Enhancing Civilian Protection 

in Peace Operations: Insights 

from Africa

A Research Paper FROM the Africa Center for Strategic Studies

by Paul D. Williams

September 2010
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies supports the development 

of U.S. strategic policy toward Africa by providing high-quality 

academic programs, undertaking policy-relevant research and analysis, 

and fostering awareness of and open dialogue on U.S. strategic 

priorities and African security issues. Toward these aims, the Center 

is committed to building networks of African, American, European, 

and international military and civilian leaders and articulating African 

perspectives to U.S. policymakers.
Enhancing Civilian Protection 

in Peace Operations: 

Insights from Africa

by Paul D. Williams

Africa Center for Strategic Studies

Research Paper No. 1

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.

September 2010
For additional publications of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, visit 

the Center’s Web site at http://africacenter.org.

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied 

within are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or any other agency of the 

Federal Government. Cleared for public release; distribution unlimited.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, provided that a standard source credit line is included. NDU Press 

would appreciate a courtesy copy of reprints or reviews.

First printing, September 2010
iii

Contents

Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

The Civilian Protection Challenge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Origins of the Contemporary Protection Agenda. . . . . . . . 6

Challenges Facing the Protection Agenda. . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Critical Role of Information Gathering and 

Threat Analysis for Civilian Protection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Turning Analysis into Action: 

Some Lessons for Enhancing Civilian Protection. . . . . . . 38

Conclusions and Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Appendix: Six Military Approaches to 

Civilian Protection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Enhancing Civilian Protection

1

Executive Summary

The protection of civilians is a critical issue in African security. 

Nearly 600,000 civilians in 27 African countries have been massacred 

in the past two decades. Tens of millions more have been killed in 

battles, displaced, or perished from indirect causes of such attacks and 

the continent’s armed conflicts. Not only are civilians the main victims 

of Africa’s wars, but also an increasing number of United Nations 

(UN) Security Council resolutions have called upon peacekeepers 

to protect them. For many, civilian protection is the very essence of 

peacekeeping. This is a driving rationale behind the unanimously 

endorsed and UN-mandated “responsibility to protect” principle—

the idea that governments have a responsibility to prevent and curtail 

genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. 

Civilian protection is also a crucial part of forging durable political 

settlements because any peace agreement that tolerates continued 

violence against civilians will not provide a solid foundation on which 

to build legitimate governance structures.

But protecting civilians in Africa’s war zones raises huge 

challenges. Among the most important is the need to devise effective 

systems of information gathering and analysis that detect patterns of 

atrocities and to develop strategies and operational approaches that 

would enable militaries to effectively protect civilians from physical 

violence. Although difficult, civilian protection can be enhanced 

if peace operation policies are based on a multilayered conception 

of protection, a sound analysis of the conflict dynamics in question, 

a clear view of the strategy guiding protection activities, and 

peacekeepers supplied with sufficient resources to undertake the crucial 

operational and tactical tasks. The most strategic long-term challenge 

is determining how to effectively deter attacks on civilians. Progress 

can be made by responding robustly to stop and punish those who 

perpetrate such atrocities; strengthening the international legal and 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

2

normative constraints on anticivilian behavior; and building security 

forces across the continent to uphold these rules. In the short term, the 

practical emphasis must focus on strengthening the civilian protection 

“chain of actions”—the chain of activities for all organizations involved 

in protection including pre-mandate mission planning, the formulation 

of mandates for peace operations, the deployment of personnel, and 

their field activities on the ground.

This paper proceeds in six main parts. Empirical illustrations are 

drawn primarily from Rwanda (1993–1994), the Democratic Republic 

of the Congo (DRC) (2001–present), and Sudan (2004–present) 

because these countries experienced both extensive international 

engagement and some of the most severe and sustained civilian 

protection challenges in Africa. For example, in Sudan and the DRC 

alone, nearly 35,000 civilians have been massacred in episodes of 

one-sided violence since 1990. Yet despite being widely regarded as 

catastrophic failures, the peace operations in these countries have also 

produced some of the most innovative examples of how protection 

policies might be improved in the future.

After outlining the civilian protection challenge, the next section 

provides an overview of the origins of this agenda by summarizing the 

interrelated streams of thought and policy that promoted it. These were 

developments in international law, specifically humanitarian, criminal, 

and human rights law; an increasing emphasis on protection activities 

by a range of humanitarian agencies; the UN Security Council’s 

readiness to discuss issues of civilian protection and make protection 

a core component of its peacekeeping mandates; the willingness of a 

variety of regional arrangements in Africa to do the same thing; and 

the rise to prominence of the responsibility to protect principle.

The third section discusses the four main challenges the civilian 

protection agenda poses for peacekeepers on the ground: establishing 

practical definitions and expectations that can guide operational 

decisions; operational and legal problems associated with working 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

3

in Africa’s war zones; the lack of appropriate resources; and political 

challenges stemming largely from insufficient commitment by powerful 

states and organizations.

The fourth and fifth sections examine how civilian protection 

policies might be enhanced. Specifically, the former discusses how 

peace operations must systematically collect and analyze information 

about what kinds of protection will be offered to whom, from what 

(threats), and through which agents. The latter section analyzes the 

available political and military options. As far as military action is 

concerned, two scenarios are discussed: situations where atrocities 

occur in a country where peacekeepers are already present, and cases 

where atrocities take place in the absence of peacekeepers. The paper 

then examines the crucial issue of how military power at the strategic, 

operational, and tactical levels can be harnessed to enhance civilian 

protection today and help deter atrocities tomorrow.

The concluding section offers 10 general policy recommendations 

for more effective policies within organizations that have made civilian 

protection part of their remit:

◆ deterrence is the objective, so strengthen global norms

◆ devise clear operational concepts and strengthen international 

consensus around them

◆ be realistic and manage expectations

◆ invest in excellent leaders for peace operations

◆ invest in peacekeepers

◆ invest in intelligence capabilities

◆ invest in reflection

◆ be prepared to coerce perpetrators

◆ keep humanitarian military intervention on the table

◆ don’t give up on security sector reform.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

4

The Civilian Protection Challenge

Peacekeepers have been trying to protect civilians in danger for 

a long time. In Africa, arguably the first official civilian protection 

mandate was issued to peacekeepers in 1960 when United Nations 

(UN) Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld authorized peacekeepers 

in the Congo to provide “Protection against acts of violence . . . to 

all people, white and black.” Hammarskjöld argued this was done 

on the grounds that peacekeepers’ “[p]rohibition from intervention 

in internal conflicts cannot be considered to apply to the senseless 

slaughter of civilians or fighting arising from tribal hostilities.” It was 

also, he noted, “in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human 

Rights and the Genocide Convention.”1 Acting on these instructions, 

UN peacekeepers established safe areas, interposed themselves between 

civilians and their tormentors, and retaliated with force when these 

camps were attacked, thereby protecting an estimated 36,200 people.2

Since then, peacekeepers in Africa have been confronted frequently 

with the mass killing of civilians; from Abyei to Aro Sharow, Bunia to 

Byarenga, Kigali to Kiwanja, Makeni to Makombo, the list of massacre 

sites is already long and getting longer.

In this context, getting civilian protection right has high stakes 

for the very concept of peacekeeping—mandates demand it and the 

legitimacy of peace operations will depend on it. Ultimately, the longterm goal of any protection strategy in Africa or elsewhere must be to 

deter attacks on civilians. To do this, not only must peacekeepers respond 

robustly to stop and punish the perpetrators of such atrocities, but also 

the world’s governments must strengthen the legal and normative 

constraints on anticivilian behavior and build security forces across the 

continent that uphold these rules. While significant progress has been 

made in all these areas, the practical emphasis must be placed upon 

strengthening what has been described as the civilian protection “chain 

of actions”—that is, the chain of activities for all organizations involved 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

5

in protection, including pre-mandate mission planning, the formulation 

of mandates for peace operations, the deployment of personnel, and their 

field activities on the ground.3

The protection of civilians is a critical issue in African security 

for many reasons. First, the human cost of Africa’s wars is enormous. 

Civilians are the main victims in these conflicts, and although most 

succumb to disease and the effects of malnutrition, a significant number 

are slaughtered.4 Since 1990, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program has 

recorded the massacres of over 570,000 civilians in 27 African countries.5

A second reason why civilian protection is important is that 

a number of UN Security Council resolutions have called upon 

peacekeepers to protect civilians. As a consequence, this has become 

the gold standard by which many contemporary peace operations in 

Africa are judged, especially by local populations and the media. As 

the seminal Brahimi Report observed a decade ago, in an increasing 

number of situations, “peacekeepers may not only be operationally 

justified in using force [to protect civilians] but morally compelled to do 

so.”6 Over time, civilian protection has thus become critical not only 

to the legitimacy and success of individual peacekeeping operations but 

also to the credibility of the entire UN system.

Third, civilian protection is also “a critical component for a 

sustainable political peace” inasmuch as any peace agreement that 

tolerates continued violence against civilians will not provide a solid 

foundation on which to build legitimate governance structures.7 In 

relation to the conflict in Darfur, for example, the African UnionUN high-level meeting in Addis Ababa in November 2006 concluded 

that civilian security was a prerequisite for progress toward a political 

solution.8 Expressed more generally, this means that successful civilian 

protection is a crucial component of a viable exit strategy for most 

peace operations.

A fourth reason why civilian protection is so important is that it 

forms the heart of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) agenda. The 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

6

idea that governments have a responsibility to prevent and curtail 

genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing 

was endorsed by the UN World Summit in October 2005 and occupies 

a central place in Africa’s new peace and security architecture as 

stated in article 4(h) of the African Union’s (AU’s) Constitutive Act. 

The Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF) recently argued that 

the United States, as one of the governments that endorsed the R2P 

principle, should work to prevent mass atrocities. Not only are the 

killings a national security issue, but also stopping them is a crucial 

part of upholding international humanitarian law, the laws of war, 

international criminal law, and human rights law.9

 The fact that R2P 

was mentioned in the 2010 U.S. National Security Strategy suggests 

this principle has gained considerable currency.10 With this in mind, 

it is also important to note that on May 24, 2010, U.S. President 

Barack Obama signed into law the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) 

Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. This breakthrough 

piece of legislation requires the Obama administration to develop a 

regional strategy to protect civilians in central Africa from attacks by 

the LRA, to work to apprehend the organization’s leadership, and to 

support economic recovery for northern Uganda.

Finally, issues relating to civilian protection are centrally located 

in the nexus among the security, development, and humanitarian crisis 

challenges confronting Africa. As a consequence, finding remedies for 

the civilian protection conundrum has far-reaching implications for 

sustained progress on the continent. 

Origins of the Contemporary Protection Agenda 

In spite of the long history of attempts to protect civilians, 

only recently has the topic been the subject of serious and sustained 

debate at the UN Security Council and other relevant international 

organizations, most notably the AU, the Economic Community of 

West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union (EU), and 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

7

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To illustrate 

how far the debate has come, consider that the General Guidelines 

for Peacekeeping published by the UN Department of Peacekeeping 

Operations (DPKO) in October 1995—more than 18 months after 

the Rwandan genocide—made only one reference to the protection of 

civilians, and this was to question the idea that peacekeepers should 

be in the business of creating “safe areas” to protect civilians because it 

would damage peacekeepers’ relationships with the conflict parties and 

tarnish their impartiality. The document did not mention genocide, 

massacres, or crimes against humanity and bluntly stated that “peacekeeping and the use of force (other than in self-defence) should be seen 

as alternative techniques and not as adjacent points on a continuum.”11

Contemporary interest in civilian protection stems from six 

interconnected streams of thought and policy that developed in 

reaction to different aspects of civilian suffering during war.12

Developments in International Law

The global effort to strengthen international humanitarian law 

(IHL), international criminal law, and human rights law has become 

the legal bedrock for civilian protection. After World War II, IHL was 

developed and codified in the four Geneva Conventions (1949), two 

Additional Protocols (1977), and a range of protocols covering the 

use of certain conventional weapons (1980, 1995, 1996, 2008). Of 

particular importance were Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva 

Conventions, which committed parties in noninternational conflicts 

to respect the human rights of all those placed hors de combat (out of 

action/combat), and the Convention on the Protection of Civilian 

Persons (Convention IV), which—among other things—offered legal 

protection to noncombatants in occupied territories. The first Geneva 

Protocol (1977) extended the protection afforded to noncombatants 

by insisting that armed attacks be strictly limited to military 

objectives (Article 52, Protocol I). Combatants were forbidden from 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

8

attacking noncombatants or their property, though so-called dual use 

facilities remained lawful targets. Article 51(5) outlawed attacks on 

military objects that “may be expected to cause” excessive civilian 

casualties, and forbade the indirect targeting of noncombatants. 

