Beyond Casualties: How Peacekeeper Targeting Affects Mission Effectiveness and Outcomes

While violence against UN peacekeepers has become increasingly prominent in contemporary peacekeeping operations, its consequences for mission effectiveness and post-conflict outcomes remain underexplored. This paper investigates how targeting of peacekeepers affects operational capacity and security outcomes in the short term. Using machine learning analysis of UN Secretary-General reports (1994-2024) processed through a semi-automated event coding framework, combined with ACLED data on peacekeeper targeting incidents, I examine how violence against peacekeepers constrains mission operations through two mechanisms: risk aversion and operational incapability. I conceptualise operational capacity as a mediating variable linking peacekeeper targeting to security outcomes, measured through peacekeepers’ engagement frequency and intensity, activity diversity, and mandate performance. The analysis tests whether violence reduces operational capacity across these dimensions, which in turn predicts worse security outcomes, specifically increased violence and reduced conflict containment, and will be supplemented by qualitative fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By connecting violence against peacekeepers to mission effectiveness through operational constraints, this paper offers insights into improving mission design, risk management, and resource allocation in peacekeeping.