Finding the Utility of Force to Protect Civilians from Violence: Exploring Outcomes of United Nations Military Protection Operations in Africa (1999–2017)

For more than two decades, the United Nations Security Council has tasked Blue Helmets to use all necessary means – including lethal force protect civilians from violence. Despite policymakers’ emphasis on reducing threats civilians, we remain ignorant of conditions leading successful outcomes when is used protect. Introducing four promising causal conditions, this article employs a new dataset capturing military protection operations across 10 UN missions in Africa 1999 2017 explore combinations and sufficient for outcomes, finding recipes success.