“What Do We Really Know about Local Peacekeeping Effects?”

Abstract

The article “Violence reduction or relocation? Effects of United Nations troops presence on local levels of violence” by Laura Peitz and Gregor Reisch is one of several recent articles that explore the local effects of peacekeeping deployments. We provide an overview of accumulated knowledge and conflicting findings, and identify a few remaining gaps in the literature. The finding that more peacekeepers are better at reducing violence has been replicated by several studies, although a few studies have identified conditional effects. Taken together, studies find that peacekeepers can reduce both violence between armed actors and violence against civilians. While Peitz and Reisch do not make a distinction between different perpetrators, previous work suggest that peacekeepers are better at reducing violence against civilians by non-state actors. Peitz and Reisch are thus far one of the few studies that explores the impact of the type of peacekeepers – although the findings are ambiguous. Lastly, there is a tension in the literature between Peitz and Reisch, who claim that peacekeepers diffuse violence to nearby location, and other studies that find no such relocation effect, or even the opposite. Future work should continue to explore the local effects of peacekeeping, directing attention to questions about types of peacekeepers, local conditions as enabling factors, the role of military capabilities (as opposed to capacity), and actions taken on the ground.