Knowledge on con ict-a ected areas is becoming increasingly important for scholarship and policy. This article identi es a recent change in knowledge production regarding 'zones of danger', attributing it not only to the external environment, but also to an on- going process of securitisation of research resulting from institutional and disciplinary practices. Research is increasingly framed by security concerns and is becoming a security concern in itself, although the implications are not readily acknowledged. To illustrate these developments, we draw on eldwork in Mali and Darfur

Mandates of recent peacekeeping operations across Africa have shown substantial innovation in the thinking of the UN Security Council. Offensive use of force, use of unmanned aerial vehicles, strategic intelligence and communication, and state-building mandates in the midst of conflicts have all expanded the scope of activities beyond what the UN peacekeepers are accustomed to. The UN is entering a new era of enforcement peacekeeping. Enforcement peacekeeping manifests itself both in enforcement of political solutions through support of a government's statebuilding ambitions and its attempts to extend state authority in the midst of conflict and in enforcement of military victories through the offensive use of force. These developments further unsettle the basic principles of UN peacekeeping-consent, impartiality, and nonuse of force-resulting in a schism between the doctrine and practice. This contribution argues that such fundamental challenges, when not properly acknowledged, create a wall between operational activities and strategic considerations. They preclude a proper debate on the problematic externalities, in particular on political processes and peacebuilding.

UN peace operations need a new peacebuilding agenda that acknowledges both the transboundary nature of conflict drivers and the multipolar nature of the global order. This means casting aside the current stabilization approach, but also abandoning the pursuit of liberal peacebuilding of the unipolar era. Such a conflict transformation agenda would require UN peace operations to prioritize the rule of law and bottom-up approaches, thus creating the potential to be embraced by a much broader range of member states. In this article, we bring liberal peacebuilding critiques into a discussion with debates on the nature of the global order. Liberal peacebuilding critiques are rooted in the bottom-up problematization of international interventions and show what kind of peacebuilding is desirable. Conversely, the debates on the multipolar nature of the global order expose the top-down constraints as to what kind of peacebuilding is feasible. KEYWORDS United Nations; peacekeeping; peacebuilding; multipolar order; rule of law; bottom-up approaches At the turn of another decade, something interesting is happening with the United Nations (UN) flagship activity: peacekeeping. In January 2019, the UN underwent substantial institutional reform, deprioritizing the term peacekeeping and subsuming it under a broader umbrella of peace operations. The former Department of Peacekeeping Operations was restructured into the Department of Peace Operations and became more closely integrated with the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs through shared regional divisions (United Nations, 2019). This reform was

In early March 2015, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General's High-Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations (HIPPO) made a stop in Cairo, Egypt as part of its regional consultations on reform of UN peace operations. One of the discussion questions for the first session asked, whether current UN peace operations in the Middle East are the right fit for today's security environment and, if not, what kind of UN presence makes the most sense now and in the future. Very soon into the session a young diplomat from one of the regional states challenged the premise of this question, arguing that the only role for the UN is in supporting regional approaches. His passionate intervention opened a floodgate, with speaker after speaker depicting the UN with deep suspicion. The message was clear: UN peace operations were seen to be a Western intervention into regional matters; the League of Arab States (LAS) should deal with Arab problems, same as the African Union