Protocol I also insisted that in cases of doubt, people should be 

assumed to be noncombatants. The principle of discrimination set 

out in the protocol also provided the legal and moral foundation for 

subsequent conventions banning weapons considered inherently 

indiscriminate and is now a core part of international criminal law.13

Thus, IHL has created a normative standard of civilian protection 

that not only prohibits certain weapons and behaviors but also seeks 

to punish perpetrators of individual or mass crimes. Particularly since 

the end of the Cold War, a variety of international tribunals and the 

new International Criminal Court have made important strides in 

supporting this agenda by eroding the impunity traditionally enjoyed 

by perpetrators of gross violations of IHL and human rights.

Humanitarian Agencies

Traditionally, humanitarian agencies viewed “protection” as 

the responsibility of “mandated actors” such as the International 

Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN Children’s 

Fund (UNICEF), and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees 

(UNHCR) to promote the legal protection of individual human 

rights. Accordingly, ICRC officials tended to equate protection 

mainly with the verification of government compliance with IHL in 

cases of detention. For its part, UNICEF was mandated to develop 

country-level reporting mechanisms in relation to the protection 

of children in armed conflict, while UNHCR was mandated by the 

1951 Refugee Convention and subsequent protocol (1967) to provide 

legal protection to refugees. To the extent that other emergency relief 

organizations referred to protection, they typically saw it as a natural 

counterpart to the impartial delivery of humanitarian assistance. This 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

9

began to change in the 1990s when some organizations recognized 

that effective humanitarian assistance was dependent on security and 

stability. In extreme cases, this view noted that providing assistance 

without protection could produce the so-called “well-fed dead”—

civilians given food, housing, and medical support by humanitarian 

agencies only to be killed by armed groups. The result was a broader 

approach to protection adopted by a variety of actors and codified 

by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee after 1999. This, in 

turn, produced a raft of different theories and strategies for the 

development, management, and assessment of protection programs.14

UN Security Council

Since 1998, the UN Security Council has explicitly debated a 

relatively broad and unfocused civilian protection agenda that has 

encompassed compliance with IHL, operational issues connected to 

peace operations and humanitarian access, and the council’s role in 

responding to emergencies and tackling disarmament issues.15 On 

September 17, 1999, the council unanimously adopted Resolution 

1265. The resolution expressed the council’s “willingness” to consider 

“appropriate measures” in response “to situations of armed conflict 

where civilians are being targeted or where humanitarian assistance to 

civilians is being deliberately obstructed”; called on states to ratify key 

human rights treaties and work toward ending the “culture of impunity” 

by prosecuting those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, 

and “serious violations of international humanitarian law”; and 

further expressed the council’s readiness to explore how peacekeeping 

mandates might be reframed to afford better protection to endangered 

civilians. In October 2002, the council adopted its first Aide-Mémoire 

on civilian protection. This was subsequently adopted and developed 

by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 

(OCHA) to guide its work.16 The Security Council issued a further 

landmark resolution (number 1674) on the protection of civilians 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

10

Table 1. Characteristics of Mandates for UN-led 

Peacekeeping Missions in Africa Since 1999

Mission Dates Protect 

civilians 

under 

imminent 

threat of 

violence

Without 

prejudice 

to responsibility of 

host 

nation

Within 

capabilities 

and areas 

of 

deployment

“All 

means 

necessary”

UN Mission 

in Sierra 

Leone

October 1999–

December 2005

Yes Yes Yes No

UN Mission 

in the 

Democratic 

Republic of 

the Congo

November 

1999–present

Yes No Yes Yes

UN Mission 

in Liberia

September 

2003–present

Yes Yes Yes (partial) No

UN 

Operation in 

Côte d’Ivoire 

April 2004–

present

Yes Yes Yes Yes

UN 

Operation in 

Burundi

May 2004–

January 2007

Yes Yes Yes Yes

UN Mission 

in Sudan

March 2004–

present

Yes Yes Yes Yes

African 

Union/

UN Hybrid 

Operation in 

Darfur

July 2007–

present

Yes Yes Yes No

UN Mission 

in the Central African 

Republic and 

Chad

September 

2007–present

Yes No Yes Yes

Percentage of mandates with 

component

100 75 100 62.5

Source: Adapted from Victoria Holt and Glyn Taylor with Max Kelly, Protecting Civilians 

in the Context of UN Peacekeeping Operations (New York: UN DPKO/OCHA, November 

2009), 45.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

11

in April 2006. This reiterated its demand for access to be granted to 

humanitarian agencies, stated the council’s willingness to take action 

in cases where civilians are deliberately targeted, and reaffirmed 

the “Responsibility to Protect” principle (see below). In 2007, UN 

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for measures to strengthen the 

right to humanitarian access and the creation of a working group to 

explore avenues for translating the council’s commitment to protection 

into tangible outcomes for endangered populations.17 It was not 

until November 2009, in resolution 1894, however, that the council 

recognized the need for comprehensive operational guidelines to be 

developed on the tasks and responsibilities of peacekeepers in relation 

to civilian protection.

Peacekeeping Mandates

The UN Security Council has long tasked particular peace 

operations with achieving specific protection goals, although it was 

rare for civilian protection to be explicitly considered the central 

objective of the mission. Indeed, it was not until the publication of 

the Brahimi Report in 2000 that it became unofficial UN doctrine 

that peacekeepers who witnessed violence against civilians should 

“be presumed to be authorized to stop it, within their means.”18

Starting in 1999 with the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), 

the Security Council has regularly invoked chapter VII of the UN 

Charter to create protection mandates. Yet these have always been 

conditioned on various geographical, temporal, and capabilitiesbased caveats. Some of the most significant characteristics of those 

mandates are summarized in table 1.

Regional Institutions

The protection agenda has also been fostered at the regional 

level with various African international organizations taking 

tentative steps to incorporate protection issues into their remit. For 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

12

example, a working draft manual for African military practitioners 

compiled in 2000 stated that “the protection of a non-combatant’s 

basic right to life and dignity is a fundamental element of all military 

operations. Should members of a PSF [Peace Support Force] who 

are designated as combatants witness war crimes, but take no action 

to stop them, they themselves become party to that war crime.” It 

defined protection as a peacekeeping task that involved the “creation 

of a secure environment” that would “include the protection of basic 

human rights and the safeguarding of individuals, communities and 

installations.” The manual went on to suggest that “in areas where 

consent is fragile, and there is a measure of opposition to the operation 

as a whole, protective tasks are more effectively accomplished by a 

peace enforcement force.”19 For its part, the AU has also provided a 

vehicle for the development of civilian protection. Specifically, with 

the entry into force of the AU’s Constitutive Act in 2001, article 4(h) 

of that act enshrined the Union’s right to intervene in the affairs of 

its member states in issues relating to genocide, war crimes, and crimes 

against humanity. Directly related to article 4(h), one of the six official 

scenarios envisaged for the African Standby Force was an intervention 

“in genocide situations where the international community does not 

act promptly.”20 Presumably, the primary objective of such an operation 

would be to protect the civilian victims of the genocide in question. 

Although not authorized with reference to article 4(h), the AU’s peace 

operation in Darfur (African Union Mission in Sudan) included a 

civilian protection component in its mandate.

By 2006, the AU had a completed draft of the harmonized 

doctrine for what it called peace support operations. This stated, 

“The protection of a non-combatant’s basic right to life and dignity 

is a fundamental element of all PSOs.” It also went on to list a 

variety of military tasks relevant to such protection including the 

protection of aid agencies, the creation and maintenance of aid 

routes, the protection of refugee camps, “restoring human security 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

13

thus helping to curb human rights abuses,” and the apprehension of 

war criminals.21

At around the same time in West Africa, ECOWAS was drafting a 

Code of Conduct for the Armed Forces and Security Services of West Africa 

(2006). Although this document deals primarily with the principle 

of soldiers “doing no harm,” it also mentions more proactive forms 

of protection. For instance, under articles 7 and 20, armed forces are 

required to “provide adequate protection, refuge and assistance to all 

persons in need” and to “protect the rights and security of the civilian 

population, including the physical integrity of the individuals.”22

The Responsibility to Protect

In October 2005, world leaders unanimously adopted the 

“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) principle in paragraphs 138–140 

of the UN World Summit Outcome Document. In April 2006, 

the Security Council reaffirmed the principle in Resolution 1674. 

As agreed by member states, the R2P rests on three pillars.23 First, 

each  state is to use appropriate and necessary means to protect its 

own population from genocide, war crimes,  ethnic cleansing, and 

crimes against humanity, and from their incitement. The second 

pillar refers to the commitment  of the “international community” to 

encourage and help states to exercise the responsibility set out in the 

first pillar. The third pillar refers to the international responsibility to 

respond through the UN in a timely and decisive manner when national 

authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population from the 

four crimes identified above. In 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon identified translating the R2P “from words to deeds” as one of 

his main priorities and appointed a special advisor on the matter.24 The 

principle has also become part of the working language of international 

engagement with political crises such as in the African Union/United 

Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) and the diplomatic 

efforts to resolve the postelection conflict in Kenya. As defined by the 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

14

UN, the R2P is limited to the four crimes of genocide, crimes against 

humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes. It is therefore important 

to note that while it is centrally related to the protection of civilians 

in peace operations, the two are not synonymous because civilian 

protection involves a broader range of issues than the four R2P crimes.

Although interrelated, these six sources of protection activities 

reflect the particular concerns and interests of the respective actors 

involved. They therefore emphasize different meanings of and 

approaches to protection. Ironically, this has produced a situation 

where one of the principal strengths of the civilian protection norm—

the breadth and depth of the normative consensus underpinning it—is 

also a source of weakness because complete agreement is lacking about 

what protection means, what it entails, and which agents are best 

placed to provide it. This has raised a number of important challenges 

and left important gaps and tensions in the contemporary civilian 

protection agenda.

Challenges Facing the Protection Agenda

Protecting civilians from the negative effects of Africa’s armed 

conflicts raises huge challenges. This section discusses these challenges 

under four headings: analytical challenges involving the creation 

of definitions and operational guidelines; environmental challenges 

arising from the problems associated with working in Africa’s war zones; 

challenges related to the lack of appropriate resources; and political 

challenges stemming largely from insufficient commitment by powerful 

states and organizations.

Analytical Challenges

Achieving civilian protection will be impossible without relative 

clarity about who counts as a “civilian,” what is meant by “protection,” 

and how protection can be achieved in practice. In abstract terms, 

civilians can be broadly defined as noncombatants. The challenge 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

15

is that modern peace operations in Africa have frequently deployed 

into situations where distinguishing civilians from combatants can be 

difficult. Moreover, when responding to the specific challenge of mass 

atrocities, the broad categories of “victims” and “perpetrators” are not 

always useful substitutes because the people who fall into each category 

can change over time as the balance of forces alters on the ground.

With regard to “protection,” the main fault line tends to lie 

between humanitarian organizations, which think of protection in 

terms of the fulfillment of human rights and legal norms, and military 

institutions, which tend to see protection in more limited terms 

related to the physical defense of particular “individuals, communities 

and installations” or demilitarized safe areas.25 Unfortunately, the 

UN’s official guidelines offer little clarification as to the meaning 

of protection. For example, the Handbook on UN Multidimensional 

Peacekeeping Operations (2003) and the UN Principles and Guidelines 

(2008) contain no clear answers.26 The latter did refer in broad terms 

to the need for peacekeepers to protect civilians but it did not go into 

useful specifics. The issue was so ambiguous that as recently as July 

2009, the authors of an important DPKO/OCHA-commissioned study 

on civilian protection concluded that “no [Security] Council document 

offers an operational definition of what protection of civilians means 

for peacekeeping missions, nor has the Council tasked the Secretariat, 

which may be the most appropriate organ to develop such guidance, 

to do so.”27 In sum, the common complaint across the international 

peacekeeping landscape was that when it came to civilian protection 

issues, “At a very practical level, it is not always clear to troops and 

police what is expected of them.”28

In this study, civilian protection is conceptualized in terms of 

a multilayered “onion” (see figure 1).29 This is my adaptation of the 

ICRC’s “egg framework,” which was developed in the late 1990s 

to depict the relationship between patterns of abuse and what the 

organization saw as the three forms of protection activities (responsive, 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

16

remedial, and environment-building). This emphasizes that protection 

can be thought of in minimalist (physical survival) or maximalist 

(the enjoyment of rights) terms and hence as a concept that contains 

many interconnected layers. Ideally, civilians would be able to enjoy 

the whole package, but in practice they can lose the outer layers of 

protection and still survive, although clearly some individuals can 

endure more than others. The inner core of physical protection, 

however, is vital for all the other layers.

