‘To Serve and Protect’: The Changing Roles of Police in the Protection of Civilians in UN Peace Operations

ABSTRACT

This article examines the contributions of police to the Protection of Civilians (PoC) in United Nations (UN) peace operations. Drawing on field research in four missions where police have had to implement PoC mandates in challenging and unprecedented ways, I identify lessons associated with emerging practice. The article contributes to debates about non-military forms of civilian protection arguing that police – at once uniformed and civilian, coercive but also community-oriented – offer unique contributions to PoC. It also highlights the need for a systematic evaluation of what works and what does not for protection through policing to be harnessed in future missions.

Introduction

Over 90% of the UN’s peacekeepers are deployed in missions mandated under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to use ‘all necessary means’ to protect civilians from direct harm. The protection of civilians (PoC) has emerged as a central mission goal (Bellamy and Hunt 2015) and it is argued that the UN is ultimately judged on its performance in protection (Wills 2009, Hultman et al. 2013). A growing number of studies argue that peacekeeping is successful against its main objectives (for overviews, see Howard et al. 2020; Di Salvatore and Ruggeri 2017). A subset of these have sought to empirically test the effects of peacekeeping on POC implementation and outcomes (e.g., Kathman and Wood 2016, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon 2019; Fjelde et al. 2019, Anup and Prins 2019). Yet these studies tend to focus on the presence – and to a lesser extent the activities – of armed military peacekeepers in particular.¹ To a large extent, this scholarly focus on the military reflects the continued influence of the military over the practice of peace operations. Furthermore, PoC in peace operations has historically been understood in predominantly military terms. The tendency has been to ask troops to provide physical protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence. Given that they comprise approximately 80% of mission personal this should come as no surprise. Notwithstanding efforts within the UN to mainstream PoC across all components (military, police and civilians) and develop mission-wide strategies for implementation, a reliance on militarised approaches to PoC has endured that has challenged the established principles undergirding UN peacekeeping (Paddon Rhoads 2016, Laurence 2019) and at times generated negative unintended consequences (Howard and Anjali 2018, Bode and Karlsrud 2018, Berdal 2019, Day and Hunt 2022). This has led to push-back by some of the larger personnel-contributing member states (Hunt 2017).

Yet since the first PoC mandate in Sierra Leone in 1999, UN police (UNPOL) components have played important roles in implementing them. The first report of the UN Secretary-General on PoC in 1999 recognised this, stating that protecting vulnerable populations required ‘civilian police activities’ as well as those of the military (UN 1999: para. 59). Indeed, the famous passage in the 2000 Brahimi Report on PoC obligations of peacekeepers explicitly emphasised that police as well as military peacekeepers are expected to act, noting:

[United Nations] peacekeepers – troops or police — who witness violence against civilians should be presumed to be authorised to stop it, within their means, in support of basic United Nations principles.

(UN 2000: para. 62 [Emphasis added])

In the two decades since, the nature of conflict has changed and threats to civilians have both diversified and multiplied in peacekeeping contexts. In response, the POC mandate, expectations and practices have evolved (Willmot et al. 2016, Williams and Bellamy 2021: p. 324–330). Originally subject to caveats relating to host government primacy, geographic coverage, and capability limitations, peacekeepers have increasingly been authorised to protect vulnerable populations ‘irrespective of the source’ of the threats (code for responding to violence by government forces) and by projecting force to proactively prevent and deter attacks rather than simply defending installations (Bellamy and Hunt 2021). At UN headquarters, policies, guidance and training materials have been promulgated as PoC has become increasingly institutionalised in the peace operations bureaucracy in New York and mission critical to the portfolio of operations in the field (Hunt and Zimmerman 2019).

With PoC becoming more central to the design and focus of peace operations, UNPOL have been required to take on many new and additional tasks to protect civilians. Developments such as providing internal security at ‘PoC sites’ in South Sudan, addressing election-related violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and operating under quasi-executive authority in the Central African Republic (CAR), have raised expectations and created demand for protection activities that are unprecedented for police peacekeepers (Hunt 2019). Yet the responses of UNPOL to PoC imperatives have received little attention in the peacekeeping literature. Given the apparent limitations of coercive approaches and the variance of PoC mandate interpretation (Paddon Rhoads 2016, Laurence 2019), better understanding the ways in which the PoC mandate has been interpreted and implemented by UNPOL in field missions is a significant concern.

This article seeks to address this gap through an examination of emerging UNPOL roles and responsibilities in the implementation of PoC mandates in UN peace operations. It employs a qualitative methodology consisting of desktop and field-based research. Desk research draws on a range of open source and personally gathered UN documents including reports of the Secretary-General, budget reports, policies, doctrine, mission concepts, and protection of civilians’ strategies. Field research conducted by the author between April 2017 and March 2020 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali, the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan consisted of in depth semi-structured interviews and focus group dicussions with representatives of peacekeeping missions, UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, international diplomats, civil society and community-based organisations.² In all four cases, police have been deployed in large numbers and have been required to implement PoC mandates in challenging and unprecedented ways.³

The article proceeds in three parts. The first illustrates how PoC has become a priority for UNPOL while police are increasingly seen as essential to achieving protection of civilians in the field. The second section examines major examples from the field where UNPOL have undertaken tasks deriving from the PoC mandate, analysing how these activities articulate to the UN’s operational conceptualisation of PoC. The third section identifies the main challenges arising for UNPOL in particular from these shifts relating to: ambiguous authority; militarisation; and, reliance on predatory host states. The article argues that police – at once uniformed and civilian, coercive but also community-oriented – offer unique contributions to PoC. In doing so, the article makes an important contribution to scholarly debates about how UN peace operations can pursue PoC in ways that do not rely on the use of force and military approaches that have proven inadequate and at times counter-productive. It concludes that there is a need to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of these nascent strategies to take stock of what works and what does not when police peacekeepers are required to contribute to PoC in peacekeeping.

Policing change; changing police

Police officers have consistently featured within UN peace operations since they first appeared in the 1960–4 mission in the Congo (ONUC). UNPOL became more deeply involved in missions during the 1990s, evolving from ‘watchers’ who observed and monitored to ‘coaches’ undertaking reform and capacity-building of national law enforcement agencies as part of a broader peacebuilding agenda (Kroeker , 2007). This shift towards reform, restructuring and rebuilding (RRR) of law enforcement agencies based on democratic policing models and international human rights standards in the early 2000s became a core part of UNPOL’s operational focus and has been included in most of their subsequent mandates (Greener 2008, den Heyer 2012). With exit strategies of missions seen as contingent on reformed and strengthened national capacity in security, UNPOL have become increasingly critical to the outcomes of UN peace operations (UN 2017a). At the same time, UNPOL took on more operational roles. In the UN’s transitional administrations in East Timor and Kosovo⁴ UNPOL temporarily assumed executive policing authority but more commonly operations have been limited to assisting national police to maintain public security. This expansion of UNPOL roles and responsibilities was matched by dramatic growth, quadrupling in numbers deployed over the past 20 years.⁵

The spike in police deployments coincided with the introducton of the PoC mandate in Sierra Leone in 1999. Present in ever greater numbers, UNPOL have been part of implementing the PoC mandate since the beginning. The Security Council began explicitly allocating protection roles to UNPOL in the Haiti mission around 2004, but police engagement in PoC implementation has deepened over time, particularly in the last decade as the doctrine, guidelines and training has been developed to support this work (Hunt and Sharland 2019).

