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Pinioning the Peacekeepers: Sovereignty,
Host-State Resistance against Peacekeeping
Missions, and Violence against Civilians
ALLARD DUURSMA
ETH Zürich
Why and how do host-states resist contemporary peacekeeping missions?

This article puts forward the argument that host-state resistance against
peacekeepers is a strategy to balance challenges to the internal and exter-
nal faces of a civil war state’s sovereignty. Government officials might see
an intense counter-insurgency campaign as an effective way to regain the
monopoly on violence and thus strengthen the internal sovereignty of the
state, but this will often lead to criticism from the international community
and thus also lead to an erosion of the external sovereignty of the state.
Conversely, the acceptance of a peacekeeping mission can strengthen a
civil war state’s external sovereignty as this acceptance signals a willingness
to manage armed violence, but the deployment of peacekeepers is at the
expense of internal sovereignty as it often limits the ability of government
troops to conduct their counter-insurgency efforts. States can resolve
this dilemma by accepting a peacekeeping mission to prop up their
external sovereignty, but at the same time trying to limit the effectiveness
of peacekeepers in those areas where peacekeeping activities potentially
interfere with the efforts of government troops to regain the monopoly
on the use of violence. The article zooms in on how the Sudanese gov-
ernment accepted the deployment of the United Nations–African Union
Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), but at the same undermined
its civilian protection efforts, though other cases are considered as well.
Resumen:¿Por qué y cómo los estados de acogida resisten las misiones

contemporáneas para preservar la paz? En este artículo se argumenta
que la resistencia de los estados de acogida frente a las fuerzas que se
encargan de preservar la paz es una estrategia para equilibrar los desafíos
de los aspectos internos y externos de la soberanía de un estado de guerra
civil. Puede que los funcionarios del gobierno vean una intensa campaña
de contrainsurgencia a modo de método efectivo para recuperar el
monopolio de la violencia y así fortalecer la soberanía interna del estado,
pero a menudo, esto da lugar a las críticas de la comunidad internacional
y también a una erosión de la soberanía externa del estado. En cambio,
la aceptación de una misión para preservar la paz puede fortalecer la
soberanía externa de un estado de guerra civil, ya que esta aceptación es
una señal de predisposición para controlar la violencia armada, pero el
despliegue de las fuerzas encargadas de preservar la paz ocurre a costa de
la soberanía interna, ya que, a menudo, limita la capacidad de las tropas
del gobierno de llevar a cabo intentos de contrainsurgencia. Los estados
pueden resolver este dilema aceptando una misión para preservar la paz
Duursma, Allard. (2020) Pinioning the Peacekeepers: Sovereignty, Host-State Resistance against Peacekeeping Missions, and
Violence against Civilians. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1093/isr/viaa063
© The Author(s) (2020). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
2 Pinioning the Peacekeepers
y apoyar su soberanía externa, pero, al mismo tiempo, intentando limitar

la efectividad de las fuerzas encargadas de preservar la paz en las zonas
donde las actividades para preservar la paz posiblemente interfieran con

los intentos de las tropas del gobierno de recuperar el monopolio del uso
de la violencia. Este artículo se centra en cómo el gobierno sudanés aceptó
el despliegue de la misión para preservar la paz en Darfur de las Naciones
Unidas y la Unión Africana (United Nations–African Union Peacekeeping
Mission in Darfur, UNAMID), pero, al mismo tiempo, quitó autoridad a
los intentos de protección civil. También se consideran otros casos.
Extrait:Pourquoi et comment les États hôtes résistent-ils aux missions
modernes de maintien de la paix ? Cet article avance l’argument selon
lequel la résistance des États hôtes contre les pacificateurs est une stratégie
visant à équilibrer les défis affectant les visages intérieurs et extérieurs
de la souveraineté de l’État en guerre civile. Les responsables gouverne-
mentaux peuvent envisager une campagne anti-insurrectionnelle intense
comme un moyen efficace de récupérer le monopole de la violence et
donc de renforcer la souveraineté intérieure de l’État, mais cela entraîn-
era souvent des critiques de la part de la communauté internationale
et donc aussi une érosion de sa souveraineté extérieure. À l’inverse,
l’acceptation d’une mission de maintien de la paix peut renforcer la
souveraineté extérieure d’un État en guerre civile car elle témoigne d’une
volonté de gérer la violence armée, mais le déploiement de soldats de la
paix se fait au détriment de la souveraineté intérieure car il limite souvent
la capacité des troupes gouvernementales à mener leurs efforts contre-
insurrectionnels. Les États peuvent résoudre ce dilemme en acceptant
une mission de maintien de la paix soutenant leur souveraineté extérieure
tout en essayant dans le même temps de limiter l’efficacité des soldats de
la paix dans les zones où les activités de maintien de la paix peuvent poten-
tiellement perturber les efforts de récupération du monopole de l’usage
de la violence des troupes gouvernementales. Bien que d’autres cas soient
également examinés, cet article se penche en particulier sur la façon dont
le gouvernement soudanais a accepté le déploiement de la Mission de
maintien de la paix des Nations unies et de l’Union africaine au Darfour
tout en sapant dans le même temps ses efforts de protection des civils.
Keywords: peacekeeping, host-state consent, resistance,

Palabras clave, preservación de la paz, consentimiento de los esta-
dos de acogida, resistencia,
Mots clés, maintien de la paix, consentement des États hôtes,
résistance
Introduction
In early 2008, only a few weeks after the United Nations–African Union Mission
in Darfur (UNAMID) had been officially launched, a supply convoy traveling
from Port Sudan to Darfur came under attack from Sudanese government forces
located in eastern Sudan. The officer leading the convoy decided not to return
fire. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the Under-Secretary General for United Nations (UN)
peacekeeping operations at the time, reflects in this regard: “It was probably the
right decision from a tactical standpoint. But I have often wondered whether an
escalation of that incident, in the early days of the new mission, would not have
forced the Security Council to recognize that it had deployed a mission into a place
where there was no business for peacekeeping” (Guéhenno 2015, 208). Guéhenno’s
reflection that “there was no business for peacekeeping” in Darfur does not refer
ALLARD DUURSMA 3
only to the ongoing fighting in Darfur, but also to the Sudanese government’s
efforts to resist UNAMID. The Sudanese government purposively tried to un-
dermine UNAMID from day one. Host-state resistance against peacekeepers is a

problem that is not unique to Sudan. The UN Capstone Doctrine on peacekeep-
ing notes how constant host-state restrictions on freedom of movement in some
peacekeeping missions amounts to a de facto withdrawal of consent (United Nations
Department of Peacekeeping Operations Department of Field Support 2008, 32).
Why and how do host-states resist contemporary peacekeeping missions?
This is a fundamental question about contemporary peacekeeping efforts. In this
article, I argue that host-state resistance against peacekeepers often is a strategy to
balance challenges to the internal and external faces of a state’s sovereignty. The in-
ternal face of sovereignty refers to a state maintaining the monopoly of force within
its territory (Jackson and Rosberg 1982; Jackson 1990; Krasner 1999). A high degree
of internal sovereignty implies that a fundamental political order exists. A state’s in-
ternal sovereignty is the product of the power of a ruler, either legitimated or not,
to make citizens comply with its authority (Prokhovnik 1996).1 An insurgency thus
challenges this political order since insurgents reject being ruled. The external face
of sovereignty refers to other states acknowledging a state’s internal jurisdiction
(Jackson and Rosberg 1982; Jackson 1990; Krasner 1999). States that experience a
civil war often face a dilemma when it comes to balancing their internal and ex-
ternal sovereignty. Government officials might see an intense counter-insurgency
campaign as an effective way to regain the monopoly on violence, but this will of-
ten lead to condemnation from the international community, or even lead to “ro-
bust” international action, and will thus also lead an erosion of the external face of
sovereignty (Lebovic and Voeten 2006). Conversely, the acceptance of a peacekeep-
ing mission can strengthen a civil war state’s external sovereignty as this signals a
willingness to manage armed violence, but the deployment of peacekeepers is at the
expense of internal sovereignty as it limits the ability of government troops to con-
duct their counter-insurgency efforts (Bellamy and Williams 2011; Johnstone 2011;
Lynch 2011; Duursma 2019b). In short, the emergence of the responsibility to pro-
tect doctrine and the turn toward civilian protection in peacekeeping operations
have put pressure on the leaders of civil counties to accept a peacekeeping mission
for the sake of maintaining external legitimacy. From this perspective, the external
sovereignty of a civil war country is tightly related to norms of civilian protection.
Governments in civil war countries thus face a dilemma between maintaining
internal and external sovereignty when it comes to peacekeeping. I argue that one
way states can resolve this dilemma is by accepting a peacekeeping mission to prop
up external sovereignty, but at the same time trying to limit the effectiveness of
peacekeepers in those areas where peacekeeping activities potentially interfere with
the efforts of government troops to regain the monopoly on the use of violence.
The central concept developed in this article to describe the efforts of a host-state
of a peacekeeping mission to maintain its internal sovereignty as much as possible
is that of the “pinioning” of peacekeepers. The term pinioning is commonly used
to describe the act of surgically removing the joint of a bird’s wing farthest from
the body, called the pinion joint, to prevent the bird from flying. Much like the
pinioning of a bird to prevent it from flying away, peacekeepers can be immobi-
lized by armed actors. Pinioning peacekeepers involves preventing peacekeepers
from implementing their mandates by obstructing their movements or activities
(Johnstone 2011; Duursma 2019b).
This type of resistance, which is aimed at preventing peacekeepers from fulfill-
ing their mandate, is markedly distinct from full-blown violent resistance against
1
It should be noted that some scholars see legitimacy an important component of internal sovereignty, but I refer
to the coercive capacity of a state to maintain its monopoly on violence when I use the term internal sovereignty
in this article.
peacekeeping missions as for example the violence conducted by non-state armed

