Conflict prevention and the UN Peacekeeping Operations in West Africa: A contingency-based approach applied to UNOCI and MINUSMA

This study aims to analyse the contingency-based approach in the UN Peacekeeping Operations in West Africa, and how that could contribute to preventing conflict in the sub-region1. There are three variables in this study: UN peacekeeping, conflict prevention and the contingency-based approach. To study the subject, we used mixed approaches: qualitative and quantitative to collect the data from the literature, the official reports of the UN and the survey, in order to see how far a situational-oriented model matters in the Mission`s Mandate for containing conflict and to prevent future escalation. The stratified simple random technique was used to design the study population, which was composed of civilians, the personnel of the UN and some political figures. And the arithmetic mean, frequencies and percentage values are used to analyse the survey datasets. We developed the six scales from Diehl's 1988-1996 models to frame our analytical concepts and to prepare the survey questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed to 3000 participants: 1500 respondents from Côte d`Ivoire and 1500 respondents from Mali. The six scales are2: (1) If the Mandate responds to the basic causes of the conflict, (2) if the key players of the conflict are involved in peace negotiations. If the UN peace mission led to (3) facilitating conflict resolution, (4) making conflict containment, (5) limiting causalities and armed conflict, (6) contributing to national peace and security nexus to international peace and security. The findings showed that the context of each conflict was different; the call for Ivoirity3 and ethno-religious political propaganda had driven tensions and post-election political violence in Côte d`Ivoire, while the lack of social justice, marginalization or political exclusion and radicalization were key factors to the rise of the Tuareg rebellion in the northern regions of Mali. The results indicate that 75 per cent of the study population sees that the Mandate of UNOCI was designed contingently to respond to the basic causes of conflict in Côte d`Ivoire, while 70 percent of the respondents think that the Mandate of the MINUSMA was not the case. From the findings, we can observe that 42 per cent of the respondents are undecided if the peace process in Mali should include the radical Islamic groups, and 20 per cent of the respondents express that they should be included. Meanwhile, the respondents are positive that key conflict parties were involved in the peace process in Côte d`Ivoire and that played a key role to enforce the relative peace. And most of the respondents agree that the UNOCI operation led to conflict resolution, conflict containment, limiting causes and armed conflict, and contributed to restoring peace and security in Côte d`Ivoire. However, the respondents are pessimists regarding the MINUSMA operation and its ability to restore peace and to prevent conflict in Mali. To conclude, the findings revealed that the UNOCI mandate was contingent and its operation was responding to the realities of the conflict in Côte d`Ivoire and that contributed to its success, while the MINUSMA operation and its Mandate are not fitting the concepts of conflict in Mali. Therefore, we summed up that: to better prevent conflict in West Africa; the managerial style of the UN Peacekeeping Operations should be contingent and situational-oriented. Keywords: Conflict Prevention, Peacekeeping Operations, UN, UNOCI, MINUSMA, Mali, Côte d`Ivoire.