Peacekeeping

Max Roser; Mohamed Nagdy

Peacekeeping

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The United Nations was founded after the Second World War with the guiding principle to promote international cooperation and prevent future conflicts. Today, the UN continues to promote peace and has active peacekeeping operations around the world.

In addition to peacekeeping, “peacekeepers are increasingly charged with assisting in political processes; reforming judicial systems; training law enforcement and police forces; disarming and reintegrating former combatants; supporting the return of internally displaced persons and refugees.”¹

Interactive charts on Peacekeeping

International Peacekeeping Operations

In this section

United Nations Peacekeeping Operations
Other international peacekeeping Operations

United Nations Peacekeeping Operations

Since the UN does not have its own military it relies on contributions from member states. The role of these peacekeeping forces is not to engage in combat but to prevent future conflict and support stabilization and rebuilding efforts.

The mandate of the early peacekeeping operations “was primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilizing situations on the ground, providing crucial support for political efforts to resolve conflict by peaceful means.”²

Modern peacekeeping forces include economists, police officers, legal experts, electoral observers, human rights monitors as well as military personnel.

The chart shoes the number of peacekeeping missions carried out by the United Nations by year.

Number un peacekeeping missions v7 850x600

Other international peacekeeping Operations

Not all peace keeping missions are conducted by the UN. The bar chart shows the breakdown of peacekeeping operations by organisation for the decade 2004-2013.

In many cases, it is regional alliances or organisations that step in to stabilise conflict zones.

Number of peace operations by conducting organizations, 2004-2013 – SIPRI³

SIPRI Number of multilateral peace operations by organisation

Peacekeeping personnel

The interactive charts show the number of United Nations peacekeepers active over time. This is shown as the total, with additional breakdown by the type of personnel.

Throughout the Cold War, the change in the number of UN peacekeepers roughly corresponds to changes in the number of active operations globally. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, this relationship breaks down. We see large dip in UN personnel size in the late 90s but only smaller reductions in the number of ongoing operations.

A large part of this decline in personnel numbers can be attributed to the failure of the United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II) and the UN’s withdrawal from Somalia in 1995.⁴

Breakdown of united nations peacekeeping forces v4 850x600

Data Quality & Definitions

All data on UN peacekeeping operations comes from the UN itself and is available online at https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/.

Data Sources

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

Data: SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database; “The SIPRI database on multilateral peace operations provides comprehensive, reliable and authoritative data on all multilateral peace operations (both UN and non-UN) conducted around the world”
Geographical coverage: Global by country or peacekeeping operation
Time span: 1948-2014
Available at: http://www.sipri.org/databases/pko

United Nations

Data: Monthly reports on peacekeeping operations
Geographical coverage: Global by country or peacekeeping operation
Time span: 1948-2014
Available at: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/

Global Policy Forum

Data: Time series data on peacekeeping
Geographical coverage: Global
Time span: 1947-2012
Available at: https://www.globalpolicy.org

Providing for Peacekeeping

Data: IPI Peacekeeping Database: “Drawing from archival UN records, the International Peace Institute Peacekeeping Database presents the first publicly available database of total uniformed personnel contributions of each contributing country by month, by type (troop, police, or expert/observer) and by mission, from November 1990 to present.”
Geographical coverage: Global by country or peacekeeping operation
Time span: 1947-2012
Available at: http://www.providingforpeacekeeping.org

Endnotes

United Nations Peacekeeping website, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/about/. Retrieved 08/09/1015.
“The early years.” United Nations. Available online here. Retrieved 08/09/2015.
SIPRI yearbook 2014 : armaments, disarmament and international security. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Available online here.
As the UN’s Peacekeeping website explains: “Missions were established in situations where the guns had not yet fallen silent, in areas such as the former Yugoslavia – UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), Rwanda – UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and Somalia – UN Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II), where there was no peace to keep.

These three high-profile peacekeeping operations came under criticism as peacekeepers faced situations where warring parties failed to adhere to peace agreements, or where the peacekeepers themselves were not provided adequate resources or political support. As civilian casualties rose and hostilities continued, the reputation of UN Peacekeeping suffered.

The setbacks of the early and mid-1990s led the Security Council to limit the number of new peacekeeping missions and begin a process of self-reflection to prevent such failures from happening again.

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Max Roser and Mohamed Nagdy (2013) - "Peacekeeping". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://snow-owid.netlify.app/peacekeeping' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owidpeacekeeping,
    author = {Max Roser and Mohamed Nagdy},
    title = {Peacekeeping},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2013},
    note = {https://snow-owid.netlify.app/peacekeeping}
}

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