The onion approach has several benefits. First, it is in line with 

current drafts of UN and AU thinking on the subject. At the UN, the 

Draft DPKO/DFS [Department of Field Support] Operational Concept 

on the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations is organized 

around a three-tiered approach to protection that entails promoting 

Enabling conditions

Enjoyment of

human rights

Provision of basic

necessities

Physical

protection from

imminent

violence

Figure 1. The Civilian Protection “Onion”
Enhancing Civilian Protection

17

a political process of conflict resolution, providing protection from 

physical violence, and establishing a protective environment that 

enhances the safety and supports the rights of civilians.30 Similarly, 

the AU’s Draft Guidelines for the Protection of Civilians by Peace Support 

Missions currently defines the protection of civilians as “all activities 

aimed at obtaining the full respect for the rights of the individual” 

recognized under the relevant international legal instruments including 

those relating to international humanitarian, human rights, refugee, 

and criminal law.31 Although both these documents are working drafts, 

they suggest that both organizations are moving significantly closer to 

adopting operational definitions of protection.

A second benefit is that it allows distinctions to be drawn between 

different aspects of the broad protection agenda. Thus, the remainder 

of this study focuses on the inner core of the protection concept (that 

is, physical protection from imminent violence) and to a lesser extent 

the provision of basic necessities, because this is where military peace 

operations can play the most important protection roles. This is also 

evident in evolving peacekeeping practice in Africa. In its 2010 

Darfur Protection Strategy, for example, UNAMID’s protection action 

is explicitly restricted “to two closely connected activities, physical 

protection and protection of humanitarian space.”32 Moreover, as the 

DPKO/DFS draft concept has emphasized, “Peacekeeping operations are 

generally the only international entity responsible for playing a direct 

role in the provision of protection from physical violence; in that regard, 

they have a unique responsibility among protection actors.”33 Sometimes, 

“their presence alone is an effective deterrent against violence.”34 At 

other times, however, they will have to devise and actively engage 

in explicit “protection activities.” Of course, the outer layers remain 

important for any comprehensive approach but they are usually best 

provided by humanitarian assistance and development agencies.

With this conception of protection in mind, the priority for 

policymakers is to ensure that peace operations can engage in 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

18

effective “protection activities.” This in turn requires that protection 

activities are linked to a political strategy defined as “the process 

of selecting goals and choosing appropriate means to achieve them 

within the resource constraints faced.”35 It is through a strategy that 

decisionmakers set priorities and focus their resources accordingly. In 

this context, once protection activities have been defined as a priority, 

a key issue will be to figure out how to use military power to achieve 

humanitarian ends. The Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) 

project, a collaborative effort between Harvard University and the U.S. 

Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, concluded 

that a big part of the problem at the strategic level is that there has 

been a lack of systematic “thinking about how military forces might 

respond” to situations of mass killing.36 Sources of guidance are more 

commonly found at the operational level, but key documents such 

as a mission’s mandate, the provisions of any local peace agreement, 

or a transitional constitution have often been vague, fragmented, 

ambiguous, or contradictory. At the tactical level, it is the mission’s 

rules of engagement (ROE) that set the parameters for legitimate 

protection activities by clarifying “the different levels of force that can 

be used in various circumstances, how each level of force should be 

used, and any authorizations that must be obtained by commanders.”37

Despite some genuine conceptual disagreement over the meaning 

of and approaches to protection at the strategic level, it is much 

harder to argue that existing military procedures at the tactical level 

are a primary inhibitor of effective protection action. As the DPKO/

OCHA study put it, “ROE are not a major impediment to UN missions 

taking robust action to protect civilians, including the proactive use of 

deadly force when necessary.” Specifically, ROE have long existed that 

appear perfectly clear on when and how to use force for humanitarian 

purposes. One current example is rule 1.9 of the UNMIS ROE (April 

2005), which states: “Use of force, up to and including deadly force, 

to protect civilians, including humanitarian workers, under imminent 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

19

threat of physical violence, when competent local authorities are not 

in a position to render immediate assistance, is authorised. When 

and where possible, permission to use force should be sought from 

the immediate superior commander.”38 Nor is such ROE clarity a 

recent invention. In November 1993, for instance, UNAMIR’s Force 

Commander Roméo Dallaire drafted the mission’s ROE based largely 

on those from the earlier United Nations Transitional Authority in 

Cambodia operation but with the addition of a paragraph permitting 

his troops to use deadly force to prevent crimes against humanity: 

“There may also be ethnically or politically motivated criminal acts 

committed during this mandate which will morally and legally require 

UNAMIR to use all available means to halt them. Examples are 

executions, attacks on displaced persons or refugees.”39 These ROE 

were issued as Force Commander’s Directive No. 2 and circulated to 

UN headquarters and the capitals of all UNAMIR troop-contributing 

countries (TCCs). After making some minor amendments in response 

to concerns raised by Belgium and Canada, Dallaire “considered the 

[ensuing] silence on all fronts as tacit approval.”40 In sum, evidence 

from previous and ongoing missions suggests that peacekeeping ROE 

are not a fundamental impediment to undertaking effective protection 

tasks. The more serious problems stem from the difficulties imposed 

by some complex operational environments, the limited resources 

available to peacekeepers, and a lack of political will among local and 

contributing governments and mission commanders.

Environmental Challenges

Africa’s conflict zones throw up significant legal and operational 

challenges for those attempting to protect civilians. In legal terms, 

except when foreign soldiers are in occupation of the territory 

concerned, “there is only a very rudimentary legal regime to regulate” 

the relationship between the local inhabitants and the intervening 

force. What does exist is a rather composite mix of obligations derived 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

20

from IHL and some human rights treaties.41 While these obligations 

are relatively clear about which actions are prohibited, they are far less 

clear on which proactive obligations fall to peacekeepers with regard to 

protecting civilians.

In operational terms, Africa’s war zones are complex and fluid 

environments with many characteristics that complicate protection 

activities. First, there is a lack of clear frontlines, making traditional 

separation and interposition approaches difficult. Second, some 

groups often deliberately target segments of the civilian population 

either for political or economic reasons. For example, in Sudan and 

the DRC alone, nearly 35,000 civilians have been massacred since 

1990.42 Civilian protection may therefore run directly counter to 

a party’s primary wartime objective. Third, these conflict zones are 

usually populated by multiple (sometimes battle-hardened) armed 

groups, militias, and criminal gangs, many of which may not have 

clear or effective chains of command.43 This makes it difficult to 

elicit consistent compliance from these factions as well as rendering 

consent fragile and fluctuating. Fourth, these actors will often 

display a wide variety of political strategies ranging from attempts to 

capture state power or a segment of territory to little more than the 

accumulation of resources. This means peacekeepers will usually have 

to devise unique approaches for dealing with each conflict party. Fifth, 

these environments often span vast geographical areas, including 

sections of very harsh terrain, and have very little and/or poor 

physical infrastructure, which makes transportation, communication, 

and resupply difficult. A sixth characteristic is the presence of large 

numbers of international actors from relief agencies and private 

security firms to international financial institutions, and all of them 

operate with unique agendas as well as different interpretations 

of what protection means and the best mechanisms to achieve it. 

To some extent, establishing regular forums for dialogue between 

civilian and military actors can overcome some of the problems of 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

21

miscommunication and misinterpretation, but they may not be able 

to resolve genuine differences over priorities.

Resources Challenges

One of the golden rules of peacekeeping philosophy is that 

mandates should be matched to the available resources. Unfortunately, 

the gap between means and ends is nowhere more stark than in the area 

of civilian protection. Although it has not always been clear what tools 

are necessary to protect civilians, it is foolish to expect a great deal of 

success if peacekeepers are not given sufficient resources. In military 

terminology, the civilian protection agenda requires peace operations 

to possess the right combination of “speed and mass.”44 In practice, 

however, most peace operations in Africa have lacked capabilities in 

both these areas.

Perhaps the most obvious shortage has been in relation to the 

numbers of troops and police deployed on these operations. This 

deficit has two dimensions: mandating organizations establishing 

missions with inadequate authorized troop levels, and their member 

states allowing vacancy rates to endure. These deficiencies leave 

missions unable to reach even their authorized strength for substantial 

periods of time. In relation to authorized levels of soldiers, two rules of 

thumb used to calculate the necessary force size for civilian protection 

operations suggest that between 2 and 10 troops are required for every 

1,000 inhabitants within the crisis zone, or that the protection force 

should be at least the size of the largest indigenous armed force.45 Using 

both these measures, recent missions to protect civilians in Sudan and 

the DRC have been woefully underresourced (see table 2). Moreover, 

as figure 2 illustrates in the case of the UN Mission in the Democratic 

Republic of the Congo (MONUC), deployment of peacekeepers often 

proceeds in a slow and reactive rather than a proactive fashion, and 

an increase of troops occurred only after a previous protection crisis 

had erupted. With regard to vacancy rates, although the UN has made 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

22

significant improvements in force generation in recent years, the hybrid 

operation in Darfur, UNAMID (launched in 2008), was incredibly slow 

to attract the authorized level of resources despite having a planning 

and gestation period dating back to mid-2006. As a consequence, as 

recently as February 2010, UNAMID’s Joint Special Representative 

acknowledged that although “the entire 8 million population of Darfur 

could be described as persons of concern to UNAMID . . . only about 

half this number are fully accessible.”46

But troop numbers are not the only problem. Peace operations 

in Africa have also frequently suffered from a lack of specialized units 

(for example, engineers, medics, intelligence gatherers, special forces, 

interpreters, and so forth) and vehicles (for example, helicopters, 

armored personnel carriers [APCs], and unmanned aerial vehicles), 

as well as inadequate communications and logistical support. Perhaps 

the most dire example of how failure to resupply a mission can impact 

its ability to undertake protection activities was in the first few days of 

Table 2. Ideal and Actual Size of Peace Operations 

with Civilian Protection Mandates

Region Local 

Population Mission

Required 

Size: 

Method 1

Required 

Size: 

Method 2

Actual Size 

(December 

2008)

Darfur, 

Sudan 6 million

African 

Union/United Nations 

(UN) Hybrid 

Operation in 

Darfur

12,000–

60,000

40,000–

45,000 15,130

South Sudan 8 million UN Mission 

in Sudan

16,000–

80,000 40,000 10,025

North Kivu, 

DRC 5 million UN Mission in the DRC

10,000–

50,000 20,000 6,000

Sources: Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the UN SecretaryGeneral: Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564, 18 September 2004 (Geneva, January 25, 2005), 27, paragraph 78; Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Congo: 

Crisis in North Kivu (November 21, 2008), available at <www.amnesty.org/en/library/

info/AFR62/014/2008/en>.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

23

the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when it became clear that UNAMIR 

lacked the ability to replenish its supplies, including its ammunition 

and medicines. As a result, when confronted with a decision over 

whether to conduct a particular protection mission, Force Commander 

Dallaire “had to balance the risk of the operation against the fact that 

[UNAMIR] had no medical safety net and a lack of ammunition.”47

Unfortunately, 15 years later, UNAMID was suffering from similar 

problems to the extent that a DPKO/OCHA study concluded that the 

operation had been “designed—despite good intentions—without the 

ability to succeed.”48

These problems are well known. As one senior official of a leading 

UN TCC recently acknowledged, “Nine-tenths of delegations know 

they’re not giving [the Department of Peacekeeping Operations] the 

resources it needs.”49 One widely publicized example occurred in August 

2004 when the UN Secretary-General asked the Security Council for 

13,100 more troops for MONUC in the aftermath of the massacres 

of civilians that took place during and after the battle for the town of 

Figure 2. MONUC Uniformed Personnel and Crisis 

Response, January 2001–May 2009

Source: Compiled by author from DPKO statistics.

20,000

18,000

16,000

14,000

12,000

10,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0

8,000

Jan-01

May-02

Apr-03

Oct-06Oct-08

May-09

Crisis in 

Goma Presidential

elections

Crisis in

Bukavu

Crisis in

Bunia

Crisis in

Kisangani

June-04

Number of Personnel
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

24

Bukavu. He was given only an additional 5,900 personnel, which 

included 341 civilian police. Indeed, MONUC’s search for resources 

was so difficult that between 2000 and 2004, the UN Secretary-General 

advised against the adoption of civilian protection as a core role for the 

mission, even after it had been mandated by the Security Council. He 

did so on the grounds that MONUC lacked the necessary capabilities.50

It was a similar story 5 years later when MONUC’s head, Alan Doss, 

repeatedly warned that without appropriate assets such as the 3,000 

reinforcements authorized by the Security Council in November 2008 

or the 16 military helicopters needed to give his troops greater mobility, 

MONUC’s “capacity to respond quickly to emerging threats and protect 

civilians would be curtailed.”51 Nor was the problem confined to the 

DRC. In mid-2008, in the wake of an ambush in Darfur that killed 7 

UNAMID peacekeepers and wounded 22 others, Henry Anyidoho, a 

veteran of the UNAMIR mission during Rwanda’s genocide and deputy 

political head of UNAMID, reiterated the importance of capabilities 

when he identified “the problem” as “the failure of the international 

community to give UNAMID the equipment it needs to do its job. They 

expect too much, too quickly, even though they are not providing the 

means.”52 In sum, many peace operations in Africa have suffered from a 

gap between expectations and capabilities.