A set of new or significantly reconfigured missions deployed in the 2010s presented UNPOL with changing operational realities and more robust mandates operating in contexts where there has been little or no peace to keep. Missions in CAR, Darfur, the DRC, Mali, and South Sudan were deployed despite poor relations with host governments (e.g., South Sudan) and where conflict dynamics involved a proliferation of non-state armed groups (e.g., DRC), as well as the prevalence of transnational organised crime and violent extremism (e.g., Mali) – all guilty of violence against civilians to varying degrees. Deployed to settings characterised by active conflict and manifold threats to civilians, in addition to their traditional mentoring and capacity-building activities, UNPOL have played a growing role in implementing the protection mandate in challenging circumstances (UN 2016b: p. 4, Osland 2019: p. 191). At the time of writing, 99% of the nearly 8,000 police officers from around 90 countries deployed to 12 UN peacekeeping operations are deployed under a PoC mandate (UN 2020a).⁶ Although it is widely acknowledged that there is significant variation in quality across different police contributing countries (PCCs) (Durch and Ker 2013), it has been argued that UNPOL have some comparative advantages over the military and civilian components of peace operations when it comes to PoC.

First, due to their training and equipment, UNPOL are often better placed than the military to play a proactive role in deterring violent acts by armed criminal groups as well as dealing with the perpetrators of these crimes – particularly in densely populated environments such as cities and IDP camps. Indeed, in situations that do not exhibit the sustained use of firearms or military weaponry, UN policy confirms that UNPOL should have command and control responsibility including in the conduct robust operations to protect civilians. Second, the community-oriented approach that underpins all UNPOL efforts makes them better able to understand localised and context-specific sources of security and insecurity and also empower local populations by putting their views and perspectives at the centre of assessments and planning related to PoC (UN 2016a: para. 17; UN 2018a). Third, police skills, configuration and modalities mean they can also be more flexible, responsive to threats and demonstrate greater agility than military and other civilian components of missions (Hunt 2020).

Despite these perceived comparative strengths of UNPOL PoC activity in the field, at headquarters the UN Police Division (UNPD) was initially slow to change its rhetoric and formulate guidance on PoC. The ‘Policy for UN Police in Peacekeeping Operations’ stated that ‘all actions of United Nations police shall be aimed at the protection and preservation of human life, property, liberty and dignity’ (UN 2014a: para. 106). In the same year a UNPD multi-year strategy document stated that ‘police-related mandates generally have the following elements: police reform through capacity and institution building, operational support to host-state police and other law enforcement services, interim policing and protection of civilians’ ([emphasis added] UNPD UN 2014b: para 5) – suggesting PoC was part of UNPOL’s core business. However, at that time the UNPD remained ambivalent and saw the ‘PoC turn’ as much of a hindrance as a help to their cause.⁷ In part, this was attributable to the concerns of major PCCs who feared being asked to perform what they perceived to be military functions.⁸ However, there were also structural impediments including a recruitment system ill-suited to meeting the growing demand for police to undertake PoC-related tasks in the field (UNPD UN 2016b: p. ix).

A discernible shift occurred around 2017 when PoC became more central to how UNPOL described and articulated their work in peace operations.⁹ New leadership of the UNPD, influenced by recent field experience in PoC-focused missions, identified a common mantra of police services around the world – ‘to serve and protect’ – as evidence that protection is their core business. Indeed a senior UNPD official stated that ‘UN police are perfectly suited to doing protection work and we are an essential component of PoC strategies’.¹⁰ Responding to these developments in the field and at the Secretariat, official UN guidance for UNPOL on PoC was developed as part of the Strategic Guidance Framework for International Policing (SGF) (UN 2016c, 2017b).

Increased PoC activity by police in the field and growing receptivity within the police peacekeeping bureaucracy has also been institutionalised within the UN system in recent years. The UN Security Council has passed landmark resolutions on police peacekeeping, formally recognising ‘the important role that United Nations Police Components can play … in the protection of civilians’ (UN 2014c, : para.6, p. 4), and a UN Secretary-General report noted the centrality of protection to UNPOL field operations (UNSG UN 2016d).

As of today, all parts of the UN peace operations system see PoC as a priority and a fundamental part of what UNPOL are directed to do in field missions. Moreover, police are increasingly understood to be a key part of achieving the protection of civilians. Indeed, some member states have begun to state their preference for more police-centric approaches to PoC mandates – particularly in the context of transitions and mission drawdowns.¹¹ In response to the growing demand, UNPOL have adapted and developed a range of modalities for implementing PoC mandates. Peace operations policy research has begun to focus on the contributions of police to civilian protection mandates (Sebastian 2015, Hunt 2020). Yet, while there are large-N quantitative studies that correlate the presence of UN police with the reduction of post-conflict violence (e.g., Di Salvatore 2019, Johansson and Hultman 2019, Kirschner and Miller 2019, Bara 2020),¹² academic research has thus far not examined how and why police may be contributing to these macro trends. The ways in which the PoC mandate has been interpreted and implemented by UNPOL in field missions are the focus of the following section.

Policing for protection in practice

The contributions of police peacekeepers to civilian protection differ according to the prevailing threats to civilians, as well as the security context, pertaining to the different missions in which they are deployed. The capacity and conduct of national police actors, including the extent to which they pose a threat to civilians, are particularly important to this. Drawing on field research in key mission contexts, this section examines the ways in which UNPOL have interpreted and implemented the PoC mandate. I chart how these efforts map to the UN’s conceptual approach to PoC envisaged under three tiers: protection through dialogue and engagement action [tier 1]; provision of physical protection [tier 2]; and, establishment of a protective environment through promotion of legal protection, humanitarian assistance and support to national institution-building [tier 3]). (UN 2019a).¹³

Protection through dialogue and engagement

UNPOL play important roles in this first tier of the UN’s operational concept: protection through dialogue and engagement (UN 2019a). All PoC mandates include the exhortation that ‘the host government bears primary responsibility for the protection of civilians’. Beyond host states, it is also increasingly recognised that myriad other non-state actors – including communities themselves – are key to organising self-protection mechanisms (Gorur and Carstensen 2016, Paddon Rhoads and Sutton 2020). However, in many peacekeeping settings, these would-be protectors also pose threats to civilians. States use the security services to target sections of their own populations and self-defence militia can abuse particular out-groups. Advocating and engaging with this array of actors – at national and local levels – is an important dimension of deescalating threats to civilians, preventing human rights violations and holding perpetrators to account.

