Bem-estar dos militares do exército brasileiro em missão de paz no Haiti

The United Nations was established in 1945 after World War II with the main mission of maintaining international peace and security. UN peacekeeping operations help countries navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace by mobilizing military troops and police officers from various countries around the world (United Nations, 2019). The Brazilian Army has participated in missions aimed at pacifying or stabilizing nations affected by conflicts since 1956, when the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was formed. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, which took place from 2004 to 2017, mobilized approximately 37,500 Brazilian peacekeepers (Brazilian Army Social Communication Center, 2018). Each of these peacekeeping missions ran for a period of 12 months, having three phases: preparation, deployment and troop demobilization. Various factors found in the work context of a peacekeeping mission may influence the well-being of these military personnel, such as weather, long working hours, distance from spouse or partner, communication problems, adverse local physical conditions, lack of privacy, boredom, and the precarious accommodation infrastructure (Adler, Litz & Bartone, 2003, Britt, 1998, Britt & Adler 1999, Chambel & Oliveira-Cruz, 2010). Thus, while it is recognized that soldiers are professionals prepared to meet the challenges posed by a peacekeeping operation, it is important that these soldiers stay healthy throughout the mission and then return to their country the same way. Focusing mainly on the Brazilian military personnel on a peacekeeping mission in Haiti, this thesis is composed of three empirical studies that seek to analyze these soldiers’ welfare during the mission. The first study, which had a sample of 483 soldiers and was centered on their intrapersonal perspective, intended to validate the brief-COPE measure (Carver, 1997) to this military population and to analyze how the strategies that the peacekeeper uses to deal with the different stressors during the preparation phases will relate to their well-being during the mission. It was verified that the use of problemsolving strategies positively influenced the perception of health and the use of negative action strategies negatively influenced their satisfaction with life. The second study, related to the peacekeepers’ interpersonal dimension, analyzed how the relation between work and family (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006) during the mission was related to the their welfare at that time, using a sample of 306 soldiers. It was observed that the peacekeepers’ perception of their spouses’ support during the mission had a positive and significant relation to both family-work and work-family enrichment; and that the latter, in turn, mediated the relation between the spouses’ support and the peacekeepers’ perception of health and general satisfaction with life. The third study, which was concentrated on the relation between the soldier and the Army, analyzed the influence of the soldiers’ affective organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1997) in the preparation phase on their well-being during the mission. With a sample of 406 soldiers, we verified that the soldiers’ affective commitment to the Brazilian Army during the troop preparation phase positively influenced their welfare (i.e., perception of health and general satisfaction with life) during troop deployment. We also observed that well-being in the workplace (i.e., work engagement) mediated this relationship. These studies showed the importance of knowing the different factors that affect the welfare of soldiers in a peacekeeping mission and their purpose is the continuous improvement of the psychological support of troops in future missions. In addition, they contribute to the Brazilian Army's alignment with the goals set by the United Nations 2030 agenda, which aim to create a new global model of sustainable development with the objective of promoting the prosperity and welfare of all (UN, 2019).