groups fighting UN peacekeepers in Mali or African Union (AU) peacekeepers
in Somalia. The pinioning of peacekeepers can, however, involve the threat of

violence to dissuade peacekeepers from undertaking certain activities. It can also
involve the use of sporadic, strategic violence to undermine peacekeeping efforts
or send a political message. Examples of such pinioning activities include refusing
to provide visas for UN personnel, stalling the import of supplies and equipment
from abroad, the destruction of property, the hijacking of vehicles, obstructing
peacekeeping patrols at checkpoints, disarming peacekeepers, refusing access to
staff that monitor human rights, declaring key staff in UN peacekeeping operations
personae non gratae, or putting restrictions on air travel.
This article contributes to the literature on peacekeeping by looking at the causes
and consequences of host-state resistance against peacekeepers in Darfur, though
other cases are also considered. Peacekeeping is a crucial tool of the international
community to manage armed violence. Recent research also clearly shows that
peacekeeping lowers levels of armed fighting and reduces violence against civilians
(Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson 2018). While some studies have looked at what
explains full-blown armed resistance against peacekeepers (Salverda 2013; Fjelde,
Hultman, and Bromley 2016), the obstruction of peacekeepers through tactics like
impeding access has received relatively little consideration (for an exception, see
Duursma 2019b). This is a striking gap in research. Reflections by UN staff clearly
suggest that armed actors are not passive “recipients” of peacekeeping and do not
just comply with whatever peacekeepers ask of them (Guéhenno 2015). Instead,
armed actors have plenty of strategies to pursue their goals in spite of peacekeepers
being deployed. This article shows that one important strategy used by host-state
governments to pursue their goals is the obstruction of peacekeepers.
Host-state resistance may seem odd given that host-states have to consent to
the presence and activities of peacekeepers. From a legal perspective, consent
is a binary, it is either given or not. However, politically speaking, consent exists
on a spectrum, ranging from a request for the deployment of a peacekeeping
mission to grudging acceptance. Alongside impartiality and the non-use of force
(except in self-defense and defense of the mandate), host-state consent is one
of the three core principles of UN peacekeeping (United Nations 2000; UN De-
partment of Peacekeeping Operations Department of Field Support 2008). The
changing nature of UN peacekeeping has been examined in relation to the use
of force (Karlsrud 2017b), as well as impartiality (Rhoads 2016), but what role
host-state consent and host-state resistance play in contemporary peacekeeping
missions is under-researched (for a recent exception, see Sebastián and Gor 2018).
This article takes up this research gap by looking at host-state resistance against
civilian protection efforts of peacekeepers. Civilian protection is at the forefront
of contemporary UN peacekeeping activities (see Hultman 2013; Williams 2013),
but why and how host-state governments try to undermine the civilian protection
efforts of peacekeepers is under-researched.
Beyond these contributions to the peacekeeping literature, this article furthers
the scholarly understanding on how states deal with trade-offs between internal and
external sovereignty. Different bodies of literatures suggest that balancing internal
and external sovereignty is not unique to peacekeeping and is in fact a general
phenomenon in international relations. Susan Hyde coins the concept of the
“pseudo-democrats” dilemma to explain why autocratic governments sometimes
invite election observers to seek international support, while at the same time
manipulating elections with the goal of not having to give up power (Hyde 2015).
Similarly, Hathaway shows that less democratic states with poor human rights
records commit to international human rights treaties because they can always
refrain from enforcing these treaties in practice (Hathaway 2007). This article
contributes to this larger body of work through showing that in addition to, for
ALLARD DUURSMA 5
example, inviting elections observers and committing to human rights treaties,

governments may also deviously agree to an arguably even bigger infringement on
a state’s sovereignty: the deployment of a UN peacekeeping operation. I show that

the subversion of international peacekeeping operations is a deliberate strategy
pursued by host-states to assert internal sovereignty while maintaining external
sovereignty through the act of accepting a peacekeeping operation.
The article is organized as follows. The first section sketches how governments of
civil war countries are under pressure to accept peacekeeping missions as a result of
the rise of the responsibility to protect norm. This section also explains the ways in
which armed actors try to undermine the civilian protection efforts of peacekeeping
forces. The subsequent section reflects on the scope conditions of the argument,
after which the research methodology is briefly explained. Next, I examine how the
Sudanese government eventually accepted the deployment of UNAMID, as well as
how the Sudanese government forces undermined the civilian protection efforts of
UNAMID once it was deployed. The final section concludes that the government
forces and government-sponsored militias in Darfur have successfully pinioned
UNAMID, undermining the civilian protection efforts of UNAMID.
The Turn to Civilian Protection and the Pinioning of Peacekeepers

The pinioning of peacekeepers by a host-state as a strategy to balance the internal
and external faces of this state’s sovereignty can be seen as an instance of a more
general phenomenon in international relations. The question of why some states in-
vite external involvement in domestic affairs, but then subsequently try to evade the
commitments that come with this external involvement is not unique to peacekeep-
ing. The literature on election monitoring is a case in point. Susan Hyde explains
that with the emergence of the international norm to invite foreign election
observers, actually not inviting observers has become a signal that a state is not de-
mocratizing. This provides “pseudo-democrats” with incentives to strengthen their
external sovereignty through inviting observers. However, akin to the pinioning of
peacekeepers, pseudo-democrats orchestrate electoral fraud in front of observers to
maintain internal sovereignty, even though this carries with it the risk of a negative
report (Hyde 2011; Hyde 2015). Hyde refers to this balancing act between internal
and external sovereignty as the pseudo-democrat’s dilemma (Hyde 2015).
Another body of research has looked at the puzzling fact that some states sign
human rights treaties, but then violate these treaties. Signing a human rights treaty
is highly invasive of a state’s internal sovereignty (Moravcsik 2000), but it also
strengthens a state’s external sovereignty as it signals a commitment to human
rights (Hathaway 2007). This means that a state that evades the enforcement
of a human rights treaty can receive the benefits of strengthening its external
sovereignty, but not undermine its internal sovereignty. Indeed, Hathaway finds
that autocratic states with poor human rights records are more likely to commit
to human rights treaties than more democratic states with poor human rights
records, which is a consequence of autocratic governments being less constrained
by human rights treaties (Hathaway 2007). More autocratic governments are likely
to balance their internal and external sovereignty through signing human rights
treaties, but not complying with these treaties. In short, studies outside of the
field of peacekeeping suggest that the pinioning of peacekeepers is part of a
general phenomenon in which states appear to seemingly sacrifice their internal
sovereignty in order to strengthen their external sovereignty, but subsequently try
to maintain as much internal sovereignty as possible.
Having outlined how the pinioning of peacekeepers is an instance of a more
general phenomenon in international relations in which states try to balance
internal and external sovereignty, I now first explain how the rise of the civilian
protection norm has provided incentives for states that experience a civil war
to sacrifice internal sovereignty in the face of international actors and accept a

peacekeeping operation.
Both academics and policy makers have been well aware for a long time that the

vast majority of casualties in armed conflict are civilians (Ahlström 1991). Yet, it
was not until September 17, 1999 that for the first time the UN Security Council
expressed its willingness to consider how peacekeeping mandates might better
address the negative impact of armed conflict on civilians. One month later, in Res-
olution 1270, the Security Council provided the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra
Leone (UNAMSIL) with the first ever civilian protection mandate.2 Fast forwarding
more than twenty years later, virtually every major UN peacekeeping mission is
equipped with a civilian protection mandate (Hultman 2013; Williams 2013).
The UN’s turn to civilian protection occurred in parallel to the rise of the respon-
sibility to protect norm. The Rwandan genocide in 1994 and civil wars in Somalia,
Burundi, Liberia, and Sierra Leone led to the emergence of a norm in Africa
that multilateral intervention in domestic jurisdiction should be possible when a
government of a state is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens from large-scale
loss of life (Deng 1996; Williams 2007). In other words, sovereignty could no longer
always act as a barrier against international involvement in civil wars in Africa. The
Constitutive Act of the AU, which entered into force on May 26, 2001, stipulated in
Article 4 that the AU has the right “to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a
decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, including war crimes,
genocide, and crimes against humanity” (African Union 2002).
In the same year when the Constitutive Act of the AU entered into force, an
ad-hoc commission, consisting of members of the UN General Assembly, was set
up to examine how the international community should respond to gross and
systematic violations of human rights considering the sovereignty of states. In their
final report, this commission—known as the International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty—essentially asserted that the security of humans overrides
the sovereignty of a state (International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty 2001). UN member states subsequently endorsed the responsibility
to protect norm at the 2005 World Summit, stipulating that the international
community has a responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity (UN General Assembly 2005; see
also Bellamy and Williams 2011).
The rise of the responsibility to protect principle has clear implications for the
external face of sovereignty of civil war countries. External sovereignty refers to the
juridical dimension of statehood, meaning the acknowledgment of the territorial
jurisdiction of a state by other states (Jackson 1990, 13). Jackson and Rosberg note
how external sovereignty is therefore both a creation and a component of interna-
tional society: states make up international society, but there simply would not be an
international society of states without states recognizing other states. Indeed, Bull
defines an international society as “a group of states, conscious of certain common
interests and common values” in which the members “conceive themselves to be
bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another” (Bull 1977,
13). For an international society to exist, states need to agree on this “common set
of rules” that largely determines whether a state is part of international society and
thus enjoys external sovereignty. Wight writes in this regard about the “collective
judgement of international society about rightful membership of the family of
nations” (Wight 1977, 153). Similarly, Clark asserts that being a member of an
2
The UN Protection of Civilians policy from 2015 defines protection of civilians in UN peacekeeping operations
in very similar terms, but is more explicit about the use of force: “all necessary means, up to and including the use of
deadly force, aimed at preventing or responding to threats of physical violence against civilians, within capabilities and
areas of operations, and without prejudice to the responsibility of the host government.” UN Department of Peacekeep-
ing Operations and UN Department of Field Support (2015) Policy on the Protection of Civilians in United Nations
Peacekeeping.
ALLARD DUURSMA 7
international society of states is, among others, about appropriate forms of conduct
(Clark 2005, 2). The rise of the responsibility to protect norm means that a state
that commits large-scale human rights abuses is likely to be placed outside of the

