An assessment of the conflict management attitudes of police peacekeepers: MINUSTAH as a case study

The essence of conflict has changed from inter-state to intra-state in post-Cold War era. That change sparked off many humanitarian intervention operations conducted by intergovernmental organizations such as the UN and the EU all around the world. As of March 2014, the UN itself runs 17 peacekeeping field missions operations in various regions around the globe. More than 12.000 police officers from 122 countries serve in the field missions. Diversity in staff members causes problems in human relations inevitably. Different levels of language fluency, different levels of professionalism, and different understandings on the essence of the peacekeeping and so on lead to interpersonal conflicts among police peacekeepers. Interpersonal conflicts might occur in every organization for sure; however, high level of diversity increases the potentiality of those kinds of conflicts. Police peacekeepers spend their daily life under stress conditions. Many factors such as being foreigner in a foreign land, being away from their families, home countries, and so on may contribute to their levels of stress. Thus, interpersonal conflicts are inevitable and what is worse, they bear guns in field missions. Interpersonal conflicts among police peacekeepers could potentially create more serious results compared to other peacekeepers. Most of the studies examined police component of peacekeeping forces from political standpoint. However, organizational side of peacekeeping missions is also crucial for their success. In the UN, in which diversity is highly promoted as a core value, problems caused by diversity remain still untouched. This study seeks to understand whether police peacekeepers’ conflict handling behaviors are contributed by factors such as gender, position in the mission, experience, and field mission.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Derin Akdeni