The relationships cultivated by heads of police components in field missions with government ministers and national police leadership provide entry points for UNPOL to provide strategic advice and advocate that host state police live up to their primary responsibility to safeguard lives and livelihoods. During volatile election periods, for instance, in the DRC and Mali in 2018, the Police Commissioners used their influence with national police leaders to achieve more rights-protecting approaches.¹⁴ As described by a senior police leader in the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), ‘the Malian gendarmerie had fired live rounds at civilians during political demonstrations but our advocacy with the leadership led to less human rights violations after that’.¹⁵ UNPOL have also used this type of engagement to call for national law enforcement to reinforce their presence in areas under threat to ensure public order as well as to advocate for removals and prosecution where elements of host state authorities are known to have exacted violence against civilians. Advocacy and dialogue is also prevalent at the local level wherefor example, in CAR, MINUSCA police in rural field sites such as Bambari, Bangassou, and Kaga-Bandoro, elevated the prioritisation of PoC concerns and incidents by the Internal Security Forces (FSI) in those locales. ‘Communities tell us they feel safer and better protected after we have encouraged our counterparts to take PoC issues more seriously’ said one UNPOL officer in Bangui.¹⁶ More generally, across all missions with civilian protection mandates, UNPOL regularly advise on IHRL and PoC-adherent policing by others.

In addition to shaping the behaviour of national police, UNPOL themselves strengthen the protection of civilians through community engagement strategies built on local participation and ownership (UN 2018a). Interviewees described how ‘our community orientation ensures that we work to prevent criminality and violence by engaging with local populations’¹⁷ and explained that ‘being close to the people means they are more willing to give us information that helps us support their own security arrangements as well as being better aware of threats they face in a timely manner. It all helps with PoC’.¹⁸ Community-oriented policing models are particularly evident in the IDP camps in CAR and inside PoC sites in South Sudan where MINUSCA and UNMISS police substitute for national law enforcement and regularly interact with residents. As part of this, UNPOL support local security and justice mechanisms including community watch groups and dispute resolution mechanisms including customary courts.¹⁹

Also at the local level, the relationships UNPOL forge with key interlocutors in communities also allow them to play a role in promoting harm reduction. As one MINUSCA police officer described, ‘here in Bria, we were heavily involved in making a deal between the leaders in the IDP camp and the rebels controlling the town – our military colleagues cannot do this’.²⁰ These pacts allowed IDPs to travel into the town to trade at the market without harassment and risk of kidnap.²¹ Though other mission components such as the civil affairs division also played a role, this breakthrough was partly possible because of the presence of UNPOL as a trusted known entity that could act as a third party.²² The same relationships with all stakeholders in Bria have allowed MINUSCA IPOs to negotiate the release of people illegally detained by armed groups.²³ In a similar vein, UNPOL’s community-oriented approach makes them particularly valuable in helping deescalate intercommunal violence. Interviews revealed many examples where UNPOL had effectively mediated herder-farmer conflict related to seasonal transhumance encountered during patrols in CAR but also South Sudan and Mali.²⁴

As shown above, UNPOL efforts can be seen as reducing civilian vulnerability as well as building the capacity of communities themselves to put in place systems of self-protection that improve preparedness and resilience and ultimately enhance PoC. The way that police provide direct physical protection is the focus of the following section.

Provision of physical protection

While often assumed to fall to the military, this overlooks important operational roles that police can and do play under the second tier of the UN’s operational concept – provision of physical protection. It has become axiomatic that the UN cannot have a peacekeeper behind every tree: poised and ready to protect all civilians from all threats all of the time. Nevertheless, when host states are unwilling or unable to do so peacekeepers are expected to step in and provide physical protection to those under threat of physical violence (UN 2019a).

UN guidelines on PoC for UNPOL state that, “Security Council resolutions authorising the use of ‘all necessary means’ to protect civilians are applicable to UN police, even if the resolutions do not set out the specific role intended for UN police” (UN 2017b: para. 32). Therefore, UN police have an active duty to protect and it is conceivable that UNPOL can undertake actions up to and including the use of deadly force in order to protect civilians.²⁵ As the UN’s individual police officers (IPOs) are only lightly armed (if at all), this applies more to Formed Police Units (FPUs) that make up a significant proportion of the overall UNPOL numbers deployed and provide a response to threats to public order or imminent threats of violence against civilians.²⁶ The UN policy on FPUs points out that PoC is envisaged as one of three core functions (UN 2016e: para. 13).²⁷ This is important given that in the absence of large-scale or sustained firearms use or presence of military weaponry, FPUs have primacy over the military component in providing a response on behalf of UN peace operations.²⁸ In such circumstances, UNPOL can intercede between vulnerable civilians and their tormenters.

For instance, during the 2016 constitutional crisis and 2018 elections in the DRC, MONUSCO FPUs in the capital Kinshasa were repeatedly deployed to interpose between political protesters and the Police National Congolaise (PNC) – ultimately protecting Congolese citizens protesting at political rallies from predation by the national police.²⁹ Where non-state criminal actors threaten civilians, UNPOL can potentially arrest and detain those threatening the well-being of civilian populations. Reflecting what Ciorciari (2020) has referred to as ‘sharing sovereignty’, under a unique provision called ‘Urgent Temporary Measures’ (UTM),³⁰ MINUSCA police in CAR are also mandated with limited executive authority allowing UNPOL, when national forces are not present, to act in their stead (Perito 2015).³¹ In 2018, UNPOL – acting under UTM – intervened inside an IDP camp in Bria arresting a number of anti-Balaka militia group leaders responsible for violations of international humanitarian law and other violent crimes.³² As one senior MINUSCA official put it, ‘UTM is not without its challenges but the arrests in IDP camps definitely enhance civilian protection – they remove the direct threat but can also degrade the armed groups in ways that can help longer-term protection, too’.³³

One of the main roles UNPOL have taken on regarding PoC is in deterring violence close to UN bases, displacement camps and designated protection safe-havens. In South Sudan, the creation of ‘PoC sites’ inside (or adjacent to) UN bases sheltering more than 200,000 people fleeing violence led to new and unprecedented PoC roles for UNPOL. The presence of thousands of people in congested camps creates an environment ripe for crime and acts of aggression. UNPOL – both IPOs and FPUs – have been permanently present at the PoC sites providing a static presence at entrances and conducting regular patrols inside the camps day and night, including random weapons search and seize operations. With the PoC sites (generally) on supposedly inviolable UN premises and IHL obligations to preserve civilian character of IDP camps, UN police have become the pseudo-law enforcement agency inside the sites. As one UNMISS police officer put it, ‘we are the main source of protection to the IDPs inside the sites’.³⁴ IPOs backed up by armed FPUs independently maintain public security and address serious criminality inside these sites, including through detentions where necessary.³⁵ While the PoC sites in UNMISS are unique in peacekeeping, the IDP camps secured and policed by MINUSCA police in CAR (and previously by UNAMID police in Darfur) are another similar example of this protection role for UNPOL.

