Return from Peacekeeping: Mission Effects on Veterans, States, and Communities

The number of peacekeepers deployed to Africa has doubled over the last decade, with two-thirds of the over 100,000 deployed troops drawn from African militaries. Significant international resources, in the form of funding, equipment, and training are invested into preparing African soldiers for peacekeeping missions and supporting them while on deployment. Yet little is known about the effects of peacekeeping deployments on the thousands of soldiers that return home each year.

Most empirical research on peacekeeping is focused on the peace operation, peacekeeping sites, and the conflict that the missions responds to. However, scholarly attention typically ends when soldiers return home and transition from peacekeeper back to a 'regular' soldier. Likewise, while there is focus on the broader civilian communities affected by military missions at the peacekeeping site, similar attention has not been given to the effects on the community that the peacekeepers come from. There have long been assumptions that involvement in peacekeeping missions will have a positive effect on individual soldiers and African militaries more broadly through increased training, new professional experiences, exposure to other foreign militaries, and added income. Yet, recent examples of revolts among returned peacekeepers challenge these assumptions. Empirical research which engages with returned peacekeepers is needed to further understand how deployment experiences can have varied long-term effects on individuals, communities, and military organizations.

The project uses a multi-method approach including an in-depth series of qualitative interviews with peacekeepers, life histories, key informant interviews with military, government, and donor leadership and document/media analysis of relevant material related to provisions for returned peacekeepers. It will provide cross-country comparative analysis through three field research sites: Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. Individuals participating in the first year will be re-interviewed approximately 2 years later to observe changes across time. The proposed methodology allows for the investigation of post-peacekeeping to move beyond a snapshot in time to envisage the experience as one which may have long-term effects. The three country comparison provides the opportunity to examine how different political environments and framings of peacekeeping may impact the expectations of the soldiers involved and their experiences upon their return home. It also allows the chance to explore military institutions with diverse experiences and former peacekeepers at various stages since their return from deployment.

This project contributes to debates in several academic fields including Security Studies, African Studies, Comparative Politics, and Military Sociology. It will also engage directly with key practitioners and policy makers within the realm of peacekeeping in Africa through briefings of findings to decision-makers and a dissemination conference at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Center in Accra Ghana (with material from these events publicly available for those unable to attend). The project also stands to be of high interest to non-African policy-makers as the vast majority of the 6 billion USD spent annually on peacekeeping comes from states in the Global North. The research aims to explore whether new forms of support to peacekeepers are needed which extend beyond pre-deployment and deployment periods.

The wide breadth of actors involved in or interested in peacekeeping allows the project to have an impact on a broad range of international beneficiaries, including state authorities, policy makers, donor countries/organisations, general public audiences, and peacekeeping veterans (as well as the previously mentioned academic beneficiaries).

Through a three-country comparative study, involving extensive interviews with peacekeepers and key decisions-makers, the project provides new empirical data to examine the effects of the missions on veterans and their home communities following deployments. In doing so, it expands the conventional scope of peacekeeping to look outside the timeframe of the mission itself and beyond the military realm.

This project raises awareness of long-term effects of peacekeeping by providing the perspective of soldiers and their communities to beneficiaries that will otherwise be unlikely to have access to the views of these veterans. Complex bureaucracies within states and international organisations, as well as hierarchical decision-making in militaries often means that those responsible for decisions regarding peacekeeping are far removed from the peacekeepers themselves. Similarly, the general public outside of conflict zones who have interests or concerns about peace and security will rarely have the opportunity to engage directly with African peacekeepers. This perspective is particularly important as peacekeepers are the individuals being entrusted with international security. Furthermore, these peacekeepers have at times had grievances post-deployment that have led to revolts and instability in their home states. This project helps understand where tensions may arise by exploring expectations of veterans, support by states post-deployment, and soldiers' long term trajectories following involvement in peacekeeping.

The project will identify aspects of support that have either worked or are needed to better assist veterans and their families in the post-deployment transition. This allows policy makers, donor states, and international organisations a better understanding of potential benefits as well as unintended consequences for individuals, communities, and states that contribute to these international missions. Through direct engagement with various national and international decision-makers, the findings are intended to inform policies related to provisions and services for veterans. The comparative nature of the project also provides the opportunity for policymakers to learn from experiences, both positive and negative, in other countries with similar histories and socio-economic traits.

By expanding the temporal and geographic scope of peacekeeping studies, the research aims to contribute to an understanding of peacekeeping that takes into account the long-term effects on those that deploy. Ultimately by generating new empirical findings, raising international awareness about the impact on soldiers, and direct engagement with key decision-makers, it is expected that the project can have a positive impact on veteran peacekeepers and enable the peacekeeping process to be one which leads to further stability in the life of soldiers, communities and states.