Peacekeeping and postwar violence

This chapter moves for the observation that UN peacekeepers operate in post-conflict settings that are, in practice, just postwar rather than truly post-violence settings. We know that violence is persistent and lingers in the aftermath of a civil war. At the same time, this does not make the postwar setting a simple continuation of the civil war – it presents its own specific challenges that are not trivial to the approach and success of UN missions. In fact, there is evidence that peacekeepers curb violence that lingers in the postwar phase as well (Hultman et al. 2016; Kathman and Benson 2019), so this violence does not pose major problems to the mission. As argued in this chapter, the postwar challenges peacekeepers face are not simply related to the lingering presence of violence linked to the past civil war.1 This chapter highlights and focuses on two main changes in the dynamics of violence that peacekeeping missions need to adjust to in the postwar phase, namely (i) the emergence of new violent actors missions are not designed to tackle, and (ii) the risks of violent urban disorders involving civilians