Beyond IDP camps, FPUs carry out preventive high-visibility patrols to disrupt activities of those who would threaten the safety and security of local communities, reducing the risk and severity of violence. For example, in central Mali, UNPOL have scheduled FPU patrols to occur on market days to prevent attacks by bandits on civilians carrying goods and money on their journeys to and from the market.³⁶ In a number of settings, including South Sudan and CAR, FPU patrols have also provided escorts for women to collect firewood around displacement sites.³⁷ More often, UNPOL support host state responses to serious public disorder or conduct joint operational activities with national police and gendarmerie. In Mali, for instance, UNPOL conduct regular nightly patrols in hotspot districts of the capital city, Bamako, in conjunction with the Malian Defence and Security Forces.³⁸ It was noted by one Bamako resident interviewed that ‘UNPOL patrols with our MDSF have reduced the risk of rape and sexual attack at night. We feel safer when we see the UN cars’. Efforts to tackle sexual and gender-based violence are central to UNPOL’s PoC mandate in Mali.

In settings where violence prevails, UNPOL have engaged in joint operations with a mission’s force component to avert or deter human rights violations. In Mali, for example, following civilian massacres and heightened inter-communal tensions in the central regions in mid-2019, UNPOL were part of protracted joint operations with the military (i.e., Operations Folon and Oryx) to provide high-visibility short- and long-range patrolling and presence along important axes that had experienced violence. An innovative example of these joint operations is the Joint Task Force in Bangui (JTFB): consisting of UN police and soldiers (originally under police command) and designed to protect civilians and maintain order in the capital by containing the movement of armed elements (UN 2015a: para. 29). In these activities, police generally perform non-coercive roles such as detaining those arrested or providing security cordons to keep civilian populations safely separated.³⁹ However, through this joint mechanism UNPOL are clearly part of robust operations partly aimed at protecting civilians.

As these examples show, whether through proactive coercive joint operations or robust policing deterrence, UNPOL contribute to PoC in ways that are often associated exclusively with the military. There are, however, important caveats to note here. First, UNPOL efforts to provide physical protection rarely occur in a vacuum. The credible threat of the military component providing back-up if necessary is important context. Protection outcomes cannot therefore be directly attributed to UNPOL who are part of a systemic response to PoC threats. Second, UNPOL are rarely deployed to locales where violence against civilians is most severe. Therefore, while the missions discussed here may have a footprint in these non-permissive environments, we cannot say the same about UNPOL who, for instance, do not have a large presence in violent settings such as North Kivu (DRC), the Jebel Marra mountains (Darfur), Kidal and Timbuktu (Mali), etc. Third, a 2018 OIOS study of PoC responses highlighted that between 2014 and 2017 in four of the five biggest UN missions with PoC mandates, UNPOL were the lead responder in only 6% of PoC-related incidents (UN 2018b: p. 21).⁴⁰ This finding calls into question the overall contribution of UNPOL to physical civilian protection. However, the OIOS report also identified that 97% of responses captured in the analysis fell under tiers I or II of the UN’s PoC concept (UN 2018b: p. 3, 21). Notwithstanding the contributions that UNPOL can make under these tiers discussed above, this discounts the contributions of UNPOL to the third tier – the subject of the next section.

Establishing a protective environment

The activities outlined above are critical to providing timely and decisive responses to immediate protection needs as well as prophylactic activities designed to reduce the likelihood that protection threats will emerge in the first place. Yet, in order to eventually drawdown and exit a mission needs to do itself out of a job. When it comes to PoC, this means eradicating or transforming the root causes of threats to civilians. Through their efforts to reform and rebuild national law enforcement actors, UNPOL are arguably one of the most important mission components in achieving this longer-term vision for a sustainable protective environment – the focus of the third tier of the UN’s PoC operational concept.⁴¹

Police development and capacity-building efforts contribute to this form of indirect protection in two main ways. First, in most major peace operations in the past two decades, host state police have been to various degrees politicised, militarised, corrupt and abusive towards their own populations – as much engaged in criminality as preventing and tackling it. Reforming, restructuring and rebuilding police who have been part of the problems that led to deployment in the first place can diminish the threat posed by predatory host state police, build trust and overcome their legacies of incompetence, corruption, and abuse (Blair 2020). Second, in peacekeeping contexts national police rarely have the capacity and capabilities to protect civilians from armed violence with links to conflict parties as well as everday criminal banditry exploiting a climate of impunity. UNPOL support for reforming host state policing actors can lead to institutions more capable of sustainably and consistently delivering on their obligations to safeguard populations (UN 2017a; Foley 2017: para.6, p. 4). Belgioioso et al. (2021), for example, have shown that UNPOL presence correlates with increased tolerance for (or at least prevalence of) peaceful protests, suggesting that the infusion of liberal norms can be facilitated by police peacekeepers.

Specific activities focused on enhancing civilian protection include training and mentorship activities with national law enforcement agency counterparts in order to sensitise and build capacity on protection and human rights. The provision of mentorship during joint patrols with national police can deter them from malpractice. Interviews with Congolese highlighted that the collocation of MONUSCO police with PNC counterparts had contributed to a reduction in the abuses civilians had suffered at the hands of host-state police, noting inconsistencies and that this was not always effective. For instance, one civil society activist interviewed in Goma said ‘we expect more from UN police but when they are working alongside our Congolese police at least they prevent them from abusing us’.⁴²

More generally, reforming police institutions includes: training on core professional policing skills and ethics; strategic advice on strengthening legislation and administration frameworks; supporting the development of strong civilian oversight and other accountability mechanisms for (mis)conduct, including human rights violations (Bayley 2006). These efforts towards more representative and responsive criminal justice institutions are part of overcoming abusive legacies and building confidence and perceptions as more accessible, trustworthy, incorruptible and therefore legitimate public services (Blair 2020). A good example of this can be seen in DRC where as part of the ‘Operational Strategy to Combat Insecurity’ (SOLI), MONUSCO police have supported the creation of toll-free emergency telephone lines for reporting threats to communities while providing technical advice and resources to national counterparts to support more effective responses. These efforts have increased confidence and even trust in host-state police previously seen more as predators than protectors.⁴³ One community member in an area where SOLI had been implemented explained that ‘Since the arrival of the phone-line we believe that the PNC will hear our cries for help and respond quickly’ ⁴⁴ while another said ‘thanks to this programme by the UN we are beginning to trust that our police are there to protect us’.⁴⁵

In addition to capacity-building, UNPOL also provide practical and logistical support for (re)deploying national police throughout a country’s territory. This can be critical to extending or restoring state authority in areas where civilians have become reliant on (or subjected to) unaccountable rebel governance. In CAR, for example, following a three-year absence, MINUSCA police have helped the national police and gendarmerie return to the PK5 district of Bangui following a community-oriented policing project.⁴⁶ Similar efforts have supported the Malian police and gendarmerie to take up positions in the north where state authorities had hitherto been non-existent.⁴⁷ Enabling national police in this way comes with risk given the potential for predatory behaviour discussed above. However, the extension of state authority is invariably part of the long-term vision for providing a sustainable protective environment – particularly in missions with a stabilisation mandate and close partnership with host government (Curran & Hunt 2020). Another benefit identified by officials in the UN refugee agency was that ‘improvements to the capacity of national police helps to build the confidence of IDPs and refugee populations that they can protect them if they return home’⁴⁸ – in turn facilitating more voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable returns, local integration, or resettlement after short or longer periods of disruption.

