While peacekeeping operations have always been heavily dependent on host-state support and international political backing, changes in the global geopolitical and technological landscapes have presented new forms of state interference intended to influence, undermine, and impair the activities of missions on the ground. Emerging parallel security actors, notably the Wagner Group, have cast themselves as directly or implicitly in competition with the security guarantee provided by peacekeepers, while the proliferation of mis- and disinformation and growing cybersecurity vulnerabilities present novel challenges for missions’ relationships with host states and populations, operational security, and the protection of staff and their local sources. Together, these trends undermine missions’ efforts to protect civilians, operate safely, and implement long-term political settlements. This essay analyzes these trends and the dilemmas they present for in-country UN officials attempting to induce respect for international norms and implement their mandates. It describes nascent strategies taken by missions to maintain their impartiality, communicate effectively, and maintain the trust of those they are charged with protecting, and highlights early good practices for monitoring and analyzing this new operation environment, for reporting on and promoting human rights, and for operating safely.

United Nations peacekeeping is experiencing a generational shift as several large missions downsize and close. Amid this change, this essay considers the future of the Protection of Civilians (PoC) mandate, which has been a priority of UN peacekeeping since it was first authorized twenty-five years ago. It argues that PoC has evolved significantly, expanding from a narrow focus on physical protection from immediate threats to a holistic approach that includes establishing a protective environment. It suggests that while the PoC mandate has proven effective in reducing violence, the future is fraught with four significant challenges: waning state commitment to UN peacekeeping, the fragmentation of global peace and security mechanisms, shifting local perceptions in a rapidly changing information landscape, and mounting disillusionment among UN personnel. This essay contends that these obstacles underscore the inherently political nature of PoC, where power dynamics and perceptions profoundly impact mission success. As peacekeeping missions scale back, PoC remains essential but increasingly precarious, demanding strategic adaptability and sustained commitment. Ultimately, the essay argues that without renewed political and institutional dedication, PoC’s effectiveness—and the UN’s credibility—will be difficult to uphold in the face of evolving conflict dynamics and geopolitical shifts.

Long viewed as an example of effective multilateralism, UN peace operations are facing mounting challenges. Transformations in the landscape of conflict are outpacing their ability to respond. Rising expectations of peacekeeping have led to disenchantment with what they can deliver, while dis- and misinformation tactics undermine the efforts of the UN to make and build peace. As UN peace operations risk becoming another casualty of intensifying international tensions, great power rivalry, and the erosion of the rules and norms that govern international cooperation, we consider the future of UN peace operations. In the debate between a “pragmatic” and an “adaptive” approach to peacekeeping, we argue that a fundamental question is the ability of both alternatives to address three recurring issues that have shaped the effectiveness and legitimacy of peace operations: the mismatch between ambitious mandates and limited resources; the gap between the protection of civilians objective and its implementation in practice; and growing difficulties in honoring the principles of impartiality. We argue that policymakers and researchers should not lose sight of the fact that peacekeeping's legitimacy depends on its adherence to some version of host-state consent and some kind of restriction on when and how force is used. The expectation of civilian populations that the UN stands for protection also means that the UN must continue to safeguard some key norms associated with peacekeeping.

Peace operations are often deployed to countries where conflicts are effectively ongoing, with mandates to protect civilians and provide security. With the authorisation to use force beyond self-defence, peacekeepers are expected to exert military pressure on armed groups to induce them to abandon violence and join peace processes. Such an approach falls in the domain of compellence. Given that peace operations struggle to adapt to this new expectation, it is imperative to find effective ways of compelling armed groups. While studies on compellence agree on the effectiveness of denial-type pressure, its specific forms are highly context-dependent. What is the most effective way to achieve denial against armed groups in the context of peace operations? There are four such approaches: attrition, stronghold neutralisation, decapitation, and counter-coercion negation. A case study of peacekeeping by the United Nation in Ituri reveals that stronghold neutralisation and counter-coercion negation were especially important for compelling rebels to disarm. As existing studies have not examined the effectiveness of specific forms of denial in peace operations, the finding contributes significantly to the literature on compellence and peace operations.

Given the increasing size and functions of United Nations (UN) peace operations (POs) and the fact that they often operate in contexts where natural resources are degraded, POs have repercussions on the environment. Yet, there is not much literature on their obligations regarding the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. This article provides insights into the obligations of POs in relation to armed conflict. First, it highlights POs’ customary international environmental law obligations. Second, it delves into their environmental obligations under the UN's internal rules and the host State's laws. Third, it explores obligations that arise from their mandates. In each of these sections, the article highlights the relevance and application of these obligations in armed conflicts. The last section examines the obligations of POs to protect the natural environment under international humanitarian law.

