Project Description

Peace missions, including good offices engagements (GOEs), special political missions (SPMs), and peacekeeping operations (PKOs), are the main tools of the United Nations (UN) to maintain international peace and security. One of their core principles is consent, denoting the agreement of the belligerents to engage with the peace mission in view of facilitating the achievement of its objectives. Consent is central for peace missions as without the cooperation of the belligerents, they can be severely hampered in the fulfilment of their mandates. Yet, despite the wide acknowledgement of the importance of the concept in both research and practice, there is to date no coherent theory on belligerent consent to UN peace missions. Consent remains under-specified, contested, and elusive.

The project fills this gap by developing a mid-level theory on belligerent consent to UN peace missions. It explores what consent means and how it manifests in practice, over time, and across peace missions. It also analyses the factors influencing consent and how consent relates to effectiveness. Overall, the proposed project makes a groundbreaking contribution by providing clarity on one of the most fundamental principles of making and keeping peace and thereby ultimately seeks to lay the foundations for more effective peace missions in the future.