While the focus of this article is on the PoC contributions of police peacekeepers, it is widely recognised that police reform in isolation is unlikely to lead to creating a protective environment in the long run (Hunt 2015, Blair 2019). In order to tackle impunity – a major driver of continued violence – UNPOL efforts are therefore part of an ‘integrated’ rule of law approach (Foley 2019). In a range of mission settings including DRC, Mali, CAR and South Sudan, justice and corrections officers enact criminal justice sector reform and support effective judicial and legal processes. As part of this, UNPOL (in coordination with other mission components and the UN Country Team) also play vital roles in pursuing accountability for crimes and combatting impunity for egregious human rights abuses. In a number of missions, UNPOL intelligence gathering and support to investigations has helped to provide the evidence necessary to build cases and prosecute crimes.⁴⁹

UNPOL are therefore an essential element of peace operations’ efforts to create protective environments through their efforts to build the capacity of institutions, transform abusive policing cultures, and tackle impunity. These efforts with a longer time-horizon for impact are arguably where UNPOL make more enduring contributions to protection outcomes. As one senior UNPOL official put it, ‘whatever we can do to provide short-term protection, our efforts to restore trust between state and society and tackle impunity is what makes UNPOL so important to PoC implementation’.⁵⁰ It is important to acknowledge that completing this work stretches beyond the scope of peace operations that are not intended to be in situ for the long haul. However, police peacekeepers are invariably involved in early peacebuilding efforts commencing processes that can make or break the success of transitions and the risk of recidivism. Given the average duration of a UN peace operation has steadily increased in the past decade and is currently approximately 12 years (Day 2020: p. 2), they are often around and involved in somewhat ‘later’ peacebuilding, too.

As illustrated above in the analysis of police efforts under the three tiers of PoC, UNPOL work to prevent, pre-empt and respond to violence against civilians, establish presence in areas under greatest threat, and assume a credible deterrent posture are all examples of how police contribute to the implementation of PoC mandates. In the context of ongoing conflict and proliferating threats to civilians, UNPOL have adapted and developed a set of activities to protect civilians, demonstrating the ability and will to innovate to meet new and emerging challenges. Some of these are direct to ensure short-term immediate physical protection to those at risk of imminent threats. Others are more indirect, advocating for prioritisation of protection concerns and longer-term efforts to put in place the conditions conducive to a sustainable protective environment. While not always expressed as such, UN police make contributions to implementing PoC mandates under all three tiers of the UN’s PoC concept through acts of compulsion, deterrence, partnership and facilitating the work of others. These interpretations and implementation by UNPOL in field missions have also generated a range of challenges that are the subject of analysis in the following section.

Challenges

Having illustrated many of the ways that UNPOL contribute to protecting civilians, this section identifies three major challenges that have emerged or been exacerbated by the practices discussed above. It higlights where impediments to more significant impacts are being generated due to: ambiguous authority; militarisation; and a reliance on predatory host state police. While some of these challenges may be germane to other components of peace operations, they manifest in particular ways and have unique ramifications for UNPOL. It is those police-specific implications I address here.

All necessary means but no executive authority

Across all missions where UNPOL operate under a PoC mandate there is uncertainty around the authority to act. This is due to confusion over what it means to use ‘all necessary means’ to protect civilians when they do not have an executive mandate (i.e., full powers of arrest and detention).⁵¹ The centripetal force exerted by the PoC mandate and heightened expectations that police should protect civilians has generated a unique tension – a paradox even – for UNPOL between their non-executive function and their active duty to protect.

As discussed above, like the military, UNPOL are authorised to act under Chapter VII of the Charter to protect civilians.⁵² However, unlike militaries, the concept of ‘all necessary means’ runs counter to policing culture where permissible action is clearly delimited and circumscribed. Furthermore, although there is significant variation in policing norms across the contingents contributed from different member states, executive authority is the norm for police in their everyday domestic settings. This is what they are trained for, experienced in and utilise to undertake their routine duties. As one interviewee explained, ‘when we are in the field with no executive mandate, we are operating in very different ways and it’s difficult for us to act’.⁵³ Without executive authority, UNPOL are in unfamiliar territory in more ways than one. Navigating relationships with the military and other mission components, operating under more stringent regulations around detention and the use of force, lacking the authority to use the tools they would usually employ to apprehend those threatening public safety, and contingent on host state consent, they feel much more restricted in what they can do. As one interviewee said, “when we do not have an executive mandate its very difficult for us to escalate our response in accordance with our rules and regulations and still live up to the ‘all necessary means’ idea”.⁵⁴

While reluctance to respond coercively by military peacekeepers is often due to national caveats or lack of capacity, inaction by UNPOL is often connected with this ambiguity around authority.⁵⁵ Field research identified a number of occasions in different missions where civilians were threatened but UNPOL had not intervened due to uncertainty around requisite authority. In Mali, there have been occasions where heavily armed militias were threatening civilians in the presence of UNPOL who did not act to disarm them citing limitations imposed by the Directives on the Use of Force (DUF) for police. ‘We did not know if our leadership would support an effort to take their weapons away and apprehend them’ said UNPOL officers who had faced this situation in the north of Mali.⁵⁶ Episodes of violence between groups of IDPs inside PoC sites in South Sudan or between host-state forces and civilians in DRC have led to similar instances of UNPOL prevarication.⁵⁷

This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that local populations often assume that UNPOL are operating under an executive mandate.⁵⁸ If they make any distinction between UNPOL and the force component, when compared to national police they see UNPOL as a relatively well-resourced and armed presence, so the expectation is that they will at least act to protect civilians in clear and present danger. Community members in the town of Beni in eastern Congo, for instance, lamented perceived inaction with one respondent stating that ‘UN police have guns and big vehicles but they do not arrest these bandits when they attack us’.⁵⁹ The result is serious frustration when this does not eventuate. Such a disconnect between local expectations of UN police on PoC and the realities of what they are currently willing and able to do is a source of frustration for local populations and a serious concern for the UN as it risks jeopardising the important relationships between locals and UN police and perceptions of the legitimacy of missions and the organisation in general.

Implementing and adapting existing guidance to unfolding situations in the field remains a challenge for UNPOL, not least because some member states resist greater precision preferring instead the leeway offered by ambiguity.⁶⁰ Nevertheless, in order to provide UNPOL with clearer parameters that enables better protection, revisions to policy and guidance should tackle this directly, including revisions to specific guidelines on PoC for UNPOL.

