BACKGROUND PAPER: Improving peacekeeping effectiveness by increasing diversity of mission composition

This background paper is about how diversity (in terms of geography, language, and religion) among peacekeepers deployed in peacekeeping missions helps to achieve missions’ successes.

The findings show that both high diversity among the peacekeepers’ deployed and high diversity between the military and the civilian leaders of the mission enhance peacekeeping effectiveness. The paper study how diversity provides opportunities to enhance peacekeeping effectiveness by combining a quantitative analysis on a global dataset with in-depth case studies from the UN missions in Central African Republic, Lebanon and Mali.  

This background paper is authored by:

  • Vincenzo Bove, Professor of Politics at the University of Warwick
  • Chiara Ruffa, Academy Fellow at Uppsala University and Associate Professor at the Swedish Defense University
  • Andrea Ruggeri, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Oxford