RADPKO
Description and Access
Along with William Nomikos and an amazing team of undergraduate researchers, I manage the Robust African Deployments of Peacekeeping Operations dataset (RADPKO). These data provide subnational estimates of the location, size, composition, nationality, and gender of all Chapter VII United Nations Peacekeeping Deployments to sub-Saharan Africa from 1999 until 2019. To make these data compatible with multiple spatial units of analysis, we offer RADPKO aggregated to individual UN peacekeeping bases, to country's second-order administrative units, and to a standard PRIO grid-cell
You can access these data here.
Please cite Hunnicutt, Patrick and William G. Nomikos. (2020). "Nationality, Gender, and Deployments at the Local Level: Introducing the RADPKO Dataset." International Peacekeeping when using these data.
You can access these data here.
Please cite Hunnicutt, Patrick and William G. Nomikos. (2020). "Nationality, Gender, and Deployments at the Local Level: Introducing the RADPKO Dataset." International Peacekeeping when using these data.
RADPKO Data Summary, 1999-2019
RADPKO Data, UNAMID, 2007-2019 (displays ADM2 units that house peacekeepers)
Why use RADPKO?
We believe RADPKO offers a comparatively comprehensive, flexible, and transparent data source for the location and composition of United Nations peacekeeping personnel. Specifically:
- RADPKO captures the entire population of Chapter VII peacekeeping deployments active in sub-Saharan Africa from 1999 onwards, therefore facilitating cross-national research on the impact of peacekeeping's "local turn" following the Brahimi report.
- RADPKO is compatible with analysis using administrative units, grid cells, or buffers as their spatial unit of analysis, and thus can be merged easily with other geocoded data from AidData, PRIO, the World Bank, and ACLED.
- RADPKO data collection process is transparent. In the accompanying research paper, we describe how our data collection effort compares to others in terms of accuracy and uncertainty. We argue our reliance on monthly mass deployment reports the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations publishes makes RADPKO a competitive source of data for UN peacekeeping operations.
What can RADPKO do?
1) RADPKO can be used to estimate the association between different types of UN peacekeeping deployments at conflict.
- We find that the association between UN peacekeeping and the targeting of civilians is highly sensitive to different model specifications and units of analysis. This contrasts with previous analysis which include only a subset of Chapter VII peacekeeping deployments and find that UN peacekeepers are associated with less civilian victimization.
2) RADPKO can be used to describe Chapter VII peacekeeping deployment patterns.
- We find that UN peacekeepers deployed under a Chapter VII mandate respond in kind to security threats. For instance, we document an increase in peacekeeper deployment to the Tomboctou region in Mali from May to July 2015. During this same period, there were five conflict events in Tomboctou involving peacekeepers. In mission reports to the UN Secretary General published during this period, mission staff expressed concern about these attacks and formally requested a greater number of troops to Mali in general and Tomboctou specifically.
3) RADPKO can be used to estimate the spillover effects of peacekeeping to other processes, such as investment in natural resource concessions.