Militarisation of (international) policing

As police have been expected to respond robustly in increasingly unstable mission settings they have also become more militarised. Despite long-standing efforts to establish a clear division of labour between the different components, there is a growing tendency for military components to take over policing functions from the police, often when the violence reaches a high level, or when there is a risk to large populations. More generally, the military and police are increasingly asked to work jointly in high risk, often urban areas, thus creating an overlap in the military and police functions of UN peacekeeping. This is particularly prevalent in multidimensional missions with complex mandates involving protection, such as in Mali, South Sudan, Central African Republic and the DRC.⁶¹ For instance, the JTFB (discussed above) was placed under military command following an escalation in violence in 2016 and UNPOL were subsequently incorporated into heavy-handed military-led operations.⁶² As one police member of the JTFB noted, ‘when it comes to coercive action, we’re not supposed to go beyond our DUF, but when things change quickly on the ground our force commanders have ordered us to do so’.⁶³ This calls into question the legality of UNPOL efforts.

While it is true that police in some contributing countries are already more paramilitary in their modality, the demands on UNPOL to operate in highly charged increasingly urban spaces with growing risks to personnel have contributed to the preference for deploying police in the shape of armed, formed units. FPUs have a more proactive posture and modality and are seen as more capable than IPOs of protecting themselves and civilians.⁶⁴ They also simplify coordination and control operating under a a single chain of command (Hansen 2011). It is also worth noting that FPUs have been a convenient gap-filling option for some time as it is far easier and cheaper to recruit and deploy a self-sustaining FPU than the same amount of individual police officers (Durch and Ker 2013). Approximately two-thirds of all UNPOL are deployed in FPUs – a reality that reinforces the paramilitary approach and appearance of UNPOL in big missions with PoC mandates.⁶⁵ As one Malian civilian put it, ‘we cannot tell the difference between the military and the police – they all look the same to us with big guns and uniforms’.⁶⁶

This blurring of lines between the work of the force and the police resuscitates earlier concerns about the negative example this sets for societies recovering from violent conflict often characterised by abusive and highly militarised security forces (Lutterbeck 2004, Agordzo 2009). Indeed, the militarisation of international policing can be seen as an internal contradiction or form of organised hypocrisy by the UN (Brunsson 1989, Lipson 2007): using paramilitary modalities to do international policing while promoting demilitarised democratic policing in host states (Hills 2001, den Heyer 2011). Furthermore, for some time, commentators have questioned how fit for purpose police peacekeepers are to be the purveyors of democratic policing as espoused by the UN (UN 2016c). The policing methodologies and human rights records of some major PCCs has led to criticism of a disconnect between the ‘message’ and the ‘messenger’. It is also worth noting that militarisation of policing is a trend in a number of countries around the world – including those who influence peacekeeping mandates and policy (Karim 2021). Recent large-scale protests across the world against systemic racism in police systems put in stark relief the assumptions about the comparative advantages of western liberal-democratic policing models that undergird UN police reform and capacity-building approaches as a model to be aspired to.

While a great deal of UNPOL’s work remains community-oriented and civilian in nature, the understandable perception among local populations that UNPOL is a paramilitary entity presents significant challenges to UNPOL in gaining trust and access to communities scarred by abusive security actors. This presents impediments to their community-oriented approaches and to missions more generally in leveraging and maximising the comparative advantages of UNPOL. Reversing trends towards militarisation is not straight-forward given the safety and security concerns of PCCs but ensuring this phenomenon is fully ‘costed’ is critical to overcoming the associated challenges.

Dependency on predatory host states

All components of peace operations and the many aspects of their work are contingent on host state consent – a corollary of consent of the main parties as one of the fundamental principles of peacekeeping (see UN 2008: p. 31). Yet this contingency has particular significance for UNPOL given the overwhelming focus of police reform, capacity-building and training efforts on statutory bodies and institutions. Blair (2021) has argued that the UN’s ability to strengthen the rule of law in post-conflict environments is strongest when peace operations engage host states in the process of reform. However, this finding – based largely on the case of post-conflict Liberia characterised by close and largely harmonious working relationship between government and the UN – does not reflect mission contexts discussed above. In the DRC and Mali, for example, through their efforts to support these entities, the UN is at risk of being complicit in abuses and extending the authority of state institutions that do more to predate than protect populations. In strengthening the very security actors who have been responsible for abusing civilians the UN – in this case UNPOL – can be at risk of doing harm. For example, in South Sudan UNPOL worked for a number of years (UNMIS then UNMISS) to train and strengthen the South Sudanese National Police (SSNPS) who were implicated in grave human rights violations when internal conflict broke out in 2013. All capacity-building programming was immediately cut-off, but the UN had essentially been working closely with government and UNPOL had bolstered the security agencies that turned on their own people to devastating effect.

But this dependency on host governments also presents a bigger structural challenge. At the highest levels of government, key power-brokers have been unwilling to engage in security and justice sector reform to transform abusive institutions and build trust between the state and society. As von Billerbeck and Tansey 2019) have shown, in the Congo the UN’s support to the state has ultimately ‘enabled autocracy’. The DRC government has a long history of resisting reforms to the law enforcement agencies and army – partly because doing so would alter the balance of power and diminish its control of resources in the eastern provinces.⁶⁷ As a senior UNPOL official complained, ‘unless there is fundamental change in how the security sector preserves political power, the technical activities we undertake will be little more than window-dressing’.⁶⁸ A similar situation is apparent in Mali and CAR where the dominance of the military/Ministry of Defence over the internal security and justice apparatus stifles the sort of ‘root-and-branch’ reform envisaged by UN police development policy and doctrine.⁶⁹ As a result, irrespective of the mandate to support/coordinate wide-ranging SSR, police and their rule of law colleagues in missions engage primarily in limited ‘train and equip’ type capacity building activities while the structures that perpetuate distrust and shield abusers remain unaltered (Chappuis and Gorur 2019).

Notwithstanding the harm mitigation potential of the ‘Human Rights Due Diligence Policy’ (UN 2011), designed to prevent UN support to security actors implicated in human rights abuses, the reliance on host state consent has further complicated decisions about how and when to engage in capacity-building and joint patrols with the abusive security sectors of recalcitrant governments. The importance placed on reformed law enforcement institutions as a prerequisite for mission exit strategies makes such choices even more loaded and renders this a significant and recurrent challenge for UNPOL and mission leadership across a wide range of operations.

The consent contingency means that only genuine buy-in from host governments is likely to enable the change required to transform abusive and incompetent police services and unpick the military’s dominance over security governance in many peacekeeping contexts. The promise of capacity-building support and extending state authority could be leveraged by missions as an incentive for governments. However, garnering the political will likely requires high-level political engagement and pressure (e.g., from the UNSC) at critical junctures – particularly at the beginning of missions and other key turning points. This speaks to the broader challenge of aligning PoC strategies with political strategies for missions – something that missions have struggled to do (Day et al. 2020).

These three sets of issues – ambiguous authority, militarisation, and reliance on predatory host states – are of central importance but they are not the only ones. Other issues include the scope of the PoC mandate for UNPOL (protecting who from what exactly), as well as the need to harmonise norms and standards across contingents contributed by member states with diverse policing cultures and practices. Together these challenges arising from the changing and growing role of UNPOL in implementing PoC mandates make it difficult for the UN and its field missions to harness the perceived comparative advantages discussed above.

