After the Exit: Peacebuilding After UN Peacekeepers' Withdrawal

This session is proudly organized in collaboration with the SDG16 Hub

UN peacekeeping is at a turning point: major missions have withdrawn in recent years, more are set to close, and few new large deployments are emerging—yet we still know too little about what happens after peacekeepers leave. This session shares findings from a collaborative, multi-method project examining post-withdrawal trajectories in security, governance, and economic conditions across former host states, asking whether violence changes, growth rises or stalls, and democracy endures. Beyond broad patterns, we’ll unpack why outcomes vary—why some countries remain stable, others deteriorate, and a few improve—and introduce an analytic framework, illustrated with real-world examples, to help explain these divergent paths.

Presenter: John Gledhill, Associate Professor, Oxford University

Host & Discussant: Silvia Danielak, Assistant Professor, Carter School