international society of states (Bellamy and Williams 2011).
While external sovereignty is clearly a social construct, it can have real material
consequences. The calls for international “robust” action against the civil war state
generally grow stronger if the civil war state cannot convincingly show that it is able
and willing to prevent civilian casualties, especially when government forces are
responsible for civilian casualties (Bellamy and Williams 2011; Toft and Duursma
2018). Hence, a civil war state’s external face of sovereignty depends in large part on
its government’s ability to signal that it is interested in the management of the con-
flict and that it respects the lives of non-combatants within its territory. A peacekeep-
ing force in a civil war country can help signal to the international community that
the host-state is committed to managing armed violence (MacQueen 2006, 14–15).
However, to strengthen the internal face of sovereignty—or in other words, re-
gain its monopoly on violence—a state will either have to make peace with the rebel
movement or conduct a counter-insurgency campaign. Many previous studies have
shown that the targeting of civilians is often an integral part of counter-insurgency
campaigns (Kalyvas 2006; Downes 2011). Conflict parties, including governments,
target civilians to deter civilians from collaborating with the enemy. Kalyvas demon-
strates that conflict parties in civil war selectively target civilians in disputed areas
to deter the wider population from collaborating with the enemy (Kalyvas 2006).
In line with this finding, Toft and Zhukov show that governments may strategically
target civilians to make supporting insurgents costly for the population (Toft
and Zhukov 2015). Furthermore, governments may target civilians to weaken the
support base of their insurgents, deny insurgents the benefit of civilian support,
or even to pressure them into surrendering (Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay
2004; Downes 2011).
If the government side engages in a counter-insurgency effort to reclaim its
internal sovereignty, this will often lead to criticism from the international commu-
nity and thus be at the expense of the state’s external sovereignty (Thakur 1994;
Lebovic and Voeten 2006). Crucially, a peacekeeping mission further complicates
counter-insurgency efforts aimed at re-establishing order. Peacekeepers are the
eyes and ears of the international community, which means they can report on
human rights abuses committed in the context of counter-insurgency campaigns
(Shetler-Jones 2008; Duursma 2017a, 2018). Peacekeepers can also interfere with
government efforts to target insurgents and the civilian support base of insurgents
(Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson 2018; Duursma 2019b).
Consequently, I argue that the paradox of host-states simultaneously accepting
and resisting peacekeepers is a result of host-states wanting to maintain sovereignty.
Accepting a peacekeeping mission, or continuing to consent to a peacekeeping
mission, helps to prop up or maintain the external face of state sovereignty—and
thus prevents a humanitarian intervention or other punitive measures taken by the
international community. To deal with the drawbacks that come with peacekeeping
in terms of maintaining internal sovereignty, states can resist the activities of
peacekeepers that limit their ability to target civilians and fight armed opposition
groups. An unintended consequence of the UN’s turn to civilian protection is thus
that it has made host-state resistance against the activities of peacekeepers, such as
civilian protection, more likely.
How then does the pinioning of peacekeepers serve the goals of host-states to
maintain their internal sovereignty? The pinioning of peacekeepers serves two
main purposes in relation to the civilian protection activities of peacekeepers
and thus to how peacekeepers constrain governments from cracking down on
civilians. First of all, pinioning peacekeepers allows government forces to maintain
the operational space to attack civilians. There is a large body of research that
shows that peacekeeping is effective in curbing armed clashes and preventing

violence against civilians. While most of the early studies on peacekeeping look at
the country-level impact of peacekeeping and show how peacekeeping operations

make peace more durable (Doyle and Sambanis 2006; Fortna 2008), several recent
studies show UN peacekeepers’ lower levels of violence on the local level amid
armed conflict (Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis 2017; Di Salvatore 2020; Fjelde,
Hultman, and Nilsson 2018). The effectiveness of peacekeeping operations on
the local level explains why host-states have incentives to pinion peacekeepers
in the first place. Peacekeepers make it harder for non-state armed groups and
government forces to engage in violence. However, conflict parties can prevent
peacekeepers from being present through pinioning them. Duursma finds that
peacekeepers are more likely to be obstructed in areas where armed groups and
state forces attack civilians (Duursma 2019b). Fjelde et al. find that the major
UN peacekeeping missions in Africa are much better at curbing violence against
civilians from rebel parties than from government forces. They explain this finding
by pointing out that since peacekeepers’ access to civilian populations rests on
government consent, peacekeepers are more effective in deterring rebels groups
from attacking civilians than government actors (Fjelde, Hultman, and Nilsson
2018). In other words, government authorities often obstruct peacekeepers so that
government forces can “freely” conduct counter-insurgency operations.
The second main purpose of pinioning peacekeepers is that it allows government
forces to prevent peacekeepers from conducting human rights investigations after
civilians have been attacked. A crucial task of peacekeeping staff is to gather infor-
mation and report to the UN Headquarters in New York or the United Nations Hu-
man Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva (Duursma 2017a; Duursma and Müller
2019). This information collected not only focuses on armed opposition groups,
but also focuses on government forces and pro-government militias (Hirschmann
2019). All major UN peacekeeping operations have a Human Rights section tasked
with ensuring the protection and promotion of human rights through strengthen-
ing accountability. Information collected by Human Rights officers will often lead
to criticism from the international community and thus be at the expense of the
state’s external sovereignty (Thakur 1994; Lebovic and Voeten 2006). Indictments
issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against (former) government
members in Kenya, the Ivory Coast, and Sudan have provided host-state govern-
ments with even more incentives to curb the information collected on human
rights violations (Duursma and Müller 2019). Host-state governments can simply
prevent the UN from collecting credible and precise information on armed clashes
and the targeting of civilians through the obstruction of peacekeepers.
Another way to pinion a peacekeeping mission in order to prevent it from human
rights monitoring is to declare UN staff personae non grata. The tactic of declaring
UN staff critical of the host-state government’s human rights record personae non
grata extends beyond peacekeeping missions such as UNAMID in Darfur. It can
also can be observed in political missions. When the UN Commission of Inquiry
on Burundi published a report on human rights abuses in September 2018, the
government of Burundi declared the members of the commission personae non grata
and even threatened to prosecute them (Nicholson 2018). Similarly, on January
1, 2019, the Government of Somalia declared the UN Special Representative, Fink
Haysom, persona non grata, allegedly because of critical remarks regarding human
rights abuses (Xinhua 2018).
It follows from above that host-state governments that target civilians in the
context of ongoing civil wars face more pressure from the international community
to accept peacekeeping as a result of the rise of the responsibility to protect
norm. Host-state governments may therefore accept a peacekeeping mission, but
simultaneously try to pinion peacekeepers to maintain operational space to attack
civilians and to prevent human rights investigations.
ALLARD DUURSMA 9
This leads to the question why would the international community solely be con-
cerned with a host-state accepting a peacekeeping operation, but not concerned
with how a host-state interacts with the peacekeeping operation after it comes in.

