TY - JOUR
T1 - Buying Hearts and Minds, Securing Blue Helmets
T2 - UN Quick Impact Projects and Violence against Peacekeepers
AU - Breslawski, Jori
AU - Kathman, Jacob D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected]
PY - 2026/9
Y1 - 2026/9
N2 - United Nations peacekeeping operations have come under threat, with peacekeepers facing attacks by armed groups. One way that the UN has sought to generate support for its missions is through Quick Impact Projects (QIPs)—small-scale, low-cost, visible projects, carried out in consultation with local communities. Do QIPs increase, decrease, or have no effect on violence against peacekeepers? We argue that QIPs decrease violence against peacekeepers by building support from the civilian population, increasing civilians’ willingness to provide intelligence to peacekeepers and allowing blue helmets to more effectively avoid or thwart subsequent attacks. We test the relationship between QIPs and violence against peacekeepers using geo-located data from the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan. We find that as QIPs in a given district increase, armed group violence against peacekeepers subsequently decreases.
AB - United Nations peacekeeping operations have come under threat, with peacekeepers facing attacks by armed groups. One way that the UN has sought to generate support for its missions is through Quick Impact Projects (QIPs)—small-scale, low-cost, visible projects, carried out in consultation with local communities. Do QIPs increase, decrease, or have no effect on violence against peacekeepers? We argue that QIPs decrease violence against peacekeepers by building support from the civilian population, increasing civilians’ willingness to provide intelligence to peacekeepers and allowing blue helmets to more effectively avoid or thwart subsequent attacks. We test the relationship between QIPs and violence against peacekeepers using geo-located data from the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan. We find that as QIPs in a given district increase, armed group violence against peacekeepers subsequently decreases.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105044197443
U2 - 10.1093/isq/sqag049
DO - 10.1093/isq/sqag049
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105044197443
SN - 0020-8833
VL - 70
JO - International Studies Quarterly
JF - International Studies Quarterly
IS - 3
M1 - sqag049
ER -