Conclusion

This article has shown that UN Police are being employed more often, in expanded ways and with heightened expectations when it comes to PoC. These new and growing demands have led to creative responses. UNPOL have stepped up to address protection imperatives and demonstrated a willingness to innovate in response to the changing nature of the environments in which they are being deployed. At a time when the shortcomings and negative unintended consequences of militarised approaches to PoC has become clearer, the examples and developments highlighted herein offer important insights into what police can contribute to non-military approaches to PoC in peace operations. But these advances have also generated significant challenges.

Many of the ad hoc developments in the field (e.g., PoC site SOPs on detention in South Sudan (UNMISS 2014, 2015), JTFB-related SOP in CAR) have been formalised and codified ‘on the fly’.⁷⁰ Given that experimentation in one mission is often mimicked by others, it is important that the lessons identified in the foregoing analysis from experiences in CAR, South Sudan, DRC, Mali and elsewhere – regarding what has worked work as well as the challenges arising – are captured and through knowledge management processes at headquarters and translated into doctrine to guide the work of UN police at the operational and tactical levels. But this will not happen easily as such organisational learning has proven to be a major challenge for the UN’s peace operations bureaucracy in the past, including in the area of policing (Benner et al. 2011, Hunt 2015). A clear opportunity is updating the 2017 PoC guidance for UNPOL and elaborating guidance on police-military coordination as part of continued efforts to elaborate and update the Strategic Guidance Framework (SGF) for International Police Peacekeeping to reflect these developments; making sure UN police are given the best chance of implementing this most challenging of mandates.

As usual, policies and doctrine are only as good as the training conducted based on them. In this sense further dividends are possible through more and better pre-deployment and in-mission training on policing concepts, roles and responsibilities in PoC strategies, including the use of force as a last resort. This is particularly important given the variation in norms that underpins the training of police across contributing countries and the importance of conflict and culturally sensitive approaches to community engagement in these settings if harm is to be mitigated (Henigson, 2020).⁷¹ More generally, as Rietjens and Ruffa (2019) have shown, enhancing coherence in peace operations requires greater attention to ‘organisational fit’ across strategic and organisational, cultural and human, and operational levels of activity. In the context of UNPOL, efforts to: (i) strengthen recruitment of PoC-ready UNPOL from PCCs (UNPD 2016; Johansson and Hultman, 2019); (ii) create a culture of accountability for performance against PoC objectives (Di Razza 2020, Donais and Tanguay 2021); and, (iii) achieve a more integrated UN system-wide approach to the rule of law, including through the Global Focal Point, will all contribute to that aim.

It is clear that there is much that can be done to improve the performance of UNPOL on PoC through technical and organisational improvements. However, these bureaucratic and technical fixes will only lead so far. The findings presented above illustrate the potential value-add of police to non-military approaches to PoC. However, there is a need for further research on the effectiveness of UNPOL PoC activities in order to establish what works, what does not and why. Studies designed to systematically evaluate UNPOL impacts on both short- and longer-term PoC outcomes in a range of different mission settings would be valuable to that end. Research that sought to disaggregate the contributions of police from other components of missions and other partners would also be useful. Causal analyses of this sort are extremely difficult to do with precision; however, research designs that acknowledge limitations but nevertheless use techniques such as process tracing to establish defensible narratives of contribution if not causation can still be valuable as a complement to extant statistical studies. The findings of such research would provide a basis to inform difficult decisions by UN member states and the Secretariat – often shaped by political calculations – about if, how and in what numbers to deploy police to ongoing and future peace operations. Given the growing emphasis on police-led transitions and exit strategy thinking this is particularly important. As UN peace operations settle into a period of contraction, thinking differently about appropriate mission configurations and evidencing their comparative advantages is likely to be critical to providing maximum protection to the vulnerable populations that these missions are sent to serve.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers, the editors and Dr Shannon Zimmerman for their constructive feedback and helpful suggestions that helped refine this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council through the Discovery Early Caereer Researcher Award fellowship [DE170100138] and Discovery Project Grant [DP1601022429]

Notes on contributors

Charles T. Hunt

Charles T. Hunt is Associate Professor of Global Security in the School of Global, Urban & Social Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, and Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research in New York. Dr Hunt is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal Global Responsibility to Protect and on the editorial boards of International Peacekeeping and the Journal of International Peacekeeping. His research is focused on UN peace operations and peacebuilding in conflict-affected states with recent articles published in Survival, Conflict and Cooperation, International Affairs, International Peacekeeping, and Global Governance.

Notes

1. Others have sought to theorise the mechanisms through which they can coerce, persuade and induce better protection (Howard 2019).

2. Interviews/focus groups lasted approximately 60–90 minutes and selection utilised ‘snowball sampling’ identifying respondents by asking initial sample of respondents to recommend other actors for interview.

3. The field research informing this paper meets national and international guidelines for research with human participants and was approved by the RMIT University College Human Ethics Advisory Network (Approval reference #: CHEAN B 21,048-08/17). In accordance with this approval, informed written or verbal (on interview recording) consent was obtained from all participants. All interview data in this paper are anonymised and non-identifiable.

4. NB: In transitional authority missions in Kosovo in 1999/2000, duplicated in Timor-Leste the following year, UNPOL were furnished with executive mandate. This proved to be a short-term development though the authorisation of ‘Urgent Temporary Measures’ in MINUSCA today echoes these – albeit more circumscribed – executive policing functions. An “executive mandate” for UNPOL refers to situations where UNPOL are authorised to assume full policing responsibilities while the host-state police and other law enforcement agencies regain functional self-sufficiency. This provides UN police with power to arrest, search, detain and carry arms under the authority of the Security Council rather than with consent of a sovereign host government. It includes conducting investigations, carrying out special operations, and maintaining public order. See: (Dwan 2002).

5. From 2,539 in 1999 to over 10,500 in 2019. NB: The number of UNPOL deployed reached a high water-mark in 2010 when over 17,000 UNPOL were authorised by the Security Council.

6. Figures as per 31 March 2020. NB: In 2007 a small (20 pax) Standing Police Capacity (SPC) was created. To provide mission start-up capacity and support on-going missions through short fly-in-fly-out support roles. Though the SPC can make important contributions to UNPOL efforts (e.g., support with a particular legislative process on rule of law, conduct an evaluation of programming or specific units) these usually only indirectly relate to POC.

7. Interview with former UN DPKO official – New York, February 2020.

8. Interviews with police advisors to various member states’ permanent mission to the UN – New York, USA, February 2017.

9. Interview with former UN DPKO official – New York, February 2020.

10. Interview with senior UNPD official – New York, February 2017.

11. Interviews with police advisors to various member states’ permanent mission to the UN – New York, USA, November 2019. See also: (UN 2019b). Proceedings of 8661^st meeting of the UN Security Council, 6 November 2019, https://undocs.org/en/S/PV.8661.

12. Kirschner and Miller (2019) and Johansson and Hultman (2019) find that UN police reduce conflict-related sexual violence and Di Salvatore (2019) finds that only UNPOL can reduce criminal violence.

