Learning to Protect? Identifying Elicitive Approaches in Protection of Civilians Training for UN Peacekeepers

ABSTRACT

How are military peacekeepers trained to undertake the Protection of Civilians (PoC)? This article addresses this important question, focussing on how ‘contact skills’ are integrated into the UN’s flagship PoC training progammes through learner-centred ‘elicitive’ forms of training. The article outlines theoretical and policy considerations which advocate more complex training in this domain, before exploring the programmes. It then critically analyses the challenges of systematically standardising elicitive forms of peacekeeper training. The article makes a strong contribution to studies of peacekeeper training and to debates on the preparation of peacekeepers for deployment to complex environments where civilian protection is paramount.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sukanya Podder and Walt Kilroy for hosting the original workshop which initiated this article, and the Research Unit at the Folke Bernadotte Academy for organising a further workshop where I was able to further develop it. Thanks also to Walter Dorn for his assistance in developing the article. The article benefited in its latter stages from workshops funded by the ESRC/IRC project ‘Towards hybridity in the Protection of Civilians’ (ES/V008811/1). Many thanks to the journal editorial team for their hard work, and the peer reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Lithuania, Slovak Republic, Switzerland.

2. This article works on the understanding that there is considerable variation in the term ‘local’. As noted by Van Leeuwen et al, the term ‘local’ is an ambiguous category, and what ‘local’ means is as much a reflection of the attitudes of interveners as it is the conditions in an area of deployment. This may lead to a tendency to romanticise the local, essentialise the local, and underplay the power dynamics inherent when defining who a ‘legitimate’ local may be (Van Leeuwen et al. 2020, p. 281). Although the article will replicate the language in quotations and examples, it will do so whilst remaining cognisant these critiques.

3. In this case, Lederach’s understanding of indigenous knowledge was informed by his engagement with Church leaders in Central America (Lederach 1996, p. 37)

4. Data came from a survey of peacekeepers who went through the ACCORD Course. There is no geographical data as to where the respondents encountered these situations.

5. The First module contains 114 slides, the second 78.

6. International Security Assistance Force.

7. This dynamic has been explored in other aspects of the UN peacekeeping system. See Riis Andersen (2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Curran

David Curran is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations where he heads the Research Theme ‘Security and Resilience’. His primary research investigates the interaction between the fields of conflict resolution and military peacekeeping. He has investigated this in his monograph More than Fighting for Peace?: Conflict Resolution, UN Peacekeeping, and the Role of Training Military Personnel, published with Springer Press. He has authored articles on the evolution of peacekeeping training, stabilisation in UN peace operations, civilian protection, and the United Kingdom’s relationship with UN peacekeeping. David has recently co-edited a book entitled ‘Multidisciplinary Futures of United Nations Peacekeeping’, which was released in September 2023.