Download Peacekeeping, Poverty, and Development: Towards an

Peacekeeping, Poverty, and Development:
Towards an Understanding of the Gendered
Peacekeeping Economies in the DRC, Sudan,
and Liberia
Morten Bøås
Fafo AIS
NORGLOBAL Annual Conference
25 October 2011
Project team
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Morten Bøås (Fafo AIS) – Project Manager
Kathleen Jennings (Fafo AIS) – PhD candidate
Marsha Henry (London School of Economics)
Kwesi Aning (Kofi Annan International
Peacekeeping Training Centre)
• Øystein Rolandsen (PRIO)
Project period: spring 2011 – spring 2014
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What are PK Economies? (1)
• Working definition:
– Peacekeeping economies include the skilled, semiskilled, or unskilled jobs available to local staff in UN
offices or NGOs that accompany the UN presence
(often secretarial or translation-based, as well as
cleaning, cooking, driving, guarding, etc); unskilled
and mainly informal work such as housecleaning,
laundering, cooking, running errands, etc for
international staff; service jobs in the establishments
that cater to internationals; and participation in the
sex industry.
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What are PK Economies? (2)
• “Peacekeeping” understood broadly
– Refers also to UN agencies/ country teams,
peacebuilding, and NGOs – not just missions
themselves
• Can be conceptualized as whatever happens
of economic activity that wouldn’t have
happened without the peacekeeping mission
– Some internationals usually present during
wartime, but the boom comes once the mission
arrives
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What are PK economies? (3)
• Different cases will have different manifestations
of the peacekeeping economy
– Monrovia or Goma (big footprint) vs Kinshasa
– Juba: PK economy concept may overstate the
importance of the international PK presence in an oilboom economy
• But generally, the peacekeeping economy is
about the under-studied impacts of the
international presence in zones of war and postwar.
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Main research questions
• How do peacekeeping economies affect local
livelihoods and politico-economic organization?
• How do peacekeeping economies seem to affect
local social (including gendered) relations?
• What is the relationship between the tangible
(and occasionally sordid) reality of peacekeeping
economies and the aims of “official”
development aid and peacekeeping activities?
• What happens to peacekeeping economies when
the operations leave?
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Hypotheses
1. Peacekeeping economies have a significant
effect on incomes and livelihoods, particularly
women’s livelihoods, because many of the jobs
and services that the peacekeeping economy
depends on are considered the preserve of
women.
2. The impacts of PK economies are neither as
temporary nor as localized as commonly
assumed:
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“Multiplier effect”
Broader understanding of “impact” (going beyond the
economic to include social norms and relations)
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Main Outputs
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One co-edited book
PhD thesis
Multiple peer-reviewed articles
Policy report
Final conference in Oslo for policymakers,
practitioners, and researchers (pending external
funding)
• Popular dissemination through op-eds, blog
postings and web forums
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