It is plausible to surmise that given the rise of civilian protection norms, the inter-
national community is likely to condemn states that undermine civilian protection
efforts of peacekeepers. Would it therefore not be at the expense of a host-state’s
external sovereignty if it engages in the pinioning of peacekeepers? The answer to
this question is that pinioning indeed is at the expense of a host-state’s external
sovereignty, but not to the point where the international community believes severe
sanctions or a humanitarian intervention is justified. There are two reasons why
this is case.
First of all, pinioning is often done in a way that host-states can limit the extent to
which the international community accuses them of undermining the peace opera-
tion. For example, various host-state governments have used pro-government mili-
tias to pinion peacekeepers (Lynch 2011; Duursma 2019b), which allows them to
plausibly deny targeting peacekeepers. In addition, host-state resistance is often sub-
tle, making it difficult for the leadership of the mission to call out the host-state for
its pinioning of peacekeepers and draw international attention to it. For example, at
some point the South Sudanese government warned the United Nations Mission in
South Sudan (UNMISS) leadership that they might accidentally shoot at UNMISS
airplanes if they were not informed of these flights. This led to a situation in which
UNMISS notified the South Sudanese authorities of all flights to avoid a confronta-
tion. At one point, every flight was even accompanied by a South Sudanese official
to “assure security.” On various occasions, UNMISS flights that were meant to fly to
locations to investigate human rights abuses could not take off because South Su-
danese officials who were meant to be on the flight did not show up (Sebastián and
Gor 2018). In short, pinioning is often done in a subtle way or at least in a way that
the host-state can deny bad behavior. Accordingly, host-state governments that try
to undermine peacekeeping operations do not anticipate this will completely erode
their external sovereignty and thus lead to robust international action.
A second reason why pinioning is unlikely to erode a state’s external sovereignty
to the point that it leads to robust international action is that the leadership of the
peacekeeping mission have incentives to maintain good relations with the host-
state. The functioning of a peacekeeping operation depends on the relationship
with the host-state (Sebastián and Gor 2018; Hirschmann 2019; Labuda 2020).
The peacekeeping leadership therefore faces a dilemma that drawing attention
to pinioning can lead to subsequent more pinioning. One UNMISS staff member
reflected in this regard that “the moment you go through the press and point
fingers, it is always going to worsen the situation and put people on the defensive”
(Sebastián and Gor 2018, 30). In short, a government of a civil war country can
prevent robust international action through accepting a peacekeeping operation.
Subsequently, undermining this peacekeeping operation is, however, unlikely to
lead to international robust action because leaders within peace operations are
unlikely to strongly condemn pinioning.
Scope Conditions
This article has so far only considered the factors that make the pinioning of peace-
keepers likely once a peacekeeping operation is deployed, but some governments
might reject a peacekeeping in the first place to ensure its internal sovereignty,
allowing government forces to crack down on civilians in counter-insurgency
operations without peacekeepers interfering. Based on the theoretical argument
that governments experiencing civil war need to balance internal and exter-
nal sovereignty, one would expect that governments that are strong “internal
sovereignty holders” to be most likely to reject peacekeeping deployments. This
theoretical expectation is in line with UN peacekeeping being rare in Asia in spite

of intrastate armed conflicts occurring in this region.3 Conflicts like the ones in
Myanmar, Nepal, and the Philippines could in theory merit UN peacekeeping,

but this is not the case. Why? Asian governments are generally committed to the
non-interference norm (Acharya 2005; Chesterman 2015), but so are African
governments (Williams 2007; Duursma 2019a, 2020). Perhaps a more important
explanation is that international “robust action” is relatively less likely in conflicts in
Asia than in Africa because of China likely vetoing against such action. Accordingly,
Asian governments experiencing civil wars face less incentives to strengthen their
external sovereignty through accepting a peacekeeping mission than African gov-
ernments. Consequently, it appears that African countries that experience civil war
are more likely to be in the middle of balancing external and internal sovereignty,
which, in turn, makes African countries most likely to see a UN peacekeeping
operation and subsequent pinioning of peacekeepers.
Furthermore, in order to better understand why some host-states engage in the
pinioning of UN peacekeepers as a strategy to balance their internal and external
sovereignty, it is important to briefly reflect on the type of contexts in which UN
peacekeepers are deployed. In her seminal study on the effectiveness of peacekeep-
ing, Fortna devotes an entire chapter to the question of what explains variation in
the presence of peacekeeping operations across countries. Fortna finds that UN
peacekeeping is most likely in autocratic countries, in countries where past peace
agreements have failed, and in intrastate armed conflicts with a greater conflict
intensity. Based on these findings, Fortna concludes that UN peacekeepers tend to
deploy to the most difficult cases (Fortna 2008, chapter 2). This conclusion is in
line with a study by Gilligan and Stedman in which they find a strong correlation
between civil war severity and the deployment of UN peacekeeping. They also find
that the UN is increasingly more likely to deploy a peacekeeping operations as a
civil war drags on (Gilligan and Stedman 2003). In addition, several studies that
explain where peacekeepers are deployed sub-nationally find that peacekeepers are
deployed in areas with relatively high levels of armed violence (Townsen and Reeder
2014; Matthew, Reeder, and Townsen 2015; Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis 2016).
That peacekeepers are deployed in more violent conflicts suggests that peace-
keepers are deployed in contexts where host-state governments face strong incen-
tives to conduct counter-insurgency campaigns and thus target civilians (Kalyvas
2006; Downes 2011). Under these circumstances, a host-state government benefits
from pinioning peacekeepers, as it allows government forces the operational space
to attack civilians and prevents peacekeepers from observing human rights abuses.
In other words, the factors that explain where peacekeepers are deployed also shed
some light on why host-states try to undermine peacekeepers. What is more, the
trend of peacekeepers increasingly being deployed amidst ongoing armed conflict
makes pinioning thus also increasingly likely (Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon
2014; Duursma 2019b).
Yet, not all peacekeeping operations experience pinioning by the host-state.
What explains this variation? So far, I have stressed how host-state governments that
experience an insurgency can become internal–external sovereignty balancers, but
another response to insurgency is to become an internal sovereignty requester.
The UN is increasingly engaging in stabilization efforts, supporting governments
to restore state authority through the use of force (Piccolino and Karlsrud 2011;
Karlsrud 2017b). The UN is currently supporting government forces in the Central
African Republic, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with regain-
ing a monopoly on violence, thus essentially strengthening internal sovereignty
(Karlsrud 2015a). When the host-state is relying on a UN peacekeeping force to
help it establish state authority and strengthen internal sovereignty, the host-state
3
The only exceptions in this regard are UN peacekeeping operations in East Timor and Kashmir.
ALLARD DUURSMA 11
government has incentives to give the peacekeeping force more wings rather than
pinion the wings of peacekeepers. Hence, a major scope condition of the argument
advanced in this article is that the argument does not apply to peacekeeping

missions that have been invited by the host-state government to fight insurgents,
such as the AU in Somalia or the UN in Mali and the Central African Republic. In
these types of missions, peacekeepers commonly fight for or alongside government
troops to curb the rebellion and actually regain a state’s monopoly on violence
(Karlsrud 2017a; Williams 2018).
It should be noted that the difference between internal–external sovereignty
balancers and internal sovereignty requesters is not always clear. In terms of the
major UN peacekeeping operations deployed or previously deployed, Sudan, Chad,
Burundi, the Ivory Coast, and South Sudan are clear cases of internal–external
sovereignty balancers, while Mali and the Central African Republic are more inter-
nal sovereignty requesters. The UN peacekeeping operation in the DRC falls some-
what in between. The pinioning of peacekeepers—for example in the form of ob-
struction to prevent peacekeepers from conducting human rights investigations—
has been observed in the DRC. This obstruction was related to the ability of
government forces to “freely” target civilians in response to an insurgency by the
Kamuina Nsapu milita in the Kasai-Central province of the DRC. Opposed to UN in-
vestigations on government forces targeting civilians, the government restricted the
access of the UN peacekeeping mission in this region of the DRC (Reuters 2017a).
On the other hand, UN troops have engaged in “robust” operations to “neutralize”
non-state armed groups in eastern DRC (Karlsrud 2015a). As such, the Government
of the DRC has worked together with the UN to strengthen its internal sovereignty.
To summarize, host-state resistance against peacekeepers is most likely when the
protection of civilians plays an important role in peacekeeping missions, while the
government forces simultaneously have incentives to target civilians as part of a
counterinsurgency. Peacekeeping operations that help government forces to re-
store state authority through the use of force are less likely to see pinioning because
the peacekeepers help the host-state to strengthen rather than limit its internal
sovereignty. This explains why in addition to UNAMID in Darfur, UN peacekeeping
missions in the Ivory Coast, Burundi, Chad, the DRC, and South Sudan have all
suffered or are also suffering from host-state resistance, though to varying degrees.
Lynch observed with regard to the Ivory Coast that “[the then incumbent Presi-
dent] Gbagbo appears to have himself drawn from the playbook of other African
leaders, like Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has provided just enough
support to UN peacekeepers in his country to keep the international community
off his back, but not enough to enable them to succeed” (Lynch 2011) In an essay
titled “Laurent Gbagbo’s Guide to Crippling a UN Peacekeeping Mission,” Lynch
describes how during the post-election crisis in the Ivory Coast the UN was pin-
ioned: “In a series of nearly daily challenges, government forces and pro-Gabgbo
militias have torched U.N. vehicles, disarmed and attacked U.N. peacekeepers and
severely hindered them from conducting patrols and supplying their operations.
[. . .] In many cases, the U.N. responded to challenges to its freedom of movement
by returning to base” (Lynch 2011) This prevented UN peacekeepers from carrying
out investigations into sites of alleged mass graves near Abidjan and Daloa (Bellamy
and Williams 2011; Lynch 2011, 832; International Crisis Group 2011, 8).
Similar to observations about Gbagbo drawing on al-Bashir’s playbook, it has been
noted that the South Sudanese government learned from the Sudanese govern-
ment how to undermine a peace mission (Sebastián and Gor 2018). Human rights
officers within the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan have repeatedly been
prevented by the government from going where massacres have allegedly taken
place (Sebastián and Gor 2018, 26). Former UN Special Representative to South
Sudan, Hilde Johnson, recalls in her memoir how in one of the first government
attacks on civilians in South Sudan, in Western Bahr el Ghazzal in late 2012,
UNMISS was unable to complete its investigations because these investigations

were impeded by state authorities (Johnson 2016, 96). In addition, an example
of the pinioning of peacekeepers to maintain the operational space to attack

