Beyond Keeping the Peace: Can Peacekeepers Reduce Ethnic Divisions After Violence?

Existing research suggests that international peacekeeping contributes to conflict resolution and helps sustain peace, often in locations with hostile ethnic divisions. However, it is unclear whether the presence of peacekeepers actually reduces underlying ethnocentric views and parochial behaviors that sustain those divisions. We examine the effects of NATO peacekeeper deployments on ethnocentrism in postwar Bosnia. While peacekeepers were not randomly deployed in Bosnia, we find that highly ethnocentric attitudes were common across Bosnia at the onset of peacekeeper deployments, reducing endogeneity concerns. To measure ethnocentrism, we employ a variety of survey instruments as well as a behavioral experiment (the dictator game) with ethnic treatments across time. We find that regions with peacekeepers exhibit lower levels of ethnocentrism in comparison to regions without peacekeepers, and this effect persists even after peacekeepers have departed. The peacekeeping effect is also robust to a sub-sample of ethnic Bosnian Serbs, suggesting that peacekeeper deployments can have positive effects on diminishing ethnocentrism, even when local communities are especially hostile to their presence. Our results speak to the potential long-term role of peacekeepers in reducing tensions among groups in conflict

Local Uses of International Criminal Justice in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Transcending Divisions or Building Parallel Worlds?

Social interactions at the local level are crucial to the analysis of the transitional justice and peace-building process. The reason that various international organizations in Bosnia have not been as successful in achieving the admittedly lofty goals of reconciliation is precisely because most of international representatives underestimated the agency of the local population, focusing exclusively on the actions of various local ethnic and civic elites. However, the parallel existence of competing state and nation building projects in Bosnia and their dominance over externally-supported projects of reconciliation cannot be simply explained by relying on one overarching variable – Bosnian nationalist elites’ work towards their own selfish interests and against the interests of the people. The stories that people tell themselves are many and they compete with each other: some are inclusionary, some less so, and some are downright exclusionist. Nevertheless, in each and every case, they provide the meaningful frame of actions that allow members of various local communities to cope with the exigencies of everyday life in Bosnia. A more suitable approach to transitional justice requires an analysis of what makes these stories so powerful and what are the objective political, social and economic factors that continue to provide a fertile ground for their wide-spread support

How Ethnic and Religious Nationalism Threaten the Bosnian State

When the wars ceased in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as in the aftermath of other past conflicts in the Balkans, ethnic and religious divisions prevailed. Bosnia Herzegovina is perhaps the most vulnerable of the newly independent states of the former Yugoslavia, partially due to the manner it was established. Ethnic cleansing and discord have marred Bosnia while the three principal ethnoreligious entities continue to struggle to maintain their distinct identity within the context of a convoluted political system wrestling against domestic and international intrigue. Ethnoreligious nationalism threatens to further rupture the Bosnian state and create a renewed state of violence that ultimately endangers this nation’s future

Mental health in the aftermath of conflict

The authors survey the recent literature on the mental health effects of conflict. They highlight the methodological challenges faced in this literature, which include the lack of validated mental health scales in a survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual exposure to conflict, and the issues related to making causal inferences from observed correlations. They illustrate how some of these issues can be overcome in a study of mental health in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mental health is measured using a clinically validated scale; conflict exposure is proxied by administrative data on war casualties instead of being self-reported. The analysis suggests that there are no significant differences in overall mental health across areas which are affected by ethnic conflict to a greater or lesser degree.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Disease Control&Prevention,Population Policies,Gender and Health,Health Systems Development&Reform