Leaving a Legacy? Examining the Short-Term Effects of United Nations Peacekeeping Withdrawal on Violence against Civilians

Sammanfattning

While extensive literature examines peacekeeping effectiveness in reducing violence against civilians during deployment, far less is known about whether these protective effects persist once peacekeepers leave. This study addresses this gap by asking how the withdrawal of peacekeepers affects short-term, local patterns of violence against civilians. It argues that withdrawal temporarily reduces local constraints on civilian targeting, producing divergent post-withdrawal violence patterns across perpetrator types, and that withdrawal context influences the intensity of these effects. Using Geo-PKO and UCDP GED data, the analysis employs TWFE models with a distributed lag structure to analyze a sample of first-order administrative units across African UN PKO host states with Protection of Civilians mandates (2000–2024). The results show no overall increase in civilian fatalities following local withdrawal, but actor-disaggregated findings reveal a persistent decline in rebel violence and a marginally significant spike in government violence. Exploratory evidence further suggests that accelerated withdrawals in ongoing conflict contexts produce more adverse outcomes. While these findings are subject to limitations in data and methodology, they indicate that peacekeeping leaves a broadly positive protective legacy, while highlighting the need for careful transition planning with civilian protection at its center.