Are UN peacekeepers actually protecting civilians on the ground? Past research at the country level has struggled to isolate peacekeepers’ local effects or to test how protection works. This study offers the first comprehensive subnational evaluation of UN peacekeeping and civilian safety in Africa.

🔍 What the Analysis Tests

The central argument is that a sizable local peacekeeper presence raises the political and military costs for armed actors considering civilian targeting. Because UN access to communities depends on government consent, the mechanism should operate differently for different perpetrators:

• Peacekeepers increase costs for rebel groups, making rebel attacks on civilians less likely.
• Peacekeepers are less able to impose costs on government forces, and thus less effective at deterring state-led violence.

📊 How Locations and Killings Are Mapped

The analysis links two new, high-resolution datasets at the monthly and subnational level:

• Monthly locations of UN peacekeepers deployed across African missions
• Detailed timing and locations of civilian killings across the same areas

This spatially and temporally precise design isolates the local effect of peacekeeper presence and tests the proposed cost-imposing mechanism.

🔑 Key Findings

• Local UN peacekeeping presence substantially improves civilian protection against rebel abuse.
• UN peacekeepers have far weaker effects on preventing killings carried out by government forces.
• The protective effect is localized: presence near civilian populations matters for deterrence.

⚖️ Why It Matters

These results clarify how UN peacekeeping protects civilians: physical presence can deter nonstate perpetrators but, because missions operate with host-state consent, they face structural limits in constraining state violence. The findings have implications for deployment strategies, mission mandates, and realistic expectations about when and how peacekeepers can reduce civilian harm.