civilians is the South Sudanese government restricting the movement of UNMISS
peacekeepers following the outbreak of the civil war in December 2013 (Johnson
2016, 207–15). This obstruction has persisted since the outbreak of the war. For
instance, South Sudanese government forces began an offensive in the Upper Nile
state in early 2017, but refused UNMISS peacekeepers access to the conflict zones
in which they targeted civilians (Reuters 2017b).
In short, there is evidence of the pinioning of peacekeepers by host-states in four
out of the six major UN peacekeeping operations currently deployed with a civilian
protection mandate, namely in The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mis-
sion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) in the DRC, UNAMID
in Darfur, The United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei in Abyei, and UN-
MISS in South Sudan. Past peacekeeping operations in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and
Burundi have also experienced host-state resistance. The two current missions that
face little or no host-state resistance, The United Nations Multidimensional Inte-
grated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic in the Central African
Republic and MINUSMA in Mali, are both stabilization missions in which peace-
keepers help to restore state authority through the use of force. What distinguishes
these stabilization missions from the other missions is that host-states can strengthen
their internal sovereignty through cooperating with the peacekeepers. By contrast,
peacekeepers are often seen as standing in the way to defeat the armed opposition
in Sudan, South Sudan, and sometimes also the DRC. While accepting and contin-
uing to accept a UN peacekeeping force helps these countries to strengthen their
external sovereignty, the host-state governments of these countries simultaneously
engage in pinioning to maintain or strengthen their internal sovereignty. The next
section zooms in how the pinioning of peacekeepers has played out in Darfur.
A Note on Methodology
This article zooms in on how the Sudanese government’s resistance to UNAMID
undermined the civilian protection efforts of peacekeepers in Darfur. The previous
section on the scope conditions of the argument shows that several peacekeeping
operations have experienced host-state resistance. I focus on UNAMID because the
level of resistance of the Sudanese government in Darfur against UNAMID has been
quite extreme in comparison to peace operations in the DRC, Abyei, Liberia, and
Burundi. This makes UNAMID what Seawright and Gerring refer to as an extreme
case study (Seawright and Gerring 2008, 301–2). An extreme case draws out ele-
ments that might be harder to identify, but still present, in less extreme cases. While
UNAMID is not representative of the entire population of peacekeeping missions in
Africa in terms of the efforts by the government to pinion peacekeepers, it is a useful
case to probe the impact of host-state resistance against civilian protection efforts.
Host-state resistance was or is also relatively high the Ivory Coast and South
Sudan, but the UN was deployed in the Ivory Coast for a shorter amount of time
and has been deployed for a shorter amount of time in South Sudan. Indeed,
another advantage of focusing on UNAMID is that this case makes it possible to
observe how host-state resistance plays out throughout almost the entire life cycle
of a peacekeeping mission. UNAMID was established in July 2007 (UN Security
Council resolution 1769), but the UN Security Council decided in June 2017 to
draw down UNAMID’s strength (UN Security Council Resolution 2363). Several
UNAMID bases were closed from 2018 onward and a full withdrawal is planned for
the end of 2020, with the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan
(UNITAMS) replacing UNAMID (Forti 2019; What’s in Blue 2020).
ALLARD DUURSMA 13
I draw on a variety of sources, including academic studies, NGO reports, UN

reports, and interviews with individuals who have been involved in the processes ex-
amined. Interviews help to fill gaps in historical accounts and reveal the perceptions

of the actors involved (Tansey 2007, 766). In order to manage the trade-offs that
come with interviewing with regard to the validity and reliability, I try—whenever
possible—to corroborate these interviews with what has been established from
other sources, including other interviews (Berry 2002).
Darfur and al-Bashir’s Challenge to Maintain Sudan’s External Sovereignty

In late 2002, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and
Equality Movement (JEM) took up arms against the Sudanese government. When
these groups took up arms, the Sudanese government initially kept the communi-
cation channels open. For instance, after an attack on the police station in Golo in
June 2002, the Sudanese government dispatched the chairman of the Parliament’s
Transport Commission, Idris Yusuf, to negotiate with the armed groups. From
March 2003 onward, when attacks on government targets became more frequent,
the Governor of North Darfur, Ibrahim Suleiman, formed an ad hoc Darfur Secu-
rity Committee to negotiate an end to the violence in Darfur (Collins 2008, 288).
However, the dialogue between the Darfurian opposition and the Sudanese govern-
ment was terminated as soon as government officials had successfully negotiated
the return of commander of the Sudanese Air Force Ibrahim Bushra, who had been
captured during the attack on El Fasher airbase (Flint and de Waal 2008, 120–22).
Rather than negotiating peace, the Sudanese government opted to restore state
authority in Darfur through the defeat of the armed opposition in Darfur.
However, the armed opposition movement was much more successful on the
battlefield than the Sudanese government had anticipated. Data from the UN and
the United States suggest that the rebels won thirty-four out of the thirty-eight
encounters with government forces in the middle months of 2003 (Flint and de
Waal 2008, 120–21). Faced with a rebellion that outran its military capacity, the Su-
danese government initiated a counterinsurgency campaign in which it employed
local militias—known in Darfur as Janjawiid—and not only fought the rebels, but
also targeted civilians (De Waal 2015, 66). As part of their counter-insurgency cam-
paign, the government forces and the Janjawiid engaged in massacres, summary
executions of civilians, burnings of villages, and the forcible displacement of ethnic
groups that made up the majority of the armed opposition (Human Rights Watch
2004). In short, the relative successfulness of the Darfurian rebels pushed the
Sudanese government to engage in a brutal counter-insurgency campaign, which
resulted in the widespread killing of civilians.
International attention regarding the situation in Darfur increased as a result of
the huge number of casualties among the Darfurian population. International calls
to intervene in Darfur—or at the very least conclude a ceasefire and deploy a peace-
keeping force—subsequently grew increasingly stronger (Flint and de Waal 2008,
179; Brosché and Duursma 2018). The Sudanese government perceived itself not to
be in a position to resist these calls. In addition to more and more calls for human-
itarian intervention by representatives of mainly western states—encroaching on
Sudan’s external sovereignty—Sudan was pressured by the United States. Leaders
from Sudan and the United States agreed in 2001 that Washington would normalize
its relations with Khartoum for which Sudanese intelligence officers would provide
American intelligence officers with intelligence on terrorist networks that had been
operating in Sudan throughout the 1990s, including al-Qaida. After the attack on
the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, the United States became
even more committed to this deal. The Sudanese government hoped that the con-
clusion of a ceasefire in Darfur could somewhat mitigate international criticism and
US pressure. Ghazi Salah al-Din al-Atabani, al-Bashir’s presidential adviser, states in
this regard that “The United States looked like a wounded lion. It was very difficult
for us to predict what kind of action they would take tomorrow. We had to wait and
see, and watch what we said and what we did—and engage” (Ghazi Salah al-Din al-

Atabani quoted in Johnson 2011, 19). This explains why the Sudanese government
agreed to the Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement in N’Djamena on April 8, 2004.
The Sudanese government’s hope to mitigate international pressure also ex-
plains why following the conclusion of the Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement in
N’Djamena, the Sudanese government agreed, in May 2004, that the AU would
deploy around eighty observers to oversee the implementation of the ceasefire.
It was further agreed that these observers would be accompanied by around 300
soldiers (Williams 2006). Crucially, in late July 2004, the AU Assembly of Heads of
State agreed that the Protection Force’s mandate would include “the protection,
within the capacity of the Force, of the civilian population” (AU Peace and Security
Council 2008).
This mission, dubbed the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), was expanded
several times, yet with an authorized force of 12,000 uniformed personnel by
mid-2006, AMIS still failed to pacify Darfur (Williams 2006; De Waal 2007). There
are multiple reasons for this failure, but one major reason was the obstruction of
AMIS peacekeepers. In 2006, Human Rights Watch noted that AMIS troops were
“severely hampered” with regard to their civilian protection efforts as a result of the
persistent obstruction of the Sudanese government (Human Rights Watch 2006).
Indeed, while the Sudanese government agreed to the deployment of AMIS under
intense pressure from the international community, it simultaneously tried to
undermine the efforts of AMIS to engage in civilian protection. A telling example
is how Sudanese authorities prevented AMIS from deploying in Khor Abeche in
early 2005, which eventually meant that AMIS could not prevent the destruction of
this village. Flint and de Waal recall:
“The African Union had been attempting to deploy troops in Khor Abeche and
Nitega village ever since an incident in which the Missirya [a Darfurian Arab tribe]
accused [Minni] Minnawi [one of the Darfurian rebel leaders] fighters of stealing 150
cows and refusing to hand over the bodies of two men killed in an earlier attack. The
AU and the UN accused the government of ‘deliberate procrastination’ in authoriz-
ing the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) deployment despite the fact that the
Nazir Tijan [an Arab militia leader] ‘had in their very presence repeatedly threatened
the destruction of Khor Abeche’. While the government stalled, the militia struck,
sending 350 men into Khor Abeche on horseback and camel, ‘killing, burning, and
destroying everything in their paths and leaving in their wake total destruction with
only the mosque and the school spared’” (Flint and de Waal 2008, 155–56).
With an AU-mediated peace process at Abuja making some progress from early
2006 onward, calls to deploy a robust UN peacekeeping mission grew stronger.
However, at no time during the negotiations at Abuja had the issue of how the AMIS
mission would be transformed into a UN mission been discussed (Interview with Jan
Pronk, UN Special Representative to Sudan, in The Hague on June 1, 2015; Inter-
view with Abdul Mohamed, UN mediator during the Abuja talks and Acting Director
of UNAMID’s Political Department, in Addis Ababa on February 17, 2015). In fact,
both the United States and the UN had been hesitant to address the transition from
an African peacekeeping force to a UN peacekeeping force in the Abuja negotia-
tions, because the mediation effort was led by the AU (De Waal 2013, 291). Instead,
US deputy secretary of state Zoellick had conveyed a secret meeting with Sudanese
Vice President Ali Osman Taha in Paris on March 8, 2006, in which Taha had
promised Zoellick that a UN mission could be deployed following the conclusion
of a peace agreement on Darfur (Duursma 2017b). Yet, when it became clear that
the United States would not normalize relations with Sudan after the conclusion of
the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), Khartoum backtracked its private promise to
ALLARD DUURSMA 15
Washington to allow a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur (Interview with Vladimir

