UN Organs’ Strategies for Protection of Civilians: Coherent, Adaptable or Both?

Abstract

This thesis examines the coherence and adaptiveness of the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations and the UN Security Council in the case of protection of civilians in peacekeeping missions. Ignasi Torrent’s conceptualisation on coherence and adaptiveness, that coherence limits adaptiveness, is used to analyse if there is a correlation between the two. The UN wants to achieve system wide coherence in peacekeeping missions, meaning that the UN policy is that every stakeholder within a peacekeeping mission should be on the same page. This attempt to be coherent throughout the whole system within a mission limits the adaptiveness of the UN. In an unpredictable setting like a conflict environment it is difficult to know which plan is going to be a failure and which is going to be a success. Therefore, high adaptiveness is important in order to be able to make changes to a plan when unforeseen events occur. The question of how coherent both organs are is answered by a qualitative content analysis over time of both organs plans on how to protect civilians and coherence is measured by how many similarities or differences there are in both organs’ plans. The question of how adaptive the two organs are is answered in the same way and the adaptiveness is measured by how many changes to the plan are made. Finally the correlation is studied. If the two organs are coherent, does that limit adaptability? Or if the two organs are not coherent, does that lead to more adaptability?