Malaysian Peacekeepers Perspectives on the Influence of Governance and Ethnic-Cross Relationship in Enhancing Ethnic Tolerance during Peacekeeping Operations

Ethnic tolerance among peacekeepers plays an important role in ensuring the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. Therefore, this study aimed to analyse the influence of governance and ethnic-cross relationship towards enhancing of ethnic tolerance based on the perspectives of Malaysian peacekeepers. This study applied quantitative data collection method through a set of questionnaires with 432 participants that previously being deployed to various United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO). The result indicates that both governance and ethnic-cross relationships have a positive correlation towards enhancement of the level of ethnic tolerance among Malaysian peacekeepers. The findings could strengthen the code of ethics for cultural competence, which emphasises the importance of understanding ethnic tolerance during peacekeeping operations or deployments. Received: 4 October 2021 / Accepted: 21 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

Recent Developments in Japan’s International Peace Cooperation Under the Second Abe Government 2012–2020

This chapter will consider the noteworthy changes in Japan’s peacekeeping policy under the second Abe administration (2012–2020), with special emphasis on the period between 2013 and 2017. Since its outset in the early 1990s, Japan’s peacekeeping policy had been gradually shaped by the trends of “integration” and the “robustness” in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKOs), but various problems remained unsolved, especially in terms of “robustness.” With the return of Prime Minister Abe at the end of 2012, reforms to follow the trend of “robustness” were carried out as part of his all-inclusive renovation of Japan’s security policy, namely the Peace and Security Legislation, to resolve numerous long-standing problems in the field. With this in mind, this chapter starts by considering new developments in Japan’s security policy as a whole before examining how these sweeping reforms transformed the quality of Japan’s peacekeeping, paying special attention to the newly added roles, such as the “coming-to-aid” duty. This chapter will also trace moves toward “integration,” especially regarding the “All Japan” approach.

Incredible Commitments

Why do warring parties turn to United Nations peacekeeping and peacemaking even when they think it will fail? Dayal asks why UN peacekeeping survived its early catastrophes in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans, and how this survival should make us reconsider how peacekeeping works. She makes two key arguments: first, she argues the UN's central role in peacemaking and peacekeeping worldwide means UN interventions have structural consequences – what the UN does in one conflict can shift the strategies, outcomes, and options available to negotiating parties in other conflicts. Second, drawing on interviews, archival research, and process-traced peace negotiations in Rwanda and Guatemala, Dayal argues warring parties turn to the UN even when they have little faith in peacekeepers' ability to uphold peace agreements – and even little actual interest in peace – because its involvement in negotiation processes provides vital, unique tactical, symbolic, and post-conflict reconstruction benefits only the UN can offer.

Introduction

This chapter introduces and summarises the book. It introduces the notion and practice of everyday peace and makes the case for why the hyperlocal level is a legitimate level of analysis. It considers how the everyday peace that occurs at the very local level might be connected to other levels of peace and conflict. The chapter introduces and discusses the sources used by the book, including findings from the Everyday Peace Indicators project, a project on local perceptions of United Nations peacekeeping in Darfur, interviews from Lebanon, and memoirs and personal diaries from World Wars I and II. Three key questions that help shape the book are introduced, questions that recur throughout the book: Is everyday peace really peace? How can everyday peace deal with and confront power? Can everyday peace be scaled up?

Introducing the Deadly Electoral Conflict Dataset (DECO)

This article introduces the Deadly Electoral Conflict dataset (DECO): a global, georeferenced event dataset on electoral violence with lethal outcomes from 1989 to 2017. DECO allows for empirical evaluation of theories relating to the timing, location, and dynamics of deadly electoral violence. By clearly distinguishing electoral violence from related (and sometimes concurrent) instances of organized violence, DECO is particularly suitable for investigating how election-related violence is connected to other forms of violent political contention. In the article, we present the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the data collection and discuss empirical patterns that emerge in DECO. We also demonstrate one potential use of DECO by examining the association between United Nations peacekeeping forces and the prevalence of deadly electoral violence in conflict-affected countries.