International organisations reflect global power configurations and as such, are deemed to reproduce global inequalities. Nevertheless, they also represent opportunities for the Global South to challenge the global stratification of power, for instance by providing personnel to international agencies and bureaucracies. This article examines the role of leadership personnel from the Global South in implementing robust peacekeeping mandates.

Given that states from the Global South have often been hesitant to support the use of force internationally, can leadership positions in peace operations help these states to influence norms at the implementation level? We develop a conceptual understanding of individuals’ role in implementing norms and apply the framework to military force commanders from Brazil, India, and Rwanda. The analysis demonstrates that appointments provide an opportunity for norm contestation, but do not necessarily guarantee such influence. Under certain circumstances, we find that military force commanders can actually undermine their governments’ preferences. However, the relation between force commanders’ practices and their country of origin's policy stance is complex and influenced by a variety of different factors that merit further investigation.

This article problematises the status quo bias in IR socialisation research, and develops an alternative concept of competitive socialisation, through which subaltern actors internalise dominant norms, enhance their competitive edge, and enact more equalised power relations in global politics. The dominant strand of IR socialisation research mostly conceives of socialisation as a status-quo-oriented practice that reinforces the existing power hierarchy, such as teacher-student relationship. This has resulted in a one-sided theory neglecting the importance of proactive and self-directed socialisation efforts embarked upon by subaltern actors themselves. Based on an alternative sociological approach that defines socialisation as a practice of self-enhancement, this article develops the concept of competitive socialisation and articulates alternative pathways to the internalisation of dominant norms. It applies this framework to the cases of Chinese socialisation into the peacekeeping community, and Russia's socialisation into the multilateral development community. These case studies demonstrate that the holistic internalisation of dominant Western norms has enabled Beijing and Moscow to challenge the existing global power hierarchy. This, in turn, resulted in fundamental changes in their behaviours from initial norm rejection, to passive acceptance, and finally to active learning and norm internalisation.

This article traces recent changes of the practices and justifications of the use of force in intervention, in the context of African security governance, highlighting how these changes interact with norm transformations at the scale of the global order. In doing so, it conveys how a long-standing pattern of norm contestation between international and African actors over external intervention vs sovereignty, has started to give way to a mutually accepted division of labour. After 9/11, the paradigm of liberal interventionism has been incrementally replaced by the framework of stabilisation, with a re-prioritisation of sovereigntist agendas. This has increased collaboration between international and African actors, specifically prompting the United Nations and the African Union to divide tasks of mandating and enforcement, thereby increasing inter-institutional ‘order’. This consensus, however, far from signifying wider compliance with ‘liberal ordering’ principles, rather indicates the need to revisit central assumptions of the International Relations norm diffusion literature. While the latter emphasises the diffusion of ‘good’ international norms, especially pertaining to human rights and democratisation, the growing consensus on ‘intervention as stabilisation’ instead exposes how post-9/11 justifications of practices that carry the potential to downsize the scope of such norms, are starting to resonate across international, regional and national sites of policy and practice.

Human rights violations committed by international organisations (IOs) have raised demands that IOs should be held accountable for their decisions, policies, and actions. However, traditional forms of accountability have often failed in the context of global governance. This article introduces pluralist accountability as a form of accountability whereby third parties hold IOs and their implementing partners accountable for human rights violations. In pluralist accountability, third parties set the standards for IOs’ actions in relation to human rights, review their behaviour and impose normative or material sanctions in case of misbehaviour. The article further reveals two conditions that foster the development of pluralist accountability, namely the competition among third parties and the degree of vulnerability of the implementing actors or the mandating authority with regard to human rights demands. This argument is illustrated with empirical insights from peace operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, which were accused of human trafficking and the violation of the rights of detainees.

This article develops an International Practice Theory (IPT) approach to United Nations peace operations through the study of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). MINUSTAH saw the introduction of new practices within the context of a UN peace operation, namely the use of joint military-police forces to conduct offensive action against armed groups that were labelled as ‘gangs’. While more objectivist problem-solving approaches would argue that the UN mission was simply adapting to the situation on the ground, an IPT lens reveals that there was considerable struggle to integrate these new practices within the repertoire of peacekeeping. The article argues for the benefits of applying an IPT lens to peace operations while proposing to develop theoretical and methodological approaches that have been less prominent in IPT. Theoretically, it posits that IPT can better articulate practice and discourse by paying more attention to what actors say about what they do.