United Nations Peacekeeping and Conflict Management (UNPAC)

2025 was the year with the most conflicts since World War II. That same year, 358 (natural) disasters were recorded. The geo­graphical overlap of wars and disasters has devastating consequences, especially for the populations in the affected areas, who are particularly dependent on aid and support.

Worldwide, more than 204 million people live in areas controlled by or contested by rebel groups. To support their constituencies and strengthen their legitimacy, rebel groups may participate in disaster governance, including through collaboration with inter­national organizations (IOs). The latter in turn often depend on the rebel groups' collaboration to gain access to affected populations and safely deliver aid in areas outside govern­ment control. The ensuing inter­actions are the subject of this dissertation. 

Although inter­actions between rebels and international organizations – such as negotiations over access or coordination on security – occur frequently in practice, they have remained largely unexplored to date. Little is known about the conditions under which IOs and rebel groups engage, the forms this engagement takes, and its effects on disaster governance, conflict dynamics, or the involved parties.

This study addresses this gap by examining IO-rebel inter­actions in disaster governance. It contributes to debates on rebel governance, international organizations’ field-level practices, and the feasibility of disaster risk governance in conflict-affected settings – an increasingly urgent issue in light of rising conflict and the growing intensity of extreme weather events.

For a long time, the United Nations was widely regarded as the central actor in multi­lateral conflict manage­ment. Yet the number of UN-led peace opera­tions has been in steady decline. Contem­porary debates increasingly focus on regional organi­sations rather than the UN, or on ad hoc arrange­ments outside any established insti­tutional framework.

This disser­tation examines how the roles of four Inter­national Organisations engaged in multi­lateral peace operations — the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, and the Organisation for Security and Co-­operation in Europe (OSCE) — have changed over time. Its theo­retical aim is to develop a theory of role change in International Organisations, identi­fying the conditions under which orga­nisations change their roles and the mecha­nisms through which such changes occur.

To address these questions, the project harmo­nises existing datasets on peace operations, en­abling systematic comparison of the man­dates and operational practices of all missions in which the four orga­nisations have been involved. Official documents, archival materials, Member State state­ments, and interviews are used to trace role-change pro­cesses and assess the condi­tions under which they take place.