Week 3
I had a chance this week to sit down and discuss a new research project that the Atrocity Prevention team was starting. The team is looking to perform research into the role of United Nations Police (UNPOL) personnel in preventing atrocities. The project specifically focuses on the actions of UNPOL as they relate to the UN Peacekeeping missions in South Sudan (UNMISS), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), and the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). Phase one of the project focuses on desk research into existing literature about atrocity prevention and backgrounds on each of the three missions. Eventually, several researchers from the Atrocity Prevention team will deploy in the DRC, the CAR, and South Sudan to perform field research.
My job is to assist in performing desk research into MONUSCO, MINUSCA, and UNMISS and the various roles that UNPOL plays in preventing mass atrocities. The desk research has been broken down into different phases, and I anticipate that it’ll probably take me the next seven or eight weeks to draft up a full, comprehensive research paper. My first area of focus this week was to search for any academic articles, policy papers, and/or reports on UNPOL and atrocity prevention efforts. As it turns out, that literature is exceedingly rare and very difficult to find. Although there are plenty of academic papers on the role of UNPOL in the Protection of Civilians (the responsibility of UN Peacekeeping missions to use, in most cases, any means necessary to prevent and respond to threats against civilians), atrocity prevention research is very limited. There’s considerable overlap between the Protection of Civilians and atrocity prevention, but they aren’t quite the same topic.
I also started to compile background information on UNMISS, MONUSCO, and MINUSCA. I’ll likely spend the next week or two doing a deep-dive into each of the country’s UN Peacekeeping missions, their histories of atrocities, and their current political situations. I'll keep you all updated!