Every year armed conflicts force millions of people to flee their homes. Displacement due to conflicts often persists for extended periods, as violence may endure for decades, making this phenomenon a major security and humanitarian challenge.
For instance, a huge emergency that is almost going unnoticed on mainstream media is the civil war in Sudan. Since deadly armed conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out on 15 April 2023, over 3.1 million people have fled Sudan seeking safety in neighboring countries, and 8.6 million people are internally displaced.
Can United Nations (UN) peace missions help forcibly displaced people? I tried to respond to this question in a recent study, carried out with my colleagues Jessica Di Salvatore and Andrea Ruggeri. The idea was exploring whether UN peacekeeping missions help reduce forced displacement during and after civil wars—a global crisis that affects millions of people every year. Forced displacement, which includes refugees fleeing across borders and internally displaced persons (IDPs) seeking safety within their own countries, is often caused by violent conflicts, human rights abuses, and economic instability. While the UN has long been involved in peacekeeping, its impact on displacement has rarely been studied in detail, and anecdotal evidence is often contrasting and ambiguous.
For instance, In January 2022, Mr. El-Ghassim Wane, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for MINUSMA, claimed that the absence of the UN operation would lead to a worse humanitarian situation in Mali. He said that, despite these challenges, the situation “would have been far worse” without the engagement of the international community, including the deployment of the UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) in 2013. On the other hand, there are examples of newspapers stressing the perceived failure of the UN in the Democratic Republic of Congo, quoting refugee advocates who say that the UN “disarmed more than a thousand rebels . . . but failed to prevent the displacement of nearly a million people, 1,400 civilian deaths and 7,500 rapes.”
Thus, we decided to take a first global look at the issue, investigating how the size of UN missions, their specific tasks, and the way they are deployed shape population movements.
One of the key findings is that large UN missions play a significant role in reducing the movement of IDPs. By stabilizing conflict zones and restoring local security, these missions make it safer for people to stay in their communities or return home after fleeing. However, the same cannot be said for refugees. In fact, peacekeeping missions may sometimes lead to an increase in refugee outflows. This happens because, as UN missions improve security and infrastructure, they make it easier for people to leave their countries in search of better opportunities or more permanent safety abroad. This unintended consequence highlights the complex and sometimes contradictory effects of peacekeeping efforts.
Available evidence on the relationship between peace missions and displacement also highlights the importance of mission mandates. UN operations that specifically address displacement—such as helping IDPs return to their homes—are more successful at reducing internal displacement and facilitating returns than missions with more general goals. However, these specialized mandates have a more limited impact on refugee movements, as the factors driving people to cross borders, like fear of persecution or lack of trust in local authorities, are harder to address even with robust peacekeeping.
Overall, our research emphasizes that peacekeeping missions need to be thoughtfully designed to tackle the challenges of forced displacement, but the good news is that it is possible to do it. Larger missions with focused mandates clearly make a difference for IDPs, but they don’t fully address the unique difficulties of managing refugee flows. To truly make an impact, peacekeeping strategies must consider the specific reasons people flee their homes, whether they stay within their country or seek refuge abroad. By tailoring their efforts to these distinct needs, the UN can better support displaced populations and help create conditions for lasting peace. Although the UN has not created any new peacekeeping missions in the past decade, well-designed missions could be a valuable tool to help hundreds of thousands of internal and external refugees.
Keywords: United Nations, UN, peacekeeping, peace missions, conflict, refugees, conflict resolutions, internally displaced persons, refugee rights
