Heritage Protection as Stabilization, the Emergence of a New ‘Mandated Task’ for UN Peace Operations

International organizations and research methods: an introduction

“…Combining the study of archives with observation of past and present situations as well as interacting-mainly through interviews-with contemporary individuals who shape or have shaped the everyday life of IOs is not just a tool for fact-checking and triangulation. It also allows the researcher to achieve more robust results and a deeper understanding of a given problem such as representativeness claims at the ILO (Louis 2016), gender within IO-led international programs (Saiget 2017), food security at the FAO (Cornilleau 2019), heritage protection during UN peacekeeping operations (Leloup 2021), among others. Such combination is particularly relevant, even necessary, when the researcher is confronted with the study of change and continuity, legitimization processes, institutional mechanisms, and routines firmly rooted in the past and the tradition of an organization like tripartite representation in the ILO (Louis 2016) or the influence of neoclassical economics at the FAO (Cornilleau 2019).…”