Political Challenges

Although there have been many statements, declarations, 

and laws that signal a broad international consensus about 

the importance of civilian protection, the depth of political 

commitment to realizing this lofty goal is not always clear and 

varies considerably across governments and organizations. 

Specifically, what costs are international actors willing to endure 

in order to protect foreign civilians, and how far are they willing 

to challenge old notions of sovereignty in countries where the host 

government is either unwilling or unable to support protection 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

25

activities? On paper at least, article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive 

Act (which entered into force in 2001) implies that the Union is 

willing to override the norm of nonintervention in what it calls 

“grave circumstances,” that is, where genocide, crimes against 

humanity, and war crimes are being committed. However, to 

date, the AU has not invoked this article because it has never 

authorized the use of military force without the consent of the de 

jure authorities of the state in question. Meanwhile, the current UN 

approach to protection is explicitly premised on peace operations 

receiving the “consent of the host government and the main parties 

to the conflict.”53 As the Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept

makes clear, UN “peacekeeping operations can only execute the 

protection of civilians mandate insofar as the host government 

continues to provide its strategic consent. If that consent is 

withdrawn, a peacekeeping environment no longer pertains, and 

action at the strategic level, including by the Security Council, 

must be considered.”54 This is why debates about what action can be 

taken under pillar three of the R2P, the legitimacy of humanitarian 

military intervention, and the newly developed concept of MARO 

remain crucial for the protection agenda (discussed below).

In Africa’s contemporary conflicts, host governments have 

often orchestrated many of the crimes perpetrated against civilians, 

denied entry to peacekeepers, or obstructed their work. Despite 

much talk about peace and protection, governments in many African 

conflict zones are more interested in defeating their rivals than 

engaging in genuine conflict resolution. In such circumstances, host 

governments may well frustrate rather than facilitate peacekeepers’ 

protection activities. For example, in November 2007, after many 

years of refusing non-African peacekeepers access to its province 

of Darfur, the Government of Sudan objected to the deployment 

of a Thai infantry battalion, a Nepalese special forces unit, and a 

Nordic engineering unit that the UN considered vital to the ability 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

26

of UNAMID to carry out its mandate.55 Similarly, in June 2009, 

62 Nigerian APCs were kept in Sudanese customs for more than a 

month and the government grounded three UNAMID helicopters 

used for medical evacuations, apparently because their newly 

installed night-flying equipment did not conform to specifications 

agreed to between UNAMID and the government.56 In this case, the 

Government of Sudan officially consented to UNAMID’s protection 

activities but then raised practical objections and erected obstacles at 

every turn. Elsewhere, however, host governments have threatened 

to withdraw their consent for a peacekeeping operation before it has 

achieved its objectives. In both Chad and the DRC, the respective 

host governments told the UN it had to withdraw its peacekeeping 

operations (UN Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad 

and MONUC), even though neither mission had completed its 

mandated tasks and there was no credible local security force to 

protect civilians.

A less sinister but still inherently political challenge revolves 

around the sometimes genuine differences over how to interpret a peace 

operation’s mandate. In this context, it is important to remember that 

UN Security Council resolutions and other mandating documents such 

as communiqués of the AU Peace and Security Council are political 

texts that are the result of complex negotiations and compromises 

and are generally not well suited to clearly laying out the specifics of a 

mission’s operations and mode of action.

Other political challenges include different strategic cultures 

evident among armed forces from different countries and the varied 

risk thresholds apparent among national contingents within the same 

peacekeeping operation.57 One striking example of different national 

tolerance for the risks involved in civilian protection tasks came 

during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In this instance, one of the force 

commander’s code cables to UN headquarters signaled his frustrations 

about some of his fellow peacekeepers in no uncertain terms:
Enhancing Civilian Protection

27

The [Bangladeshi] contingent commander has 

consistently stated he is under national orders not to 

endanger his soldiers by evacuating Rwandese. They 

will evacuate expatriates but not local people. His junior 

officers have clearly stated that if they are stopped at a 

roadblock with local people in the convoy they will hand 

over these local people for inevitable killing rather than 

use their weapons in an attempt to save local people. 

This reticence to engage in dangerous operations and 

their stated reluctance to use their weapons in selfdefence or in defence of crimes against humanity has 

led to widespread mistrust of this contingent among its 

peers in other units and amongst staff officers/UNMOs 

at the headquarters when they are tasked to go with 

these men on dangerous missions.58

To function effectively, especially in circumstances where coercion 

is likely to be necessary to achieve the mandate, the contributing 

countries in a peace operation need to be willing to shoulder their fair 

share of the risks involved in undertaking protection tasks.

Taken together, these analytical, environmental, resource, and 

political challenges support several conclusions about the current 

state of the civilian protection agenda. First, the definitional problems 

surrounding civilian protection issues can be resolved with relative 

ease. What requires more thought is how to translate broad conceptual 

approaches into more concrete political strategies and operational 

guidance for peacekeepers. Second, to date, most of the initiatives that 

have emerged to help fill these strategic and operational gaps have 

been designed with a single institution in mind.59 For instance, the 

DPKO/OCHA study is geared solely toward UN peace operations, and 

both the GPTF and MARO initiatives were focused squarely on the 

U.S. Government.60 Here, several interrelated problems emerge. As the 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

28

AU increasingly asserts its presence in Africa’s peacekeeping landscape, 

hybrid peace operations that involve several organizations (either in 

sequence or in partnership) rather than a single institution going it 

alone are likely to become the norm. Furthermore, the likelihood of 

hybrid peacekeeping raises challenges of coordination and coherence 

across different organizations as these initiatives are adopted to fit 

different contexts. In Africa, the foreseeable future of peacekeeping 

will necessitate key axes of coordination horizontally between the UN, 

AU, and EU, and more vertically between the AU and the continent’s 

regional economic communities.

A third conclusion is that a significant gap remains between 

capabilities and expectations in the realm of civilian protection. As the 

UN’s New Horizons project correctly noted, this “creates a significant 

credibility challenge for UN peacekeeping.”61 The same certainly goes 

for AU peace operations and, to a lesser extent, EU peacekeeping on 

the continent. Fourth, the messy nature of armed conflicts in Africa 

means that peacekeepers will probably also have to get used to operating 

in environments that have been labeled “neither war nor peace,” 

where peace agreements might exist on paper but violence remains 

pervasive even if there are few large-scale military engagements.62

Finally, political currents across the globe appear to indicate that it 

will be increasingly difficult to procure sufficient resources for civilian 

protection because international society remains reluctant to support a 

right of humanitarian military intervention. Indeed, host government 

consent will remain both the crucial prerequisite for entry for most 

missions and a dangerously weak link in a protection chain that might 

be broken at any stage.

The Critical Role of Information Gathering and 

Threat Analysis for Civilian Protection

Since “every situation of mass killing is unique and requires a 

tailored response,” attempts to overcome these challenges must start 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

29

with astute analysis of the situation at hand.63 In particular, peace 

operations must systematically collect and analyze information about 

what kinds of protection will be offered to whom, from what, and 

through which agents. In traditional military thinking, the issue is 

usually framed as requiring a planning process to understand the 

environment, frame the problem set, and develop a solution. This 

is also the case for the UN system where key pivotal points in the 

planning process for civilian protection issues have been identified.64

In relation to contemporary peacekeeping practices, perhaps the best 

example is MONUC’s Joint Protection Teams comprising civil affairs, 

human rights, and child protection staff. First established in 2009, 

more than 80 of these teams were deployed to MONUC bases in North 

Kivu during the first half of 2010. Deployed for up to 5 days at a time, 

these teams are intended to enhance understanding of local conflict 

dynamics, create links between MONUC and the local population 

(sometimes through the use of community liaison interpreters), fill 

the gap in field-level data collection, and provide early warning by 

predicting threats.65

Prioritizing Protection

Protection analysis should start by clarifying which individuals 

and groups are to be protected. Although warfare undoubtedly affects 

all civilians, the approach to protection outlined above suggests 

that peacekeepers should focus their attention on those civilians in 

imminent physical danger. But since the threat of physical violence 

assumes many forms, peacekeepers need to be aware of different 

categories of war deaths. Figure 3 depicts the four most common sources 

of war deaths and a scale for prioritizing the attention peacekeepers 

give them.

Figure 3 suggests that peacekeepers should assign the highest 

priority to instances of “one-sided violence.”66 The second highest 

priority should be protecting civilians from falling victim to criminal 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

30

and unorganized violence carried out by random individuals or bandits 

and criminal gangs. The third highest priority should be stopping 

civilians from being killed in battles.

Peacekeepers also have an important, albeit indirect, role to 

play in relation to the category of nonviolent mortality—primarily 

death brought on by malnutrition and disease. This generally 

accounts for the largest number of civilian fatalities, but these 

tend to occur relatively slowly and have symptoms that are best 

addressed by nonmilitary actors. Consequently, the role of military 

peacekeepers in this area should involve collaboration with relief 

workers to protect their activities, organize camps for displaced 

people, and keep delivery routes for humanitarian assistance open 

and safe. If, as is usually the case, insecurity and inaccessibility of 

suffering populations because of insecurity are the central causes of 

abnormally high nonviolent mortality rates, peacekeepers must also 

focus on stemming the sources of that insecurity—that is, by tackling 

Figure 3. Sources of War Deaths and Protection 

Priorities for Peacekeepers

Source: Bethany Ann Lacina and Nils Peter Gleditsch, “Monitoring Trends in 

Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths,” European Journal of Population

21, no. 2–3 (2005), 149.

WAR

DEATHS

Battle

deaths

Non-Battle

deaths

Soldiers and civilians are 

killed in combat

One-sided violence

increases

Criminal and unorganized

violence increases

Nonviolent mortality

increases }
Enhancing Civilian Protection

31

the armed actors perpetrating atrocities. At the other end of the 

spectrum, since most peace operations are not mandated, prepared, 

or equipped for warfighting roles, it is unreasonable to expect 

peacekeepers to intervene directly in battles between opposing 

armed factions, especially if they are outnumbered or outgunned. As 

the DPKO/OCHA study correctly concluded, beyond a certain level 

of battlefield violence, “peacekeeping operations generally cease 

to be capable of significantly influencing the course of events.”67

Of course, peace operations serve many important functions in 

Africa’s conflict zones, and force commanders on the ground should 

be encouraged to do what they can to enhance civilian protection 

when such battles occur within their area of operations. But how 

exactly peacekeepers should respond to combat between armed 

groups must be assessed in light of what is realistically within their 

capabilities. It is unreasonable to expect peacekeepers to lay down 

their lives for civilians if there is not a viable prospect that they 

will survive the encounter. As a consequence, civilians killed either 

deliberately or accidentally during battles are listed as only the third 

priority for peacekeepers.

The top two priorities occur in circumstances where civilians are 

in imminent danger of physical violence outside of battle, specifically 

because of the threat of massacre or criminalized violence. Deterring 

these two types of scenarios should constitute the top priorities for 

peacekeepers. Stopping large-scale massacres is at the heart of the 

R2P principle and was the original intent behind the UN Security 

Council’s first explicit civilian protection mandate in Sierra Leone in 

1999. Deploying to areas where the threat of massacre is high—such 

as internally displaced persons (IDP)/refugee camps or vulnerable 

settlements—and establishing a credible deterrent should thus be a 

priority for peacekeepers. A positive example of this kind of analysis in 

action is the MONUC priority protection planning meetings. Threats 

were categorized into three protection categories:
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

32

(i) “Must protect” areas where MONUC troops 

should be physically present with a base deployed to 

the area; (ii) “Should protect” areas where MONUC 

should be physically present if the resources are 

available, and if not, MONUC troops should at least 

do regular patrols to the area; and (iii) “Could protect” 

areas where MONUC troops should carry out patrols, 

especially on market days.68

The problem, of course, is that it is very difficult for peacekeepers 

to predict where massacres might occur or to stop those taking 

place outside their areas of deployment. Moreover, they do not 

always act on their own assessments. Although MONUC designated 

Waloaluanda a “must protect” area in February 2009, it took 7 

months to establish a base there.69 In areas where criminalized and 

unorganized violence occur, police officers will have particularly 

important roles to play by establishing a visible presence in civilian 

areas and engaging in patrols. Undertaking preventive measures such 

as community policing and public information dissemination is of 

particular importance. International actors also have a vital role to 

play by strengthening host state capacity, that is, helping to monitor, 

advise, and train host state law enforcement.70 There will also be a 

need to address egregious cases of organized criminal activity within 

the area of operations.71

Threats

Peacekeepers cannot protect civilians effectively without developing 

accurate threat assessments of who is committing violations and how 

they are doing it. To gather this information, peacekeepers need to tap 

multiple sources of information about their operating environment, 

including members of the local population, nongovernmental 

organizations (NGOs), and other international agencies.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

33

In part, good threat assessment entails discerning patterns 

of behavior, and this work is already under way. In April 2009, for 

example, MONUC began analyzing patterns of sexual violence 

in order to generate a risk model that might help them predict 

and hence prevent future abuse.72 The problem is that “atrocities 

committed during civil wars may well be patterned, but they do 

not occur uniformly across time or space. There are lulls and peaks. 