Zhagora, UN Senior Political Affairs Officer, in Hawassa on January 16, 2016).
The Western members of the UN Security Council kept pushing for a UN mis-

sion. As a result, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1706 on August 31,
2006, which, creatively worded, “invited the consent” of the Sudanese government
to a UN peacekeeping mission (United Nations Security Council). Al-Bashir called
the UN Security Council’s bluff, commenting: “We totally reject resolution 1706.
Its acceptance would mean placing Sudan under UN mandate. We will not accept
such a situation under any circumstances and willingly, because it would turn us
into another Iraq” (Asharq Alawsat 2007). It is very likely that al-Bashir perceived a
UN force consisting of western troops as too big of an infringement of its ability to
conduct an effective counter-insurgency campaign in the Darfur region.
What ensued was a long, drawn-out process of negotiations to get UN boots on
the ground in Darfur, which cumulated in a high-level meeting attended by UN Sec-
retary General Kofi Annan, the permanent members of the UN Security Council,
the AU, the EU, several African states, and Sudan in Addis Ababa on November 16,
2006. By the end of this meeting, the parties agreed that a hybrid AU–UN mission
would be deployed under UN command, but with a principally African character,
as al-Bashir wanted to prevent Darfur from becoming an “inlet for the forces of
international hegemony” (Flint and de Waal 2008, 268–69; Lanz 2015, 786). The
UN Security Council subsequently authorized UNAMID on July 31, 2007, with the
adoption of Resolution 1769. UNAMID then officially took over from AMIS on Jan-
uary 1, 2008. UN Security Council Resolution 1769 mandated force of over 26,000
international troops, police officers, and civilian staff and made the protection of
civilians UNAMID’s core mandate. Holt et al. note how this makes UNAMID the
first-ever UN-authorized peacekeeping mission to deploy with a mandate to protect
civilians as a core objective of the mission (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009).
However, Khartoum’s consent to UNAMID was devious. It was a result of an
effort by Khartoum to mitigate diplomatic pressure and maintain an acceptable
level of external sovereignty rather than a commitment to the deployment of an
effective peace mission in Darfur. Lanz notes in this regard that “Khartoum was
eventually forced to accept the mission, but it never gave full consent. As soon as
the international pressure abated, it reverted to an obstructionist policy” (Lanz
2015, 786). This obstructionist policy served to maintain the operational space to
conduct a counter-insurgency campaign aimed at re-establishing the government’s
monopoly on violence.
Pinioning the Peacekeepers in Darfur

In spite of the strong civilian protection mandate of UNAMID and being the largest
and most expensive peacekeeping mission when it was deployed in early 2008,
UNAMID struggled to provide civilian protection due to host-state resistance (Holt,
Taylor, and Kelly 2009, 159). During the lengthy negotiations on the deployment
of UNAMID, President al-Bashir had negotiated in such a way that the government
of Sudan “had ample means to control the pace of transition [from AMIS to
UNAMID], and to decide whether it wanted to be the mission a success or a failure”
as Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the Under-Secretary General for UN peacekeeping
Operations at the time puts it (Guéhenno 2015, 200).
The Sudanese government used all the prerogatives of a sovereign state to
pinion UNAMID right from when it was being deployed. This manifested itself in
many small measures, but in the aggregate, these measures seriously undermined
UNAMID’s capacity to fulfill its mandate. For instance, President al-Bashir refused
the deployment of Special Forces units from Thailand and Nepal, making it clear
that non-African peacekeepers were only allowed to deploy if all African offers
to contribute peacekeepers had been exhausted. The Sudanese government also
delayed UNAMID’s deployment by refusing to provide land for new bases that were
being set up. The government also required UNAMID to get permission for flights
(Lanz 2015). A denial of flight clearances occurred frequently, a practice that

has continued throughout UNAMID’s deployment. The government also set up
checkpoints and even imposed curfews when UNAMID was deployed, prohibiting
peacekeepers from conducting night patrols without having asked for permission to
patrol first (Sebastián and Gor 2018, 23). The Sudanese government also withheld
hundreds of visas for UNAMID staff, who had to wait for months until they could
be deployed. Khartoum further prevented the import of necessary equipment and
spare parts. In a UN study on the effectiveness of civilian protection efforts in UN
peacekeeping missions, conducted in 2009, Holt et al. note how obstructionism
by the Sudanese government “has hindered basic operations and the already
daunting logistical challenges inherent in deployment. Well-documented delays in
the deployment of troops, police, and air assets have hamstrung the mission’s basic
capabilities” (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009, 158).
Yet, since these obstructions were all small-scale and, crucially, since UNAMID
was so dependent on the Sudanese government, the UNAMID leadership tried
to appease Khartoum and constructively work toward unfolding UNAMID. The
modus operandi of UNAMID staff in response to the obstructionism of the Su-
danese government became one of accepting the restrictions of movement and
adapting to them (Lanz 2015). In addition to a need to work with the Sudanese
government, it was almost impossible for the UNAMID leadership to re-negotiate
the terms of the Sudanese government influence on UNAMID activities. In ex-
change of a concession on UNAMID being deployed, the UN had conceded to
President al-Bashir’s demand that his government would have a strong say in the
terms of UNAMID’s deployment and activities.
The extent to which the Sudanese government has tried to pinion UNAMID
becomes even clearer when looking at the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
violations, specifically the restrictions on the freedom of movement. A SOFA spec-
ifies the rights and responsibilities of peacekeepers. The unhindered movement of
peacekeepers is one of the rights of peacekeepers. Every single report of the UN
Secretary-General on UNAMID from January 2008 onward notes how restrictions
on the freedom of movement of UNAMID staff is a problem. For much of 2008,
the first year of UNAMID’s deployment, the Secretary-General addressed this issue
through including examples in his reports. For example, in a report issued on
October 17, 2008, the Secretary-General notes, among others, that:
“In Southern Darfur, the National Intelligence and Security Services interrupted
UNAMID night patrols, claiming that such patrols were neither required nor accept-
able in Nyala. The Government authorities subsequently agreed to allow UNAMID
patrols as long as they were notified in advance” (UN Secretary-General 2008)
The UN Secretary-General reports issued during 2008 do not mention any spe-
cific figures, but the UN Secretary-General began to state specific figures on the
level obstruction UNAMID staff faced in his quarterly reports on UNAMID from
2009 onward. Figure 1 show the number of access restrictions imposed on UNAMID
staff on land over time. Each bar represents the number of times UNAMID staff
were reported to be obstructed by government forces in a given year. The line indi-
cates the number of civilian casualties as a result of attacks by Sudanese government
forces or government-sponsored militias, based on data from the Armed Conflict
Location & Event Dataset (ACLED) (Raleigh et al. 2010). The left vertical axis rep-
resents the civilian fatality figure, whereas the right vertical axis represents the num-
ber of freedom of movement restrictions. Although far from a perfect correlation,
access restrictions seem to be roughly correlated with government or government-
sponsored violence against civilians in Darfur. The two years with the highest level of
government violence against civilians in Darfur, 2014 and 2016, also were the years
ALLARD DUURSMA 17
600 250
500

200
400
150
300
100
200
50
100
0 0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Obstrucon Civilian Fatalies
Figure 1. Freedom of access restrictions and violence against civilians by government

forces and government-sponsored militias in Darfur, 2009–2017.
with the highest level of obstruction of UNAMID staff. A notable exception is 2011,
which saw the third highest level of obstruction of UNAMID staff, but a relatively
low level of civilian targeting. The “real” number of access resections is probably
much higher than the numbers stated in the UN Secretary-General reports, as ob-
struction has not always been reported by UNAMID staff (Interview with a former
UNAMID a Human Rights Officer on December 6, 2016). Yet, the ACLED figures
on civilian casualties probably also underreport the true figure (Duursma 2017a).
Two further reflections on the number of freedom of movement restrictions are
in order. First, many of the obstructions were not stand-alone incidents, but rather
efforts by the Sudanese government to prevent UNAMID from patrolling in a given
area over an extended period of time (UN Secretary-General 2008). Yet, these
type of restrictions count as one observation in the data presented above. Second,
while the number of access restrictions is quite small in comparison to the total
number of patrols conducted by UNAMID, these restrictions nevertheless signifi-
cantly undermine the Mission’s effectiveness, because, as noted, in a special report
of the Secretary-General on UNAMID, “they tend to occur in situations where
protection and humanitarian assistance needs are acute” (UN Secretary-General
2014b, paragraph 27).
This explains why obstruction of UNAMID has consistently been noted as a key
obstacle to the effective functioning of UNAMID throughout UNAMID’s history.
The UN Secretary-General noted in 2009 that freedom of movement continues
to be “a serious concern for UNAMID” (UN Secretary-General 2009, paragraph
15); the Secretary-General noted in 2010 that “restrictions on movement continue
to hamper the mission’s activities throughout Darfur” (UN Secretary-General
2010a, paragraph 32); the Secretary-General highlighted in 2011 that flights and
patrols are restricted by government authorities “on the vast majority of occasions”
when UNAMID is attempting to enter areas of ongoing military activity (UN
Secretary-General 2011, paragraph 32), and similar observations are made by the
Secretary-General in each of the subsequent years of UNAMID’s existence. For
instance, in 2015, the Secretary-General issued a special report on UNAMID in
which he noted that “access restrictions, especially in the early stages of conflict,
continued to impede the discharge of the mission’s mandate to protect civilians”
(UN Secretary-General 2015, paragraph 39). The link between the pinioning
of UNAMID peacekeepers and violence against civilians in Darfur has not gone
unnoticed by the UN itself. In a UN report on civilian protection published in

