Empowering Peace Operations to Protect Civilians: Form over Substance?

This article will consider the evolution of the doctrines of peacekeeping and military enforcement, and the problematic move towards convergence. It will focus in particular on the predominance since the turn of the century of what are labelled protection mandates – mandates that authorize peacekeepers to protect civilians. In so doing it raises the question of whether the increased use of chapter VII mandates has had a positive impact in terms of lives saved. Further empirical work will be needed if this hypothesis is to be tested properly, though this paper incorporates some initial findings, based on UN reports from both the DR Congo and Darfur.