Violence comes to different cities, towns, and neighborhoods at 

different times.”73 It is therefore important for peacekeepers to build 

an accurate picture of all armed groups, militias, and criminal gangs 

present in the area of operations and study their particular policies 

and techniques of violence. In Africa at least, peacekeepers may need 

to pay greater attention to the activities of militias and criminal gangs 

than of more formal insurgent groups because of their propensity 

for committing atrocities. Recall that during the single largest orgy 

of mass killing in Africa during the 1990s—Rwanda’s genocide—

most of the atrocities were carried out by militias and criminals. 

As Roméo Dallaire noted during the genocide, the main danger to 

his personnel and civilians did not come from the Rwandan Army 

or the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels. Rather, the “most dangerous 

threat to UNAMIR” came from what Dallaire called a “third force” 

of aggressive/brazen/militia” who displayed “no particular respect 

for anybody and essentially work to their own unruly/drunk/drugged 

tune.” They were, he concluded, “a very large and dangerous and 

totally irrational group of people.”74

Repertoires vary across armed groups and can change significantly 

over time. A group may also add a particular mechanism of violence 

to its repertoire in response to changing circumstances—for example, 

mimicking other groups or as part of a change in strategy or tactics. 

The officially endorsed repertoire may also differ from what actually 

occurs on the ground, especially in groups with weak military chains of 

command and with undisciplined recruits.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

34

When conducting threat assessments, it is particularly important 

for peacekeepers to identify any “opportunistic rebellions.” As 

defined by Jeremy Weinstein, these are insurgent organizations that 

enjoy access to a substantial flow of economic endowments—either 

domestic resources or those provided by an external patron. They are 

more likely to commit high levels of indiscriminate violence against 

civilians because they tend to recruit individuals interested only in 

short-term material gains rather than promoting particular ideological 

principles. In addition, they struggle to discipline recruits who abuse 

civilians indiscriminately, thus causing a cycle of civilian resistance 

and rebel response. These organizations are also highly unlikely—and 

indeed will usually be organizationally unable—to change this behavior 

voluntarily because “patterns of violence are a direct consequence of the 

endowments leaders have at their disposal as they organize.”75 When 

dealing with such insurgents, peacekeepers are unlikely to stop their 

activities without resorting to proactive forms of coercion.

These insights are important but they deal only with opportunistic 

rebel organizations. Unfortunately, African governments also commit 

atrocities. Indeed, for years MONUC has been placed in the difficult 

position of helping Congolese government forces to defeat various 

rebel organizations even though it is well known that the government’s 

soldiers regularly commit as many if not more abuses against civilians 

than the rebels. In light of such abuses, in mid-2009 the MONUC 

human rights section drew up a list of 15 individuals believed to 

be involved in Kimia II (a DRC Government operation against 

Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda [FDLR] rebels that enjoyed 

direct support from MONUC) who had records of gross violations 

of human rights documented by MONUC over several years.76 As a 

consequence, MONUC suspended its support for the Congolese army’s 

notorious 213th brigade.

While MONUC was handed an unenviable strategic headache, 

sometimes circumstances are more clear-cut. When UNAMSIL 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

35

deployed to Sierra Leone in 1999, for instance, it faced a relatively 

straightforward scenario inasmuch as the majority of atrocities were 

committed by one group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—a 

perfect example of Weinstein’s “opportunistic rebellions.” As figure 

4 demonstrates, the RUF was responsible for the vast majority of the 

40,242 violations suffered by 14,995 victims of Sierra Leone’s war 

between 1991 and 2000.77 On other occasions, such as the conflicts 

in Darfur and eastern DRC, peacekeepers will find it much more 

challenging to compile accurate threat assessments and understand the 

repertoires of violence of a bewildering number of armed factions. In 

eastern DRC alone, analysts have identified nearly 20 armed factions.78

In such circumstances, mapping threats and perpetrators is crucial. 

Figure 4. Percentage of Violations by Perpetrator 

Group (Sierra Leone)

Source: Richard Conibere et al., appendix 1, “Statistical Appendix to the Report of 

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone,” October 5, 2004, 23.

Key: RUF = Revolutionary United Front; AFRC = Armed Forces Revolutionary 

Council; SLA = Sierra Leone Army; CDF = Civil Defense Forces; ECOMOG = 

Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group; GAF = Guinea 

Armed Forces; ULIMO = United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy

RUF

Rebels

AFRC

SLA

CDF

Unknown

SLA/AFRC

ECOMOG

GAF

ULIMO

Misc.

Police

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

36

In Darfur, for example, UNAMID has identified well over two dozen 

armed factions and has to deal with a long list of threats relevant to 

civilian protection, including offensive overflights/area bombings, 

violence between two or more parties, shooting at civilians, physical 

assault against civilians, harassment at checkpoints, insecurity in IDP 

camps, gender-based violence, general lawlessness, arbitrary arrest and 

detention, destruction of civilian assets, and children associated with 

armed groups.79

Protective Agents

As discussed above, the outer layers of physical protection can 

usually be provided for by a variety of humanitarian and development 

actors such as NGOs. When dealing with the inner core of physical 

protection, however, the need for coercive capabilities means there is a 

much shorter list of potential agents. While international peacekeepers 

often have the most important roles to play, they are not the only 

actors who can make a difference.

According to both the DPKO/DFS approach to protection and 

the R2P principle, even in situations of humanitarian crisis, it is the 

host government that retains the primary responsibility to protect 

its population. Consequently, if the host government is willing and 

able to engage in protection activities, its security services then hold 

a privileged status in the protection equation, and peacekeepers 

and other actors will play a supporting role. Insurgent organizations 

constitute a third set of actors. Although these groups are often 

responsible for many human rights violations, they can also undertake 

important protection activities, particularly when the host government 

in question is a perpetrator of atrocities against civilians. In the 1994 

Rwandan genocide, for instance, it was the Rwandan Patriotic Front 

rebels who ended the killing by defeating the genocidal regime’s armed 

forces. Local resistance groups make up a fourth set of protective 

agents. Although rarely well equipped for protection activities, local 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

37

actors are often the only groups present in remote areas or during the 

early stages of a campaign of mass killing. Recall that in most cases of 

mass atrocities international assistance arrived, if at all, only after the 

peak of the violence. Before ECOWAS and, later, UN forces deployed 

to address Sierra Leone’s civil war, for example, various self-defense 

groups emerged to fight off the RUF rebels and marauding government 

soldiers. Similarly, in Darfur, the emergence of dozens of small armed 

organizations, many of which were groups of armed men who united 

to protect their community, caused the rebel movement eventually to 

fragment. In the short term, such local resistance might be encouraged 

as the only realistic option in a desperate situation. In the longer term, 

however, a proliferation of armed groups is undesirable. The aim of 

external actors must therefore be to demilitarize local communities and 

reduce the numbers of armed groups in the area of operations.

A final category of actors able to conduct protection operations 

is private security firms. Although the vast majority of contractors 

engaged in peace and stabilization operations do not explicitly conduct 

frontline warfighting activities, the successful campaign waged by the 

firm Executive Outcomes against the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone during 

the mid-1990s continues to fuel the prospect of privatizing protection 

tasks.80 The usual arguments in favor of subcontracting a private 

military company to conduct protection operations are that firms 

will be able to rapidly assemble and deploy an appropriate and wellequipped force and will be less concerned than governments about the 

“body-bag syndrome” and thus able to endure high levels of casualties 

and—if the price is right—to venture where governments fear to 

tread.81 Given its swift and effective intervention in Sierra Leone, 

Executive Outcomes and other private security firms may offer strategic 

and operational lessons to protection efforts. On the flip side, it is 

worth recalling that the military junta that hired Executive Outcomes 

was only able to do so by selling off mining rights to the country’s major 

diamond producing area in Kono. The deal was completely opaque, 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

38

and civil associations were still fighting the contract and the process 

through which it was agreed after the war had ended in early 2002. 

Moreover, Executive Outcomes personnel remained in the diamond 

mining area well after the peace agreement, suggesting that some of 

them had become involved in the illicit trade that helped to fuel the 

war.82 Indeed, since private security firms are profit driven, there is 

little to prevent them from switching allegiances when offered a more 

lucrative contract, potentially upending conflict management efforts. 

In sum, difficult issues remain concerning the accountability and 

transparency of such operations. 

Turning Analysis into Action: Some Lessons for 

Enhancing Civilian Protection

Once peacekeepers have conducted a sophisticated analysis of 

the protection issues, the task is to take action that effectively halts 

ongoing atrocities and deters future killings. When focusing on the 

inner core of the protection “onion,” actions can be broadly divided 

into two interlinked categories: political and military.

The political challenge is obvious: to resolve the conflict that is 

generating the protection challenges. As the DPKO/DFS draft report 

puts it, “The maintenance of peace through an effective peace process is 

perhaps the single largest contribution a mission can make to protecting 

civilians.” Peace operations can facilitate this process through a variety 

of means including “the provision of good offices to the parties to a 

peace agreement, facilitating the political process through mediation, 

support to reconciliation processes, and active liaison with the host 

government, the parties to the peace process and their respective 

command chains, as well as with the international community.”83

Bringing stable peace to Africa’s conflict zones is no easy task 

but using the mechanisms of mediation and diplomacy to negotiate 

an end to war is well understood if not always well executed. In 

contrast, the military dimension of the protection equation is less 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

39

well developed and understood. Appropriate military action depends 

on the scenario in question. Broadly speaking, these can be divided 

into situations where atrocities take place in either the presence or 

the absence of peacekeepers.

When atrocities take place in the absence of peacekeepers, the 

rapid deployment of sufficient numbers of well-equipped troops who 

have received individual and collective training on how to conduct 

protection tasks must be emphasized and achieved. Historically, the 

biggest obstacles in this scenario have been threefold: international 

law, international politics, and a lack of relevant military doctrine. 

The first obstacle is that international law does not currently 

permit humanitarian military interventions unless they are authorized 

by the UN Security Council.84 Humanitarian military intervention 

is defined here as military force without host state consent aimed at 

preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of human rights 

such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity. Indeed, 

the UN Security Council has never authorized such an intervention 

if a functioning government has withheld its consent; therefore, this 

pattern is not likely to alter any time soon. This means that any other 

organization would have to conduct an intervention with, at best, a 

precarious legal basis and, at worst, a perceived stamp of illegality. One 

such example occurred when NATO conducted Operation Allied Force

in Serbia/Kosovo in 1999.

The second barrier to such interventions is international 

politics. In the majority of relevant cases, the world’s most powerful 

governments have shown little inclination to use military force 

in response to mass atrocities. As Simon Chesterman put it, 

“inhumanitarian non-intervention” has been international society’s 

usual response.85 It can also be difficult to generate political support 

for military interventions because there is no guarantee that they will 

improve the situation. This was certainly a fear raised in the context 

of Darfur. Indeed, there are many reasonable, prudential considerations 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

40

that might make humanitarian military intervention a bad idea in 

certain cases. Moreover, the series of debates within the UN General 

Assembly leading up to and during the 2005 World Summit show quite 

clearly that most UN members were unwilling to permit the R2P to 

involve the idea of military intervention without UN Security Council 

authorization.86 In sum, R2P was only accepted because the UN’s 

version did not include the prospect of endorsing humanitarian military 

intervention outside of the UN system. 

This was even true of most African governments despite the 

existence of article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act. Without 

authorization by the UN Security Council and an endorsement by 

the AU, humanitarian military interventions would have to overcome 

the widespread perception of illegality and political disapproval. In 

this context, it is little wonder that although several international 

organizations—notably the AU, NATO, and the EU—have given 

indications that they would consider conducting some form of 

humanitarian military intervention, this remains an unlikely scenario 

in Africa, at least for the foreseeable future.

The third obstacle is that until very recently military thinking on 

how to conduct such a protection operation was almost nonexistent. 

To be clear, the lack of relevant military doctrine does not explain the 

lack of humanitarian military interventions in places like Rwanda, 

Srebrenica, or Darfur—that was up to political decisionmakers. But the 

lack of relevant doctrine does pose significant headaches for military 

planners if they are asked to undertake such interventions. Fortunately, 

a significant advance has been made to address this doctrinal gap 

with the publication of a military planning handbook by the MARO 

Project that “describes a contingency operation to halt widespread and 

systematic use of violence by state or non-state armed groups against 

non-combatants.” In military terms, a MARO’s distinguishing feature 

is that its “primary objective” is to stop “the killing of civilians.”87

Although its analysis and recommendations are directed at the U.S. 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

41

Government, the MARO Project contains many transferable insights 

about how to enhance civilian protection efforts (discussed below). In 

sum, however, the prospect of international forces coming quickly from 

abroad to rescue civilians in imminent danger remains slight.

