ABSTRACT
The blurred line between peacekeeping and force mandates is apparent in robust peacekeeping (the authorisation of tactical force within a peacekeeping mission) and peace enforcement (the escalation of a peacekeeping mission into a ‘Chapter VII force’). 2 While the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s (UNSC) authorisation of Chapter VII force attracts attention, as does authorisation of peace enforcement missions, the UNSC’s development of robust peacekeeping has not attracted the same level of attention. This is despite the UNSC considerably enlarging its functions through the creation of robust peacekeeping mandates. Thus in 2011 the UNSC, and much of the western world, debated the merits of intervention in Libya on the grounds of a responsibility to protect (R2P) civilians; 3 and the world watched while the peacekeeping mission in the Ivory Coast was transformed into a Chapter VII operation. Yet the use of force as robust peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) less than 12 months prior to the Libya and Ivory Coast authorisations received considerably less attention. 4 In this chapter, I argue that the UNSC would benefit from internal rather than external projections of the rule of law (ROL) in the context of robust peacekeeping, to better account for the risks associated with the deployment of force. I use a gender analysis as a means to interrogate the function and deployment of robust peacekeeping measures in the DRC.
