by South Sudanese authorities, and UNMISS patrols repeatedly blocked. By contrast, with the benefit of relatively strong political will on the part of the CAR government, MINUSCA has supported institutional reform of the police and the army, and the deployment of state officials to areas otherwise lacking a state presence (Zimmerman 2020, p. 11).

For peacekeepers’ efforts to monitor and report on human rights violations, the analysis shows that while still possible in a compromised consent context, it is far more challenging. MINUSCA’s human rights section, for instance, receives regular information from state authorities and has also worked together with authorities to collect information on human rights issues. By contrast, consistent access-restrictions imposed on UN peacekeepers by South Sudanese state authorities have made human rights reporting difficult. The South Sudanese government has also tried to stifle human rights reporting through expelling human rights officers or certain key staff. To the credit of UNMISS, however, peacekeeping staff have still reported on grave abuses conducted by state forces. This shows how compromised host-state consent, in principle, must not prevent a PKO from reporting on human rights abuses, including those committed by government forces.

One area where host-state consent appears to have played a less significant role is in peacekeepers’ efforts to support national-level political processes. In CAR, such processes have been driven by the AU, leaving MINUSCA to play a marginal role only. UNMISS’ role in national-level peace processes has also been marginal, mainly because South Sudanese government officials saw the UN as biased towards the armed opposition. In other words, both missions struggled to support political dialogue on the national level but for different reasons. This contrasts the important roles both UNMISS and MINUSCA have played in supporting local-level peace processes. Strong working-relations between MINUSCA and the CAR government have translated into support for local authorities, but also the involvement of national-level government officials in these local peace processes. In the case of UNMISS, compromised host-state consent does not appear to have carried any evident negative effects on the efforts of UN peacekeeping staff to support local peace processes. Rather than involving national-level officials, these efforts have managed to circumvent national-level authorities to rather involve local state authorities that have generally cooperated with UNMISS to try and resolve local conflicts.

This article is one of the first studies to specifically examine the impact of host state-consent on peacekeepers’ POC-activities. The purposive selection of cases with divergent levels of host-state consent has allowed us to examine how the quality of host-state consent may affect the implementation of POC under different conditions, and how distinct sets of POC-activities maybe be impacted differently. These findings can be used to inform assessments of prospects for peacekeepers’ performance and POC-mandate implementation also elsewhere. For instance, the UN peacekeeping operation in Mali (MINUSMA) initially enjoyed strong host-state consent when it helped the government re-establish state authority in the northern part of the country, but over time and particularly following a successful coup in May 2021 host-state relations with MINUSMA became strained and consent compromised. Based on findings in this article, this leads us to expect more challenging conditions for MINUSMA’s POC-activities. Indeed, news reports cite that while MINUSMA previously experienced very little hindrance to its patrols, this has drastically changed in 2022 (AfricaNews 2022). Government and government-aligned forces increasingly target civilians, which makes reporting on abuses challenging for MINUSMA, though as in the case of South Sudan, the UN has not completely refrained from reporting on abuses by government forces (Roger 2022). Findings from our study can thus contribute to understanding also other cases where UN PKOs operate in often non-permissive circumstances with wide-reaching mandates placing heavy emphasis on civilian protection - where the principle of consent and POC-implementation are in “near direct contradiction” (Day and Hunt, 2021: 106) - and must find ways to continue to deliver”.

Future research can build on our study to further develop understanding of these phenomena. First, our article opts for breadth and takes a comprehensive approach to study POC, but to study a more limited set of POC-efforts in-depth – within or across cases – could add further insight and either confirm, disconfirm or qualify our findings. We show that the way both UNMISS and MINUSCA were originally formed impacted how well the missions could implement POC-activities in the period under study. While we have looked at this important alternative explanation, we acknowledge that a more in-depth study would have the advantage of allowing for more closely examining factors that might affect both state-consent and PKOs’ ability to implement specific POC-activities.

Second, findings from our case-studies point to potential differential effects across different areas of POC-implementation that future studies can probe in other cases or through other applications, allowing for further theoretical refinement. To that end, future studies could also further unpack host-state consent and operationalise it as a spectrum that can range from strong cooperation to full-blown resistance.

Finally, insights from our case-studies point to a potential loop effect by which the implementation of POC-related activities may impact host-state consent. Many POC-efforts can be perceived as threatening to state sovereignty, and thus run a strong risk of triggering a deterioration of consent. For instance, peacekeeping missions may use the information they gather on violations to produce reports, exert pressure, and publicly or privately advocate offenders to deter future threats to civilians. As host-states are often themselves implicated in human rights violations, peacekeepers’ efforts in this area therefore carry strong potential to bring missions into conflict with their government counterparts, also in otherwise strong-consent environments. Future research should study these potential loop effects.

Acknowledgement

We are thankful to Kristine Höglund, two reviewers, and the editors for providing excellent comments. Any mistake are our own. In addition, Sara wishes to acknowledge funding support from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet grant number 2018-06603).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allard Duursma

Allard Duursma is an Assistant Professor in Conflict Management and International Relations at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on how mediation and peacekeeping can help to prevent and end armed conflict. Previous research on host-state consent and resistance against peacekeepers has appeared in the Journal of Peace Research and the International Studies Review.

Sara Lindberg Bromley

Sara Lindberg Bromley is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. Her research focuses primarily on peace operations, political violence and civil war dynamics, including civilian protection and peacekeepers’ safety and security. Earlier research related to resistance to peacekeepers appears in journals including International Studies Quarterly and Journal of Peace Research.

Aditi Gorur

Aditi Gorur is a senior policy advisor at the United States Mission to the United Nations, and previously served as director of the Protecting Civilians in Conflict Program at the Stimson Center. Her research has included work on the protection of civilians by UN peacekeepers, civilian self-protection measures in conflict areas, and host-state consent for UN peacekeeping missions. She participated in this publication in her individual capacity; it reflects her personal views and does not represent the views of the U.S. government.

Notes

1. It is important to note that these activities naturally and not exclusively relate to POC. The same activity may simultaneously serve a POC and other peacekeeping aim. For instance, human rights monitoring aims at protecting people’s physical integrity rights, but also at contributing to post-conflict democratisation.