There is room for a more optimistic outcome in the second scenario—

that is, where a campaign of mass killing occurs in a country where 

peacekeepers are already present. In this case, emphasis must be placed 

on deploying assets to what MONUC analysts called “must protect” areas 

and using military power and, if necessary, military force, to create political 

effects on the ground that stop ongoing atrocities and deter future ones.

The issue of harnessing military power to enhance civilian 

protection can be thought of at the strategic, operational, and tactical 

levels. At the strategic level, there are four classic approaches for 

stopping mass killing: deterrence, compellence, defense, and offense.88

Examples of their application in relation to civilian protection tasks are 

listed in table 3.

Deterrence involves attempts to manipulate a target’s behavior 

through conditional threats. A deterrent strategy is about establishing 

red lines and the risks of crossing them. It usually takes the form of 

a demand communicated through a combination of words and actions 

that states: “Do not do X, or I will do Y.” In relation to civilian 

protection, it involves influencing how armed groups think, especially 

their calculations about committing atrocities. Deterrence is most 

likely to succeed when the deterrer and the target share a sense of what 

counts as appropriate behavior in the situation at hand. This is because 

a shared framework makes it easier to agree on what counts as fair and 

effective punishment.89

Compellence, Thomas Schelling’s term derived from the verb 

“compel,” means employing the threat or limited use of force to induce 

an opponent to take a specific action, usually by a specified deadline.90

It is complementary to deterrence and usually takes this form: “If you 

do not do X, I will do Y.” Ideally, both deterrence and compellence 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

42

involve using conditional threats effectively so that the actual use 

of military force can be avoided entirely or used in limited, symbolic 

doses. The success or failure of both these strategies thus hinges on the 

target’s acquiescence to the demands specified in those threats.

Defense and offense, on the other hand, are strategies that 

involve using military force when conditional threats fail to generate 

the acquiescence of the target—in this case, the perpetrators of 

mass atrocities. As a result, they are not dependent upon the target’s 

acquiescence but instead hinge on whether military force can be 

wielded effectively. With regard to civilian protection, the primary 

difference between defensive and offensive strategies is that the 

former focuses on saving the victims whereas the latter focuses on 

defeating the perpetrators. Peacekeepers have only rarely employed 

Table 3. Strategies for Military Protection

DETERRENCE

Deter violence 

through military 

presence or threat

DEFENSE

Defensively protect 

vulnerable civilians 

in fixed locations

COMPELLENCE

Disrupt means and 

capabilities of 

perpetrators

OFFENSE

Militarily attack and 

defeat perpetrators

Focus on physical protection of civilians Focus on halting actions of perpetrators

• Patrol on land, 

at sea

• Conduct military 

exercises

• Use satellites and/

or unmanned 

aerial vehicles to 

gather information on potential 

atrocities

• Position military 

assets in deterrent posture (for 

example, off-shore 

or in neighboring 

territories)

• Defend villages, 

stadiums, churches, 

and so forth

• Defend internally 

displaced persons/

refugee camps

• Establish interpositionary operations

• Protect humanitarian corridors

• Disrupt supply lines

• Control borders, 

roads

• Enforce no-fly zone

• Impose arms 

embargo/cut off 

military assistance

• Jam media, hate 

radio, and other 

communications

• Precision targeting

• Deployment of 

ground troops

• Air campaign

Source: Adapted from Genocide Prevention Task Force, Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint 

for U.S. Policymakers (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2008), 83.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

43

an offensive strategy, but one positive example occurred in 2005 

when MONUC troops conducted cordon-and-search operations that 

resulted in the forcible disarmament of some 15,000 combatants in 

the Kivus.91 Cases of peacekeepers employing a defensive strategy are 

much more common. One positive example occurred in the DRC in 

late November 2006 when Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for 

the Defense of the People forces, having fended off DRC Armed Forces 

(FARDC) resistance, advanced on Goma, the region’s main city, the 

hub of most international relief efforts, and for all intents and purposes 

a de facto UN safe area. In the ensuing combat, MONUC troops beat 

back Nkunda’s forces using infantry and attack helicopters, killing 

between 200 and 400 of his troops.

As a general rule, it is widely accepted that it is “easier to protect 

those who might become victims of violence . . . than it is to defeat 

the perpetrators.”92 Nevertheless, two very important caveats must 

be emphasized. First, the rewards of defeating the perpetrators are 

potentially much higher because such a campaign can end a war and 

hence the cause of the mass killing, whereas protecting potential 

victims can only ever address the symptoms. Second, as Taylor Seybolt 

has demonstrated, of the cases that occurred globally during the 1990s, 

campaigns to defeat the perpetrators had a better success rate than 

those to save the victims, probably because those who intervened 

tended to underestimate the demands involved in the “easier” option 

(that is, defending “safe areas”).93 In sum, both strategies are risky, 

dangerous, costly, and require exceptional military leadership in order 

to succeed. Without sufficient resources, defenders will be overrun and 

attempts to defeat perpetrators will fail. Moreover, if either approach is 

started but abandoned because of unacceptable costs, it will probably 

make the situation worse because the perpetrators will be emboldened 

by their success.

At the operational level, the most useful current thinking on 

military protection (when protection is the only or primary objective) 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

44

has been developed by the MARO Project. Drawing on its work 

enables us to identify six relevant military approaches for conducting 

protection operations. As discussed in the MARO handbook, each 

approach has various pros and cons depending on the number, type, and 

location of intervening troops deployed; the number, type, and location 

of the victims and perpetrators; and the level of political commitment 

on the part of the interveners and perpetrators. The major elements 

and considerations of each approach are summarized in table 4 and 

depicted graphically in the appendix. Aspects of the MARO handbook 

perspective on each approach could be contested but they serve as a 

useful starting point for debate.

As noted above, among the most dangerous but potentially 

effective approaches is for peacekeepers to defeat perpetrators. A clear 

example of the benefits of this approach occurred in late 2000 when 

British forces in Sierra Leone defeated a rebel faction known as the 

West Side Boys. Although the primary motivation behind Operation 

Barras was to rescue British soldiers who had been taken hostage by the 

rebels, it had the crucial psychological effect of signaling to other rebel 

factions that the British forces possessed superior firepower and were 

not afraid to use it. Roughly a year after the operation, the decade-long 

civil war was finally over.94

Unfortunately, the fate that befell the West Side Boys is a 

rare occurrence in the world of peace operations. Sometimes the 

peacekeepers lose, as in the failed attempt by U.S. and UN troops 

to defeat General Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s forces in Somalia in 

1993–1994. More commonly, peacekeepers engage in coercive efforts 

against particular rebel groups, inflicting some damage, though not 

defeating them. This allows rebel forces an opportunity to recover 

and exact retribution upon the peacekeepers or local civilians at 

a later date. In early July 2003, for example, troops in the Frenchled Operation Artemis force in the Democratic Republic of the 

Congo clearly demonstrated their resolve when they killed some 20 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

45

Approach Description Considerations

Saturation

Establish control and 

provide security over a large 

region with dispersed units 

on the ground.

• Requires adequate forces, 

extensive logistics, and weak 

adversary

• Suitable when victim population is widely dispersed

• Extensive stability operations necessary

Oil spot

Focus on control of selected 

key locations and gradually 

expand to other areas.

• Fewer forces required than 

saturation

• Suitable with strong perpetrators and concentrated 

victim populations

• Cedes territory to perpetrators

• Extended commitment

Separation

Establish a buffer zone 

between victims and perpetrators.

• Limited forces required

• Suitable when perpetrators 

and victims are separated

• Cedes territory to perpetrators

• Forces may be caught between belligerent groups

• Potential long-term division

Safe areas

Secure internally displaced 

persons camps and other 

areas with high densities of 

vulnerable populations.

• Limited forces required

• Suitable when victims are 

concentrated

• Cedes territory to perpetrators

• Large humanitarian assistance burden

• May “reward” perpetrators

Containment

Strike perpetrators or isolate 

them with blockades and 

no-fly zones.

• Requires effective air, sea, 

logistics capacity 

• Limited in-country presence

• Does not provide direct 

protection to victims

• Risk of collateral damage

• Precursor to other approaches

Defeat perpetrators

Attack perpetrators’ leadership and forces to eliminate 

their capability to commit 

mass atrocities.

• Large force required

• May be required for longterm resolution

• Extensive reconstruction and 

stabilization effort required

• High casualties and collateral damage

Table 4. Military Approaches to Civilian Protection

Source: Paraphrased from Sarah Sewall et al., Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military 

Planning Handbook (Cambridge: Harvard Kennedy School and PKSOI, 2010), 63–78.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

46

militiamen from the Union des Patriotes Congolais who had threatened 

the peacekeepers and local civilians. The problem was, however, that 

the rebel threat in the area remained long after Operation Artemis

forces departed just a few months later. Similarly, in response to 

MONUC’s cordon-and-search operations mentioned above, the Front 

des Nationales et Intégrationnistes ambushed a UN patrol, killing nine 

Bangladeshi peacekeepers. MONUC subsequently reengaged the 

rebels in a fierce firefight, killing 50 to 60 fighters and disarming more 

than 140 with only 2 MONUC soldiers injured.95 These problems 

also bedevil government forces. For example, when Congolese and 

Rwandan troops undertook military offensives against the FDLR 

rebels during 2009—Operations Umoja Wetu and Kimia II—they 

killed and disarmed some of the rebels, but the majority simply 

dispersed only to return and exact retribution upon the civilian 

population after the Congolese and Rwandan soldiers withdrew. 

Moreover, while these operations were being conducted between 

January and September 2009, over 1,400 civilians were deliberately 

killed, more than half of them by the Congolese army.96

These examples demonstrate some of the difficulties involved 

in conducting offensive operations to defeat perpetrators of mass 

atrocities. Although they have produced mixed results, it is hard to 

see any alternative once diplomacy has failed to stop the killing. The 

challenge for the future is to equip peacekeepers with the resources 

they need to either coerce these groups into participating in a genuine 

peace process or defeat them once and for all.

In tactical terms, many established military tasks are relevant 

to protection operations, some of which have been carried out in 

peacekeeping operations in Africa on a regular basis (see table 5). It 

is up to analysts and commanders in specific missions to decide which 

of these are appropriate and deserve priority in the local theater 

of operations. An awareness of all of them should form part of the 

individual and collective training for would-be peacekeepers.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

47

Conclusions and Recommendations

Protecting civilians from the vagaries of war will always raise 

huge challenges, but as a variety of earlier studies have concluded, it 

is not an impossible mandate for peacekeepers. Indeed, since 1999, the 

protection of civilians has become a requirement for the operational 

success of most UN peace operations in Africa. The central argument 

of this study is that civilian protection can be enhanced if policies are 

based on a multilayered conception of protection, a sound analysis 

of the conflict dynamics in question, and a clear view of the strategy 

guiding protection activities, and if peacekeepers are given sufficient 

resources to undertake the crucial operational and tactical tasks. 

The following recommendations are intended for the variety of 

international organizations that have made civilian protection part of 

their remit.

Recommendation 1: Deterrence is the objective so strengthen global 

norms. The central objective must be to prevent the mass killing of 

Table 5. Examples of Military Tasks Relevant to 

Protection of Civilians

• Coerce perpetrators

• Cordon-and-search operations against 

bases of armed groups

• Crisis response

• Set up bases in areas of civilian insecurity

• Guard installations

• Patrolling/observation/surveillance, for 

example, in displacement camps

• Removal of illegal barricades and checkpoints on civilian roads

• Sensitization missions to armed groups

• Establish safe areas and maintain security 

within them

• Separate combatants and noncombatants

• Noncombatant evacuation operations

• Provide safe passage for civilians

• Identify, demilitarize, and patrol humanitarian aid supply routes

• Escort humanitarian aid convoys and 

protect relief workers

• Monitor violations

• Arrest war criminals

• Demining

• Disable unexploded ordnance

• Enforce curfews

• VIP protection

• Stop hate media

• Reform and train security services
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

48

civilians rather than to intervene and try to stop massacres already 

under way. In the long term, this requires a deterrence strategy 

based on the goal of strengthening global norms that restrain armed 

violence against civilians. Lawrence Freedman has described this 

as a “norms-based” approach to deterrence that involves powerful 

actors “reinforcing certain values to the point where it is well 

understood that they must not be violated.”97 The two key norms in 

question are the R2P and the legitimacy of humanitarian military 

intervention in cases of genocide and mass atrocities. In the nearer 

term, the challenge is to ensure that the UN and other international 

organizations build a reputation for responding to atrocities that 

creates internalized deterrence within would-be perpetrators. This 

means bolstering the resources available to peace operations so that 

when deterrence fails, they have a reasonable prospect of successfully 

protecting civilians in imminent danger.

