Operational Doctrine and Peacekeepers' Ability to Protict Civilians in Contemporary Armed Conflict
2014 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The protection of civilians in contemporary conflicts has emerged as an important issue in the international society, because civilians are often the main victims as a result of armed conflict. UN peacekeepers are deployed to protect civilians with the robust UNSC resolutions and military capacities. However, their limited ability to protect civilians has been criticized.
This thesis aims to answer the following research question: "under what conditions can peacekeepers protect civilians in peacekeeping?" with focus on the possibility for mission specific operational doctrine to increase peacekeepers’ ability to protect.
Through observing the NATO case in Afghanistan, the power of the operational doctrine was proved. This can be compared to be the UN case in Congo, where it was confirmed that the ab-sence of mission specific doctrine was linked to the peacekeepers’ inability to protect civilians.
Meanwhile, new COIN doctrine in ISAF has not reduced overall civilian fatalities but prevented ISAF-caused casualties, because ISAF’s mission is not to protect civilians and is not a part of its mandates. Thus this thesis concludes that the protection of civilians in peacekeeping may requires specific operational doctrine and robust PoC mandates.
This thesis also points out the flaw of research design which is applied in the thesis and suggests a desirable way of improving the research design for future research.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2014. , p. 41
Keywords [en]
PoC, Peacekeeping, MONUC, ISAF, use of force, doctrine, population-centric, COIN
National Category
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-4643OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-4643DiVA, id: diva2:723031
Subject / course
War Studies Thesis
Educational program
Högre stabsofficersutbildning (HSU)
Presentation
2014-05-15, N 305 B, Drottning Kristinas väg 37, Stockholm, 10:00 (Swedish)
Supervisors
Examiners
2014-07-072014-06-102014-07-07Bibliographically approved