November 2009, Holt et al. note that the most fundamental challenge to civilian
protection in Darfur has been the “relentless obstructionism” of UNAMID by the

Sudanese government (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009, 354).
UNAMID staff not always caved in to pressure from Sudanese authorities. For
instance, the Sudanese government tried to pinion UNAMID in relation to a
Sudanese government attempt to re-take control of Muhajeria after the JEM had
taken control of this town in mid-January 2009. Heavy fighting, as well as aerial
bombing of the area, between January 22 and February 4 resulted in the almost
complete displacement of the area’s 30,000 residents (US Department of State
2010). UNAMID tried to both protect civilians and investigate possible human
rights abuses. On February 3, 2009, a UNAMID assessment patrol was sent to Muha-
jeria to assess the situation and collect information, but the Sudanese authorities
refused UNAMID access to the area, ironically stating that it was not safe to travel in
that area (internal UNAMID Situational Report, February 4, 2009). Moreover, the
Sudanese forces in Muhajeria tried to create the operational space to crack down
on the civilians in Muhajeria, demanding that the 196 UNAMID peacekeepers
at a local UNAMID base at the outskirts of the town would withdraw. With many
of displaced people seeking refuge at this base, the UNAMID leadership chose
to ignore the government’s demand and remained to protect the civilians. Holt
et al. note that “UNAMID’s refusal to withdraw from the town as the Sudanese
government requested may well have prevented a far larger assault on the town
that could have cost many more civilian lives” (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009, 358).
By and large, however, UNAMID was successfully pinioned by the Sudanese gov-
ernment in spite of efforts by the UNAMID leadership to mitigate restrictions on
movement of UNAMID staff. Some UNAMID staff members have tried to counter
the obstruction by the Sudanese government, yet the Sudanese government com-
monly declared UNAMID staff members, whom it perceived as too proactive,
personae non gratae, forcing them to leave Sudan within a few days (Lanz 2015). A
UNAMID staff member noted in 2017 how every effort to implement the civilian
protection mandate generates a backlash: “Every time there is a peak of tensions
. . . when we release a report on human rights they do not like or we defend
ourselves—supplies stop coming immediately. Visas are not delivered. . . . Access
becomes extremely difficult and they reduce our ability to monitor and report by
reducing the number of staff we have. It lasts for a few months” (UN staff member
quoted in: Sebastián and Gor 2018, 26).
With the UNAMID leadership unable to prevent the Sudanese government from
pinioning its forces, the Sudanese authorities have consistently undermined the
human rights reporting capacity of UNAMID. A telling example is that UNAMID
tried to investigate an attack on Hashaba conducted on September 25, 2012, by
government forces and local militias. After having repeatedly been prevented
by government forces, a UNAMID patrol could finally verify, on October 3, that
around 70 civilians had been killed during the attack. A UN Secretary-General
report subsequently noted that several attempts by UNAMID to return to Hashaba
to “gather more information on the incident and enhance security in the area”
were denied by the Sudanese government on grounds of insecurity (UN Secretary-
General 2013, paragraph 18).
Similarly, government forces clashed with rebels in the vicinity of Thabit in
October 2013. This engagement included air strikes by the Sudanese air force.
In response to obstruction by the Sudanese authorities, the Secretary-General
noted that “Access restrictions imposed by government security officials, who cited
security concerns, prevented UNAMID from conducting a timely assessment of the
impact on civilians” (UN Secretary-General 2014, paragraph 15).
A former UNAMID Human Rights Officer recalls how he and his unit responded
to reports about a massive attack on civilians, including the raping of women, in
ALLARD DUURSMA 19
a village in West Darfur in January 2013: “We flew to the village in a helicopter to
report on these human rights abuses, but the Sudanese security services refused the
helicopter to land, delaying it for 24 hours. When our patrol finally arrived, people

were afraid to speak and it was clear that the crime scene had been cleaned up”
(Interview with a former UNAMID, a Human Rights Officer on December 6, 2016).
A similar incident happened in late October 2014, when Sudanese soldiers were
accused of having raped more than 200 women and girls during an attack on Tabit
in north Darfur. According to Human Rights Watch, the Sudanese government
subsequently blocked UNAMID investigators from entering Tabit. On November 9,
2014, the Sudanese authorities gave UNAMID personnel brief access, but security
forces prevented them from carrying out a credible investigation (Human Rights
Watch 2015). The Government of Sudan also repeatedly prevented a credible in-
vestigation by UNAMID following the use of chemical weapons against civilians by
government forces in the Jebel Marra area during the first half of 2016 (Amnesty In-
ternational 2016). In short, Khartoum has been successful in pinioning UNAMID,
thus undermining its civilian protection efforts. This is also recognized within the
UN. The HIPPO report from 2015 described UNAMID as “a mere shadow of its
original purpose” (High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations 2015, 5).
This, together with drop in armed violence, may explain why UN Secretary-
General and the Chairperson of the AU released a special report on UNAMID
in June 2018, in which they proposed a timetable for the closing of UNAMID
(Chairperson of the African Union Commission and the Secretary-General of the
United Nations 2018). The next month, the UN Security Council adopted the
recommendations of the report, instructing UNAMID to prepare for “the exit of
the Mission on 30 June 2020 and liquidation by December 2020, provided that
there is no significant change in the security situation in Darfur and key indicators
are fulfilled” (UN Security Council 2018).
However, the future of UNAMID has become unclear again with the fall of
President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, following a massive popular uprising.
With the military transitional council still in power in June 2019, the UN Security
Council decided to “pause” UNAMID’s drawdown (Forti 2019). On July 17, 2019,
the military transitional council and the leaders of the protest movement agreed
to form the “Sovereignty Council” with five military members and five civilians.
This council is supposed to oversee a three-year transitional period to democracy
in Sudan. Crucially, in response to a request by the Sovereignty Council, the UN
Security Council extended the presence of UNAMID in Darfur for at least another
year in November 2019 (TRT World 2019). While this is a good signal in terms of
the consent of the newly formed host-state government, the Sudanese paramilitary
Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagolo continues
to undermine the activities of UNAMID in Darfur. Indeed, with Hemeti, a military
member of the Sovereignty Council, being the local power broker in Darfur,
UNAMID might find itself in a position in which it has the complete buy-in of the
civilian leaders of the Sovereignty Council in Khartoum, while Hemeti might have
more incentives as ever before to pinion UNAMID. Any decisions made by the UN
Security Council on UNAMID’s future should take this into account.
Possible Responses
How then should the leadership of peacekeeping missions deal with host-state
governments trying to pinion peacekeepers? A first option is to simply withdraw
the mission. Host-state consent is crucial for the effectiveness of a peacekeeping
operation, so it might be best to terminate the mission when the host-state is
committed to the pinioning of peacekeepers. Sebastián and Gor reflect in this
regard that when confronted with full-blown host-state resistance, the UN faces
a fundamental dilemma: “whether to keep a peacekeeping mission in place with
questionable consent, or withdraw and leave the civilian population unprotected