13. The UN Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support originally developed an operational concept for PoC in 2010. It was codified in the 2015 PoC policy (UN 2015b, para. 30), which was updated in 2019 (UN 2019a, para. 40). NB: a 2020 Handbook (UN 2020b) further elaborates guidance for these different components.

14. Interviews with UNPOL officials – Bamako, Mali and Kinshasa, DRC, 2018–2019.

15. Interviews with UNPOL officials – Bamako, Mali and Kinshasa, DRC, 2018–2019.

16. Interviews with MINUSCA officials and Central African national law enforcement officials – Bangui, CAR, August 2019.

17. Interviews with UNPOL official – CAR 2019.

18. Interviews with UNPOL official – Bentiu, South Sudan, 2018.

19. Interviews with UNPOL officials – CAR and South Sudan, 2018–2019.

20. Interviews with UNPOL official – Bria, CAR, 2019.

21. Interviews with MINUSCA officials – Bria, CAR, August 2019.

22. Focus groups with IDP camp residents and armed group representatives – Bria, CAR, August 2019.

23. Focus group with armed group representatives – Bria, CAR, August 2019.

24. Interviews with UNPOL officials – CAR, South Sudan & Mali, 2018–2019.

25. NB: the use of force by UNPOL is governed by Directives on the Use of Force (DUF).

26. See below section on ‘Militarisation of (international) policing) for further discussion of FPUs vis-à-vis IPOs.

27. The other two functions being: (i) Protect United Nations personnel and property; and, (ii) Support police operations that require a formed response or specialised capacity above the capability of IPOs.

28. NB: once incidents are characteristed by sustained use of firearms of heavy weaponry there should be a withdrawal of UNPOL and a handover of command and control and responsibility for PoC to the military component. See: UN DPKO/DFS Policy (revised) on Formed Police Units in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, para 51.

29. Interview with MONUSCO UNPOL official – Kinshasa, DRC, June 2018. NB: Similar situations arose in Mali during 2018 general election.

30. ‘Temporary’ only in name having been in place since 2014.

31. See: UN Security Council resolutions 2149 (2014), 2217(2015) and 2301 (2016).

32. Interviews with senior mission leaders and UNPOL officials in MINUSCA – Bria, CAR, August 2019.

33. Interview with senior mission leader MINUSCA – Bangui, CAR, August 2019.

34. Interview with UNPOL official – Malakal, South Sudan, December 2018.

35. For people deemed to pose a serious threat – i.e., cases that involve violence, sexual assault, or other serious threats.

36. Interviews with UNPOL officials in MINUSMA – Mopti, Mali, April 2017.

37. Interviews with UNPOL officials in UNMISS (Bentiu, South Sudan,December 2018), MINUSCA (Bangui, CAR, August 2019).

38. Interviews with MINUSMA UNPOL officials and Malian Police Commissioner – Bamako, Mali, August 2019.

39. Interview with JTFB Deputy Commander – Bangui, CAR, August 2019.

40. NB: the inclusion of UNMISS in the sample of cases for this study would certainly have increased this percentage average.

41. ‘Establishing a protective environment’ is the term used by the UN to refer to efforts that work towards building a longer-term, sustainable protective environment. See (UN 2019a).

42. Interviews with community-based organisations – Beni and Goma, DRC, May 2018.

43. Interview with Congolese national police officials and civil society organisation – Beni, DRC, May 2018.

44. Interview with Congolese national police officials and civil society organisation – Beni, DRC, May 2018.

45. Interview with Congolese national police officials and civil society organisation – Beni, DRC, May 2018.

46. Interview with UNPOL official in MINUSCA – Bangui, CAR, August 2019.

47. Interview with UNPOL official in MINUSMA – Gao, Mali, 2017.

48. Interviews with UNHCR official – Bangui, CAR, August 2019.

49. Interviews with human rights officials – Mali, South Sudan, DRC, CAR.

50. Interview with senior UNPOL official – New York, December 2019.

51. See Note 5 above for explanation of executive policing mandates.

52. UN guidelines on the role of United Nations police in protection of civilians state that, “Security Council resolutions authorising the use of ‘all necessary means’ to protect civilians are applicable to UN police, even if the resolutions do not set out the specific role intended for UN police”. (UN 2017b. para.32, p.9).

53. Interview with senior UNPOL official – Bamako, Mali, August 2019.

54. Interview with senior UNPOL official – Juba, South Sudan, December 2018.

55. It is important to note that another line of argument is that unclear directives on the use of force can be used as an excuse by PCCs for inaction, or at least can create the perception that inaction will not be punished while incorrect action could lead to penalties as severe as repatriation.

56. Interview with MINUSMA UNPOL official, Gao, Mali, 2017.

57. Interviews with UNMISS and MONUSCO officials – South Sudan and DRC 2018.

58. Interviews with UNPOL officials DRC, Mali, SS and CAR.

59. Focus group with community-based organisations – Beni, North Kivu, DRC, May 2018.

60. Interview with UN DPO official – New York, February 2020.

61. Interview with UNMISS, MONUSCO, MINUSMA and MINUSCA officials – South Sudan, DRC, Mali, CAR, 2017–2019.

62. The JTFB saw police and military involved in highly militarised joint operation in PK5 neighbourhood that went badly wrong with negative repercussions for police access and effectiveness protecting civilian in PK5/Bangui. in the night between 7 and 8 April 2018, what was announced as joint law enforcement operation of MINUSCA, the Central African Armed Defence Forces (FACA) and the Internal Security Forces (ISF) aimed at disarming and arresting some criminal groups in the PK5 area of Bangui turned into violent fire confrontation between the armed groups and the mission. (http://opiniojuris.org/2018/04/16/escalation-of-violence-in-bangui-has-minusca-become-party-to-a-conflict-in-car-and-what-would-that-mean/).

63. Focus group with MINUSCA JTFB officials – Bangui, CAR, August 2019.

64. Interviews with UNPOL officials in MINUSMA, MONUSCO, UNMISS and MINUSCA – Bamako, Mali (April 2017), Goma, DRC (May 2018), Juba, South Sudan (December 2018) and Bangui, CAR (August 2019).

65. UN Police Website, 31 August 2020.

66. Focus group with community-based organisations – Mopti, Mali, 2017.

67. Interview with former senior MONUSCO official – New York, December 2019.

68. Interview with senior MONUSCO UNPOL official – Goma, DRC, June 2018.

69. Interviews with expert analyst on CAR and senior mission leaders in MINUSCA – Bangui, CAR, August 2019. Interviews with MINUSMA officials – Bamako, Mali, August 2019.

70. e.g. UNMISS, Guidelines on Informal Mitigation and Dispute Resolution Mechanism in Protection of Civilians Sites, August 2015; UN DPKO, Challenges, lessons learned and implications of the protection of civilians sites in South Sudan, 2015; UNMISS, Note of Guidance For UNMISS, Security of the IDP Population in the PoC Sites, 2014.

71. The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.