Recommendation 2: Devise clear operational concepts and strengthen 

international consensus around them. If organizations cannot clearly 

define what protection means, they have little chance of achieving 

it. The good news is that although still a work in progress, the various 

operational definitions of protection emerging from the diverse range 

of NGOs, governments, and international organizations discussed 

above show a significant degree of consensus about what it means. This 

suggests that the major challenge for the foreseeable future will revolve 

around how best to achieve protection in concrete contexts. In other 

words, the debate will be more about means than ends.

Recommendation 3: Be realistic and manage expectations. The 

record of civilian protection operations since the end of the Cold 

War leaves considerable room for improvement. It is therefore right 

to hold peacekeepers to the highest standards. But these standards 

must be realistic. As the DPKO/OCHA study correctly cautioned, 

“Peacekeeping operations cannot ‘protect everyone from everything’.” 

In particular, they “cannot address all the vulnerabilities of a society, 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

49

operate without some semblance of a ‘peace to keep’ or halt determined 

belligerents wholly backed by a state.”98 This means that wouldbe protectors must work to manage expectations across a variety 

of audiences, particularly local populations in conflict zones, the 

international media, global civil society, and the political leaders of 

the world’s governments and international organizations. The general 

message that needs to be conveyed is simple: without more resources, 

better planning and training, and greater levels of political support, 

there are real limits to how many civilians the world’s peacekeepers can 

protect, especially when governments choose to massacre segments of 

their own populations. In the field, MONUC’s Joint Protection Teams 

represent an important innovation and highlight the potential for what 

could be achieved in this area. While more extended deployments of 

such teams are clearly needed, this is an initiative worth building upon 

and replicating elsewhere.

Recommendation 4: Invest in excellent leaders for peace operations.

As an old African proverb suggests, peace is expensive but well worth 

the investment. The same could be said about leadership in protection 

operations. Put simply, leadership matters. Indeed, it is often only 

strong leadership that “can counterbalance the many tensions in 

peacekeeping and integrated missions.”99 As the examples of Dag 

Hammarskjöld’s leadership in the Congo mission of the 1960s and 

Roméo Dallaire’s efforts in Rwanda suggest, strong leadership, clear 

goals, and political commitment can make the difference even when 

personnel have relatively limited experience. Organizations interested 

in civilian protection need to invest more resources to ensure that 

heads of mission and senior officials are better selected and prepared. 

These leaders then need to be held accountable for producing and 

executing mission-wide strategies and for reporting on their results. The 

long-term aim should be to build up a significant cadre of professional 

peacekeepers and senior officials who have the experience and critical 

judgment to take the appropriate action in difficult circumstances.
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Recommendation 5: Invest in peacekeepers. Asking peacekeepers 

to protect civilians in Africa’s conflict zones requires them to take 

considerable risks. It is only fair that in return they are provided 

with sufficient political support and resources to give them at least 

a reasonable chance of success. The good news is that even in its 

relatively threadbare state, UN peacekeeping is cost effective; at 

approximately $8 billion per annum, the UN’s peacekeeping budget is 

less than 1 percent of global military spending. This is far too small, 

but it means that peacekeeping can be significantly strengthened for 

comparatively small amounts of money, at least when compared with 

the national defense budgets of NATO states. The AU budget is 

considerably smaller. As a result, relatively small amounts of money 

spent through assistance and training programs in Africa, such as the 

Global Peace Operations Initiative, could have a significant impact, 

not least by helping to expand the pool of potential troop- and policecontributing countries.

Recommendation 6: Invest in intelligence capabilities. The protection 

of civilians cannot be accomplished without a sophisticated 

understanding of conflict dynamics and good threat analysis conducted 

as close to real time as possible. Peace operations need to develop 

efficient forms of intelligence gathering. As Dame Pauline NevilleJones noted, “It is hard to envisage the possibility of capable and 

effective peacekeeping without the availability of good quality, timely 

intelligence.”100 Yet historically, UN member states have been reluctant 

to endow DPKO with its own intelligence gathering capabilities. This 

needs to change.

Recommendation 7: Invest in reflection. Enhancing civilian protection 

policies tomorrow will be made easier by reflecting systematically on the 

extent of progress today. This will require organizations to improve in two 

areas in particular: devising benchmarks and key indicators of progress, and 

generating actionable lessons learned and best practices. Field operations 

in Sudan, DRC, and elsewhere have made significant strides in developing 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

51

performance indicators but this should be done more systematically across 

missions. In addition, the institutional memory of potential protection 

organizations needs to extract, analyze, and systematize the practical 

wisdom gained through the field experience of their personnel.101 Whether 

this takes the form of oral histories, a lessons-learned interview technique 

to extract information from senior officials and peacekeepers, or, ideally, 

more systematic studies on the criteria for success in peace operations, 

these experiences are too important to waste.102 As the DPKO/OCHA 

study concluded, “Too much knowledge is being lost at a time when it 

is sorely needed.”103 Such knowledge has many uses but it will be crucial 

for developing better training programs at a time when there is no 

standardized concept of civilian protection training.

Recommendation 8: Be prepared to coerce perpetrators. It may often 

be a politically unpalatable option, but historical evidence suggests 

that once diplomacy has failed, there are few ways to stop campaigns 

of widespread and systematic atrocities without resorting to the use of 

lethal force. When such force is used, peacekeepers should expect to 

take casualties and political leaders should be prepared to absorb them. 

In addition, it is important to recall Taylor Seybolt’s conclusion that 

during the 1990s, campaigns to defeat the perpetrators had a better 

success rate than those to save the victims, probably because those 

who intervened tended to underestimate the demands involved in the 

“easier” option (that is, defending “safe areas”). Coercion need not 

always be military, however. Indeed, Jeremy Weinstein has suggested 

that when dealing with opportunistic rebellions, starving them of the 

resources they use to finance their insurgencies and pushing them 

toward building states with the consent of the governed may have the 

desired effect.104 If economic measures are unsuccessful or too slow, they 

should be combined with military efforts of the kind discussed above. 

Soldiers will need to be trained accordingly.

Recommendation 9: Keep humanitarian military intervention on the 

table. The way in which UN member states have defined the R2P 
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

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principle and framed much of the debate about civilian protection 

issues suggests that humanitarian military intervention can be 

achieved through the existing UN structures. The problem with this 

formulation is that it sidesteps a crucial policy conundrum raised by 

the fact that the most widespread and systematic campaigns of mass 

killing historically have been orchestrated by government agents.105

Yet the UN Security Council has never authorized a humanitarian 

military intervention against the will of a functioning government. 

Organizations interested in civilian protection thus need to keep 

the issue of humanitarian military intervention very much on the 

table. As Kofi Annan famously asked the UN member states, if “in 

those dark days and hours leading up to the genocide [in Rwanda in 

1994], a coalition of states had been prepared to act in defense of the 

Tutsi population, but did not receive prompt Council authorization, 

should such a coalition have stood aside and allowed the horror to 

unfold?”106 If the answer is “no,” then governments must continue to 

explore all potential options—including actions undertaken without 

explicit UN Security Council authorization—and figure out ways to 

maximize the chances that humanitarian interventions, if they are 

needed, can succeed.

Recommendation 10: Don’t give up on security sector reform. Given 

the amount of security challenges exacerbated by unprofessional 

militaries in Africa, a vital part of the long-term effort to prevent 

mass atrocities lies in professionalizing the continent’s armed 

forces.107 Unprofessional militaries not only make it relatively easy 

for insurgencies to form and start a serious civil war, but they also 

are a major source of atrocities against civilians. As a result, building 

the capacity of weak states through security sector reform should 

be considered a crucial part of the civilian protection agenda. On 

occasion, it may even be wise to provide salaries and equipment to 

militaries guilty of committing atrocities because as evidence from the 

DRC suggests, “payment and logistical shortfalls played a significant 
Enhancing Civilian Protection

53

role in contributing to [FARDC] attacks on civilians as hungry, unpaid 

troops looted and pillaged from local populations.”108 The long-term 

objective of such reform efforts is to instill a professional ethos in the 

security services to the extent that, ideally, their members would refuse 

to follow orders to commit illegal actions against civilians.

Enhancing Civilian Protection

55

Appendix

Six Military Approaches to Civilian Protection

Source for the six figures: Sarah Sewall et al., Mass Atrocity 

Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook (Cambridge: 

Harvard Kennedy School and PKSOI, 2010), 63–78.

1. Saturation: Establish control and provide security over a 

large region with dispersed units on the ground.

X: Brigade II: Battalion
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

56

2. Oil spot: Focus on control of selected key locations and 

gradually expand to other areas.

X: Brigade
Enhancing Civilian Protection

57

3. Separation: Establish a buffer zone between victims 

and perpetrators.

X: Brigade II: Battalion
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

58

4. Safe areas: Secure internally displaced persons camps and 

other areas with high densities of vulnerable populations.

II: Battalion
Enhancing Civilian Protection

59

5. Containment: Strike perpetrators or isolate them with 

blockades and no-fly zones.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

60

6. Defeat perpetrators: Attack perpetrators’ leadership and 

forces to eliminate their capability to commit mass atrocities.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

61

Notes

1

 Cited in Siobhán Wills, Protecting Civilians: The Obligations of Peacekeepers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8, 10.

2

 Trevor Findlay, The Use of Force in UN Peace Operations (Oxford: Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 2002), 68.

3

 Victoria Holt and Glyn Taylor, with Max Kelly, Protecting Civilians in the Context 

of UN Peacekeeping Operations (New York: UN Department of Peacekeeping Operation 

(DPKO)/Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), November 

2009), 5.

4

 There are no reliable figures on the casualties of wars in Africa, but it is highly 

doubtful that the widely used statistic that 90 percent of war fatalities are civilians is 

accurate. See Adam Roberts, “Lives and Statistics: Are 90% of War Victims Civilians?” 

Survival 52, no. 3 (2010), 115–136.

5

 A breakdown of this total is available at <www.pcr.uu.se/gpdatabase/search.php>.

6 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (UN doc. A/55/305-

S/2000/809, 2000), paragraph 50. This report is commonly referred to as the Brahimi 

report because of its chairman, former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi. 

The report was published in August 2000 in response to UN Secretary-General Kofi 

Annan’s request that the panel thoroughly review the UN’s “peace and security 

activities” and “present a clear set of specific, concrete and practical recommendations 

to assist the United Nations in conducting such activities better in the future.” It is 

widely regarded as one of the most important documents on UN peace operations in 

the post–Cold War era.

7

 Holt et al., 3–4.

8

 UN doc. S/2007/307/Rev. 1, June 5, 2007, paragraph 40.

9

 Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF), Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for 

U.S. Policymakers (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2008). The task force 

was conceived as a bipartisan effort and established on the initiative of the United States 

Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the U.S. 

Institute of Peace. It was co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and William Cohen and was 

tasked with identifying “practical steps to enhance the capacity of the U.S. government 

to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”

10 In the section on cooperation to address key global challenges, the U.S. Government reiterated its support for the “responsibility to protect” principle and stated 

that “the United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the 

international community are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass 

atrocities and genocide. In the event that prevention fails, the United States will work 

both multilaterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, 

and—in certain instances—military means to prevent and respond to genocide and 

mass atrocities.” United States National Security Strategy (Washington, DC: The White 

House, May 2010), 48.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

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11 General Guidelines for Peace-Keeping Operations (DPKO: UN/210/TC/GG95, 

October 1995), paragraphs 29, 38. Tasks related to protecting civilians were similarly absent from the 1996 United Nations Peacekeeping Training Manual (DPKO: n.d. 

[1996]).

12 This section builds upon Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, “Protecting Civilians in Uncivil Wars,” in Protecting the Displaced, ed. Sara Davies and Luke Glanville 

(Leiden: Brill, 2010), 131–137.

13 Louise Doswald-Beck, “The Civilian in the Crossfire,” Journal of Peace Research

24, no. 3 (1987), 253.

14 Recent examples include Deborah Mancini-Griffoli and Andre Picot, Humanitarian Negotiation: A Handbook for Securing Access, Assistance and Protection for Civilians 

in Armed Conflict (Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2004); Hugo Slim and 

Andrew Bonwick, Protection: An ALNAP Guide for Humanitarian Agencies (London: 

ALNAP/Overseas Development Institute, 2005); and Liam Mahoney, Proactive Presence: 

Field Strategies for Civilian Protection (Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2006).

15 For a list of documents produced by the UN Security Council and SecretaryGeneral on civilian protection, see Holt et al., 81–84.

16 OCHA, Aide-Memoire for the Consideration of Issues Pertaining to the Protection of 

Civilians (New York: OCHA Policy Development and Studies Branch, 2004). In early 

2009, OCHA proposed a revised version, which was welcomed by the Security Council 

(see UN doc. S/PV.6066, January 14, 2009) and published in May 2009.

17 Report of the Secretary-General on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (UN 

doc. S/2007/643, October 28, 2007). For the council’s reaction, see UN doc. S/PV.5781, 

November 20, 2007.