(Sebastián and Gor 2018, 11). While the termination of a major peacekeeping
operation mandated to ensure the protection of civilians in a civil war has never oc-

curred, the termination of a peacekeeping operation in response to the pinioning
of peacekeepers is not without precedent. Johnstone explains how in response to
“crippling restrictions imposed by Eritrea on [United Nations Mission in Ethiopia
and Eritrea] UNMEE,” the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1827 on July
30, 2008, stipulating the withdrawal of UNMEE.
Another option to respond to the pinioning of peacekeepers is the use of force or
the threat to use force. The UN peacekeeping policy on the protection of civilians
specifies that peacekeepers should be prepared to use force at the local level if this
is necessary “to prevent, pre-empt or put an end to threats of physical violence” (UN
Department of Peacekeeping Operations and UN Department of Field Support
2015: emphasis added). However, in practice, peacekeepers are greatly dependent
on cooperating with armed actors, especially with the government side. Peace-
keepers therefore commonly avoid confrontation when they are obstructed by
armed actors. One example of a confrontation, however, is when the South African
Protection Support Detachment (SAPSD), which was tasked to protect a number of
Burundian politicians, deployed in Burundi. SAPSD encountered strong resistance
from the Burundian army, which demanded that the SAPSD troops would be
stationed outside of the capital Bujumbura. During a standoff, Burundian soldiers
and SAPSD soldier drew guns on one another. The SAPSD troops subsequently
stayed based in Bujumbura (Bentley and Southall 2005, 86).
Rather than using force, the leadership of peacekeeping mission can also use
public pressure to dissuade conflict parties from obstructing peacekeepers. For
instance, in a statement deploring the killing of civilians in the Kasai-Central
province, MONUSCO chief Maman Sidikou called upon the government to im-
mediately halt the “restrictions on the freedom of movement on MONUSCO,
which impede on the ability of the Mission to discharge its full mandate in the
DRC” (MONUSCO 2017). UNMISS has also responded with public pressure to
obstruction of peacekeepers. For instance, in response to South Sudanese gov-
ernment forces preventing UNMISS staff from accessing the Eastern Equatoria
state town of Pajok in April 2017, the UNMISS leadership urged the government
in an official statement to immediately allow it access “so it can fully implement
its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations”
(Sudan Tribune 2017). The head of UNMISS, David Shearer, has also occasionally
responded to some roadblocks with public pressure. For instance, he demanded
access to the Torit orphanage on UN radio (Reuters 2017b). While public pressure
is obviously a much less intrusive response than the use of force, it still can lead to a
deterioration of the relationship between the conflict parties on the one hand and
the peacekeeping mission on the other hand.
A less intrusive response to the obstruction of peacekeepers is trying to negotiate
access. Some peacekeeping missions have developed instructions for engagement
to guide peacekeeping patrols when they are obstructed. Negotiating access some-
times works. For instance, on October 17, 2008, a UNAMID patrol was stopped by
Arab militia 13 km from Muhajeria en-route to Ed Daein. The militiamen fired
warning gunshots to stop the patrol. However, after negotiation, the patrol contin-
ued with its mission (internal UNAMID Situational Report, October 29, 2008). In
south Sudan, UNMISS peacekeeping patrols have camped near checkpoints before
they were finally allowed to move further following lengthy negotiations (Reuters
2017b).
Furthermore, if negotiations in the field are not successful, then the mission
leadership can follow up and negotiate on access to hot spots with senior represen-
tatives of the conflict parties. For example, in response to Sudanese government
forces repeatedly blocking night patrols in the El Geneina area in Darfur in the
ALLARD DUURSMA 21
first half of 2008, UNAMID High Command took up these violations of the SOFA
with senior government officials in El Geneina (internal J2 [military intelligence
unit] weekly, July 2, 2007). However, this type of high-level negotiating does not

always work. For instance, the UNAMID leadership negotiated with Vice-President
Ali Osman Taha to lift a blanket restriction on flights in and out Nyala, which
had been put in place on May 29, 2010. Even when Taha had officially lifted this
restriction on June 14, 2010, following negotiations with UNAMID, flights from
Nyala to Muhajeria, Shaeria, and El Daein were denied security clearance (UN
Secretary-General 2010b). These were all places where military operations were
ongoing and where civilians were targeted.
Besides the question of what type of responses are most effective when dealing
with obstruction of peacekeepers in relation to protection of civilian efforts, it is
important to consider the timing of a possible response. Obstruction of peace-
keepers usually does not start as a full-blown effort to undermine a peacekeeping
mission’s mandate right from the start, which suggests that any encroachments
on the mandate in the early phase of a mission should be met with a response,
as not doing so might lead to the civilian protection mandate of a mission being
compromised.
The development over time of the level of obstruction against UNMISS peace-
keepers in South Sudan is instructive in this regard. When the civil war in South
Sudan broke out in December 2013 and both the armed opposition and the
government forces began targeting civilians, the mandate of UNMISS quickly
transformed into centering around the protection of civilians rather than building
state capacity. As a result, both sides started to obstruct peacekeepers. Yet, this
obstruction started extremely subtle. In hindsight, it would have been better if the
UNMISS leadership had been adamant in preventing any infringements of the
SOFA, even seemingly small infringements.
Sebastián and Gor note that if and when “a mission begins to experience serious
deterioration of consent by the host-state government, the Security Council, with
the assistance or at the request of the Secretary-General, should act decisively and
creatively to strengthen the mission’s negotiating position and dissuade behavior
by the host-state government that violates the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
or the spirit of the mandate” (Sebastián and Gor 2018, 6). In addition, to guard a
mission from being undermined on a local level, missions that are being deployed
could include start-up teams with personnel with experience in navigating the
challenges of compromised consent from the local armed actors on the ground
(Sebastián and Gor 2018, 7).
Nevertheless, even trying to respond immediately to any restrictions that hinder
their ability to carry out the mandate carries a risk, because host-states might re-
spond through revoking consent altogether. This is essentially what happened in the
case of the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MIN-
URCAT) and the United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB). MINURCAT
faced a derailing operational environment, and when the mission leadership began
pushing the government to allow it to realize its mandate, the government instead
reclaimed its internal sovereignty by asserting it now held the capacity to protect
civilians and thus the mission was compelled to withdraw (De Waal 2015; Karlsrud
2015b, 191). Similarly, the newly elected Burundian government continuously tried
to restrict ONUB’s activities related to the implementation of its mandate and “pres-
sured ONUB to withdraw precipitously and SRSG [Special-Representative of the
Secretary-General] Mc Askie to depart in early 2006” (Boutellis 2015, 737–38).
Conclusion
A state that accepts a peacekeeping mission for reasons related to its external
sovereignty, but is also engaged in counter-insurgency effort, will likely resist the
activities of peacekeepers that limit the government forces’ ability to target civilians
and fight the armed opposition. This suggests that robust peacekeeping is not the
only factor determining the effectiveness of a peacekeeping mission. Armed actors

can undermine the civilian protection efforts of peacekeepers through obstructing
them. This is a much less costly strategy than directly attacking peacekeepers, but
it can be equally effective in terms of preventing peacekeepers from protecting
civilians.
The UNAMID experience demonstrates the difficulty of protecting civilians
when operating with host-state resistance. The Sudanese government consented
to the mission’s presence on paper, but simultaneously obstructed the mission’s
mandated activities. The Sudanese government tried to delay the deployment
of UNAMID as much as possible. When UNAMID was eventually deployed, the
Sudanese government undermined the effectiveness of the peacekeeping mission
through obstruction, intimidation, and even through the sporadic use of force.
The presence of UNAMID was never directly challenged through full-scale armed
resistance, but it faced so many small obstructions that its ability to fulfill the
mandate was seriously jeopardized. Johnstone has described this type of resistance
against peacekeeping missions as death by a thousands cuts (Johnstone 2011, 177).
The pinioning of peacekeepers is not unique to UNAMID, it also has occurred in
the Ivory Coast, Chad, the DRC, and South Sudan.
The pinioning of peacekeepers in many locations of UN peacekeeping illustrates
that while the responsibility to protect norm is a social construct, it has real empiri-
cal consequences. The shifting emphasis from a state’s sovereignty to the protection
of civilians puts a lot of pressure on governments to accept a peacekeeping mission.
A civil war state might therefore accept a peacekeeping mission because they
anticipate that this is the only way to uphold its external sovereignty and to prevent
robust international action. However, a peacekeeping mission impedes the counter-
insurgency efforts of a state. This article has shown that states can respond to this
dilemma through simultaneously accepting and resisting a peacekeeping mission.
It is crucial that the leadership of peacekeeping missions are aware of this
dilemma host-states face and try to manage host-state resistance as much as possi-
ble. For its own part, the UN thus faces a trade-off when it comes to maintaining
good relations with government forces and non-state armed actors on the one hand
and the protection of civilians on the other hand.
Perhaps the most promising response to the obstruction of peacekeepers is to nip
obstruction in the bud before it has escalated into a full-blown effort to undermine
the civilian protection effort of a peacekeeping mission. Since UN peacekeepers
will continue to be deployed amidst armed conflict and in places were the consent
to their presence compromised, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
should make it very clear to the leadership of peacekeeping missions and field
commanders that any infringement of their mandate is unacceptable. As soon as
peacekeepers in the field start giving in to armed actors obstructing them in their
efforts to protect civilians, these obstruction efforts will become more frequent,
as we have seen in Darfur and South Sudan, which ultimately will cost the life of
civilians who otherwise could have been protected by peacekeepers.
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International Studies Review (2020) 0, 1–26

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Why and how do host-states resist contemporary peacekeeping missions?

Resumen:¿Por qué y cómo los estados de acogida resisten las misiones

y apoyar su soberanía externa, pero, al mismo tiempo, intentando limitar

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Keywords: peacekeeping, host-state consent, resistance,

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peacekeeping missions as for example the violence conducted by non-state armed

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example, inviting elections observers and committing to human rights treaties,

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The Turn to Civilian Protection and the Pinioning of Peacekeepers

to sacrifice internal sovereignty in the face of international actors and accept a

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shows that peacekeeping is effective in curbing armed clashes and preventing

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theoretical expectation is in line with UN peacekeeping being rare in Asia in spite

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UNMISS was unable to complete its investigations because these investigations

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I draw on a variety of sources, including academic studies, NGO reports, UN

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Darfur and al-Bashir’s Challenge to Maintain Sudan’s External Sovereignty

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Washington to allow a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur (Interview with Vladimir

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Pinioning the Peacekeepers in Darfur

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Figure 1. Freedom of access restrictions and violence against civilians by government

unnoticed by the UN itself. In a UN report on civilian protection published in

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questionable consent, or withdraw and leave the civilian population unprotected

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