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This dissertation investigates how natural resources can undermine the effectiveness of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping. UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) generally consist of multidimensional missions. Since the 1980s, each mission has been tailored to local contexts and cultural conditions, allowing them to be more effective in accomplishing their mandates. Having abundant natural resources in the conflict zones leads to significant differences in the outcomes of conflict dynamics since it affects the revenue stream of both the government and the rebel groups’ insurgencies. However, there is little research on testing the mechanism between abundant natural resources in the conflict states and UN PKOs.
On the contrary, the mechanisms between natural resources and conflict is well studied in existing literature, which includes natural resources and conflict onset (Collier and Hoeffler 2002; Fearon and Laitin 2003; Ross 2012), conflict duration (Collier et al. 2004; Fearon 2004; Lujala 2010), conflict intensity (Addison et al. 2000; Lujala 2009), conflict recurrence (Doyle and Sambanis 2000; Rustad and Binningsbø 2012), and resources characteristics (lootability) increasing the likelihood of violence (LeBellion 2001; Lujala et al. 2005; Ross 2006; Snyder 2006; Asal et al. 2016). Additionally, the literature on UN peacekeeping effectiveness mostly focuses on the extent to which UN forces are effective in mitigating conflict violence based on the robustness of the forces, which are measured by their quantity or the quality of the forces. Absolute quantity (Kathman and Benson 2019) or stronger relative power of the forces (Ruggeri et al. 2013) leads to more effective peacekeeping, while missions’ internal ethnic diversity (Bove and Ruggeri 2015) or how much trust they win from local populations to be perceived as unbiased and cooperative forces (Bove and Ruggeri 2019) matters when they are aiming for better or more effective peace.
Abundant natural resources in conflict-affected countries have a significant impact on how conflicts unfold and, consequently, on how the UN responds to them. This difference can be observed in the different types of UN PKOs deployed and their effectiveness in keeping peace between regions rich in natural resources and those that are not. Based on previous research in the field, this dissertation aims to analyze and empirically assess how the effectiveness of UN PKO varies under the condition of natural resource conflicts. By doing so, I expect it will provide another path of research that bolsters UN PKO effectiveness literature. This research seeks to connect scholarship between research about natural resources and conflict and research about UN PKO effectiveness. Although UN PKOs consider the social and cultural variation of rebel groups, few scholars have addressed how natural resources affect these groups and, consequently, UN PKO efforts.
In short, this study aims to demonstrate that abundant natural resources also exert a significant impact on UN PKOs by altering the nature of rebel organizations in comparison to areas lacking them. In other words, abundant natural resources tend to attract organizations with more opportunistic members (Weinstein 2006). When the majority of members resort to violence for personal gain, this naturally results in escalated violence among members who lack strong organizational leadership and control. Substantial disparities in violence, whether influenced by the presence or absence of natural resources, can result in an entirely distinct peacekeeping operation, even though it may involve seemingly similar contingents of blue-helmeted soldiers, police, and observers. This demonstrates that the consistent empirical method of assessing the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations solely by comparing casualty numbers before and after troop deployment to conflict zones would encounter limitations. In contrast, this study aims to establish a foundation for effectively addressing the role of natural resources in literature concerning the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping forces. This will be achieved by demonstrating how the composition and deployment of UN PKOs change, as well as the extent to which they mitigate conflict, contingent upon the presence or absence of abundant and exploitable natural resources in the conflict zones.
While focusing on the mechanisms between the natural resources in the conflict states and UN peacekeeping efforts, each paper covers how natural resources of the conflict states cause changes in each of the stages of UN peacekeeping operations, starting from peacekeeping deployment to how effective peacekeeping operations are in mitigating civilian killings. The first paper explores how widespread illegal exploitation and illegal trade of natural resources increase the likelihood of UN peacekeeping deployments in resource-rich, conflict-affected countries. It highlights the conflicts fueled by resource-driven extortion are particularly attract attention from international intervention, such as UN PKOs.
The second paper extends this analysis by looking at how the presence of lootable natural resources impacts the type of peacekeeping missions that are deployed. The paper finds that in lootable resource environments, missions are more closely tied to the resource values and civilian violence. In non-lootable contexts, other factors such as violence led by rebels and human rights violations drive intervention. The third paper focuses on peacekeeping effectiveness, showing that while UN peacekeeping operations decrease civilian victimization in resource-poor conflicts, their effectiveness diminishes in resource-rich settings. In such environments, peacekeepers are not able to mitigate violence effectively because of opportunistic behavior of rebels and weak governance in the conflict-affected countries. The three papers contribute to advancing our understanding of how natural resources shape how and when UN peacekeeping operations are deployed and the outcomes of UN PKOs.
