A Lack of Strategic Vision: Robust Peacekeeping’s Unintended Consequences

This article shows the UN’s ‘robust’ peacekeeping mandates have led to a clear mismatch between robustness in organisational policy and the realities of how a robust mandate is implemented by the UN. Evidenced by interviews with participants with experience of working with or within robust peacekeeping missions, the data supports the argument that the implementation of robust mandates has resulted in unintended consequences, such as the shrinking of humanitarian space that exacerbates long-standing tensions between UN peacekeepers and humanitarian actors. This unique dataset significantly advances our understanding of the consequences of robust mandates within the literature on peacekeeping and civil-military coordination.