18 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, x.

19 Peace Support Operations: A Working Draft Manual for African Military Practitioners (DWM 1-2000, February 2000), paragraphs 0245, 0346, and 0511, available 

at <www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Other/PeaceSupportManualMM/Contents.html>. Peace 

enforcement tasks included protecting rule of law, protecting humanitarian operations and human rights, and creating demilitarized safe areas. See also chapter 5, 

section III.

20 African Union, Roadmap for the Operationalization of the African Standby Force 

(Au doc. EXP/AU-RECs/ASF/4(I), Addis Ababa, March 22–23, 2005), A–1. The African Standby Force is intended to be made up of five regional battalions of approximately 

4,000 troops. It is supposed to undertake operations in six scenarios:

1. AU/regional military advice to a political mission

2. AU/regional observer mission codeployed with a UN Mission

3. Stand-alone AU/regional observer mission

4. AU/regional peacekeeping force for Chapter VI and preventive deployment missions (and peacebuilding)

5. AU peacekeeping force for complex multidimensional peacekeeping missions, 

including those involving low-level spoilers
Enhancing Civilian Protection

63

6. AU intervention in genocide situations where the international community does 

not act promptly.

The official deadline for the force becoming operational was mid-2010. For details, 

see Jackie Cilliers, The African Standby Force: An Update on Progress (Pretoria: ISS 

Paper 160, March 2008); Jeffrey E. Marshall, Building an Effective African Standby Force 

to Promote African Stability, Conflict Resolution and Prosperity (London: LSE Crisis States 

Discussion Papers No. 16, April 2009).

21 African Union, Peace Support Operations Harmonized Doctrine (AU doc. 2006), 

pages 3–9, and chapters 2–2, 2–3, 3–9, and 5–3. Copy in author’s possession.

22 ECOWAS Draft Code of Conduct for the Armed Forces and Security Services of 

West Africa (April 2006), available at <www.dcaf.ch/code_conduct-armed-forces-westafrica/WestAfrica_CoC.pdf>.

23 Report of the UN Secretary-General, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect (UN 

doc. A/63/677, January 12, 2009).

24 Ban Ki-moon, “Annual Address to the General Assembly,” UN doc. SG/

SM/11182, September 25, 2007.

25 NATO, Peace Support Operations (Allied Joint Publication 3.4.1, July 2001), 

paragraphs 0629c and 0640–1.

26 Handbook on UN Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO Best Practices Unit, December 2003) and UN Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines

(DPKO, 2008).

27 Holt et al., 57.

28 UK Government Strategy on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (London: 

FCO–DFID–MOD, 2010), 11, available at <www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/about-us/

our-publications/ukstrategy-protect-civilians-arms-conflict>. 

29 The “onion” is my adaptation of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s 

“egg framework,” which was developed in the late 1990s to depict the relationship 

between patterns of abuse and what the organization saw as the three forms of protection 

activities (responsive, remedial, and environment-building).

30 Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept on the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations, January 29, 2010, copy in author’s possession. The UNMIS Protection 

of Civilians Strategy-Security Concept developed in late 2008 also conceptualized protection in multilayered terms with protection from imminent physical violence at its core. 

See Holt et al., 190–192.

31 AU Draft Guidelines for the Protection of Civilians by Peace Support Missions, March 

2010, copy in author’s possession. They are currently in the process of being approved by 

the AU’s chiefs of defense staff.

32 Ibrahim Gambari, UNAMID 2010 Darfur Protection Strategy (February 2010), 1.

33 Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept, paragraph 16.

34 A New Partnership Agenda: Charting a New Horizon for UN Peacekeeping (DPKO, 

July 2009), 19.

35 Taylor B. Seybolt, Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success 

and Failure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 23.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

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36 Sarah Sewall et al., Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook

(Cambridge: Harvard Kennedy School and PKSOI, 2010), 5. See also Victoria K. Holt and 

Tobias C. Berkman, The Impossible Mandate? Military Preparedness, the Responsibility to Protect, 

and Modern Peace Operations (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2006).

37 UN Peacekeeping Operations, 35. Within the UN system, rules of engagement 

are developed by the Military Planning Service and the Office of Legal Affairs, issued to 

the force commander for dissemination, and provided on a simplified card for soldiers to 

carry with them.

38 Ibid., 323; Holt et al., 138, 322. The Aide-Mémoire (“Soldier’s Card”) was equally clear. 

39 Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 

1994 Genocide in Rwanda (UN doc. S/1999/1257, December 16, 1999), 9. See also Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (New York: 

Carroll and Graf, 2005), 72.

40 Dallaire, 99.

41 Wills, 85.

42 These figures on one-sided violence are available at <www.pcr.uu.se/gpdatabase/

search.php>.

43 Militias are armed groups controlled by political parties, whereas criminal gangs 

are bands of armed thugs not under the control of any political umbrella.

44 See Sewall et al., 31.

45 Michael O’Hanlon and Peter W. Singer, “The Humanitarian Transformation: 

Expanding Global Intervention Capacity,” Survival 46, no. 1 (2004), 97n7.

46 Gambari, 1.

47 Dallaire, 264.

48 Holt et al., 159.

49 Cited in ibid., 89.

50 Katarina Månsson, “Use of Force and Civilian Protection: Peace Operations in 

the Congo,” International Peacekeeping 12, no. 4 (2005), 507, 512.

51 Human Rights Watch (HRW), “You Will Be Punished”: Attacks on Civilians in 

Eastern Congo (HRW, December 2009), 143–144, available at <www.hrw.org/node/87151>.

52 Cited in Wills, 65.

53 Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept, paragraph 7. See also Holt et al., 96.

54 Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept, paragraph 8.

55 Holt et al., 42.

56 Ibid., 356–357.

57 The specific terms of a state’s contribution to a UN peacekeeping operation are often 

codified in memorandums of understanding between the TCC in question and the UN.

58 Code cable, “The military assessment of the situation as of 17 April 1994,” Dallaire (UNAMIR) to Baril (New York, United Nations), April 17, 1994, paragraph 17.

59 An exception is Alison Giffen, Addressing the Doctrinal Deficit: Developing Guidance to Prevent and Respond to Widespread or Systematic Attacks against Civilians (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2010).
Enhancing Civilian Protection

65

60 See Holt et al., GPTF, Sarah Sewall et al., and Mass Atrocity Response Operations.

61 A New Partnership Agenda, 20.

62 David Keen, “War and Peace: What’s the Difference?” International Peacekeeping 

7, no. 4 (2000), 1–22.

63 Sewall et al., 7; Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept, 1.

64 They are (1) the Strategic Assessment, where mission planning begins; (2) the UnderSecretary-General’s Planning Directive, which forms the bridge from the strategic objectives 

identified by the Secretary-General to subsequent operational planning; (3) the Technical Assessment Mission Report, where draft plans can be checked against the realities on the ground 

firsthand; (4) the Secretary-General’s Report to the Council, which shapes the mission mandate 

and structure in its core document; (5) the Military Concept of Operations and Police Concept 

of Operations, which shape all aspects of the military and police components, respectively, 

from resources to logistics to rules of engagement; and (6) the briefings to troop- and policecommitting countries, as a means to ensure the contingents deployed to the mission are able, 

willing, and prepared to implement the civilian protection mandate. Holt et al., 14, 106–112.

65 HRW, 148. 

66 One-sided violence, as the name suggests, involves one side using violence and 

the other side suffering the consequences. It might include soldiers firing on unarmed 

protestors, summary executions of prisoners, or genocide.

67 Holt et al., 197.

68 HRW, 149. 

69 Ibid., 150–151.

70 Holt et al., 122–129, 205–207.

71 On which, see the special issue of the journal International Peacekeeping 16, no. 1 

(2009) devoted to the relationship between peace operations and organized crime.

72 HRW, 142. 

73 Charles King, “The Micropolitics of Social Violence,” World Politics 56, no. 3 

(2004), 447.

74 Code Cable, Dallaire to Baril, paragraph 19.

75 Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20, 47–50, 207–208. For Weinstein, 

economic endowments are “resources that can be mobilized to finance the start-up and 

maintenance of a rebel organization.” They “shape and constrain the range of strategies 

leaders can employ as they organize violence . . . because they affect the cost-benefit 

calculations leaders make.” 

76 HRW, 141. 

77 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone identified 17 types 

of violations: abduction, amputation, arbitrary detention, assault/beating, destruction 

of property, drugging, extortion, forced cannibalism, forced displacement, forced labor, 

forced recruitment, killing, looting, physical torture, rape, sexual abuse, and sexual slavery. Appendix 1, “Statistical Appendix to the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation 

Commission of Sierra Leone,” by Richard Conibere et al., October 5, 2004.
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78 See the list compiled by Jason Stearns at <http://congosiasa.blogspot.

com/2010/06/list-of-armed-groups-in-kivus.html> (June 2010).

79 UNAMID Mission Directive on the Protection of Civilians in Darfur (issued February 

23, 2009), cited in Holt et al., 82.

80 For details see Abdel-Fatah Musah, “A Country under Siege,” in Mercenaries: An 

African Security Dilemma, ed. Abdel-Fatah Musah and J.K. Fayemi (London: Pluto Press, 

2000), 76–116, and Herbert M. Howe, Ambiguous Order (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 

2001), chapter 5.

81 For a discussion, see P.W. Singer, “Peacekeepers, Inc.,” Policy Review 119 (June–

July 2003).

82 I am grateful to Alison Giffen for pointing this out.

83 Draft DPKO/DFS Operational Concept, paragraph 18.

84 The best discussions of the subject are Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: 

Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

2000); Adam Roberts, “The So-called Right of Humanitarian Intervention,” Yearbook of 

International Humanitarian Law 3 (Summer 2001), 3–51; and Seybolt.

85 Simon Chesterman, “Hard Cases Make Bad Law,” in Just Intervention, ed. Anthony Lang (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 54.

86 See Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford: Polity, 2007), 125, and 

Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009).

87 Sewall et al., 21.

88 Seybolt. This is not an exhaustive list. Contemporary British defense policy, for 

example, lists eight strategic effects that military power can be employed to deliver: prevent, stabilize, contain, deter, coerce, disrupt, defeat, and destroy. For definitions of each 

effect, see UK Government, Delivering Security in a Changing World: Supporting Essays 

(London: TSO, Defence White Paper, Cm 6041-II, December 2003), 6.

89 Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 5–6, 116.

90 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press, 1966).

91 Holt and Berkman, 165.

92 Seybolt, 218.

93 Ibid., 272, 274. Defeating the perpetrators worked four out of five times: Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia (1995), the RPF’s defeat of the genocidal regime in 

Rwanda (1994), Operation Allied Force in Serbia/Kosovo (1999), and the International 

Force in East Timor (1999). The one failure was UN Mission in Somalia II’s attempt to 

defeat General Aidid (1993). Of the campaigns to save victims, Seybolt coded Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq as a success; NATO’s Kosovo Force as mostly successful; UN 

Protection Force’s efforts in Bosnia, UNAMIR, the RPF, and Operation Turquoise in 

Rwanda as mostly failures; and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo as a failure. 

94 See Andrew Dorman, Blair’s Successful War: British Military Intervention in Sierra 

Leone (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

95 Holt et al., 261–262; Holt and Berkman, 165.
Enhancing Civilian Protection

67

96 HRW.

97 Freedman, 4.

98 Holt et al., 12, 211.

99 Ibid., 29.

100 Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, foreword in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, ed. Ben de Jong, Wies Platje, and Robert David Steele (Oakton, VA: 

OSS International Press, 2003), iv.

101 A good example is the work of the Henry L. Stimson Center’s Future of Peace 

Operations Program and its attempts to generate reflections on civilian protection issues 

from key practitioners. See Victoria K. Holt and Joshua G. Smith, Halting Widespread or 

Systematic Attacks on Civilians (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2008).

102 For a useful discussion, see Paul F. Diehl and Daniel Druckman, Evaluating Peace 

Operations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2010).

103 Holt et al., 218.

104 Weinstein, 350.

105 See Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 

Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

106 Cited in Wheeler, 294.

107 See Howe.

108 HRW, 128.
ACSS Research Paper, No. 1

68

About the Author

Paul D. Williams is Associate Professor in the Elliott School 

of International Affairs at The George Washington University. He 

has published widely on contemporary peace operations and Africa’s 

international relations, including as coauthor of Understanding 

Peacekeeping, 2d ed. (Polity, 2010); coeditor of The International Politics 

of Mass Atrocities: The Case of Darfur (Routledge, 2010); and author of 

War and Conflict in Africa (Polity, forthcoming). He can be contacted 

at pauldw@gwu.edu.

The author would like to thank Alex Bellamy, Alison Giffen, 

Davin O’Regan, and Joseph Siegle for their constructive comments on 

an earlier draft of this paper. 
Africa Center for Strategic Studies

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