UN peacekeeping economies and local sex industries: connections and implications

UN peacekeeping missions have been a major component of many conflict and post-conflict environments. The resultant ‘economies’ that emerge to accommodate such an influx of personnel - the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo numbers some 20 000 for instance - have received scant attention from researchers, with little known of the resulting economic, socio-cultural or political impacts. However, such peacekeeping economies are the arena where the local populace interact with the international civilian and military personnel. The subsequent relations not only have a major impact on local and international perceptions of the mission but shape the roles and the status of the local citizens themselves.

This paper considers the characteristics of such peacekeeping economies, paying particular attention to the attendant sex industry. The authors contend that such economies are highly gendered but that the “normalisation” of peacekeeping economies allows these gendered effects to be overlooked or obscured. Furthermore the research also asserts that the gender relations contained in, and gendered effects of, peacekeeping economies - including the accompanying expansion of the sex industry - have been carried over into the post-peacekeeping period, with broad and lasting consequences.

The authors findings/conclusions include:

• While peacekeeping economies prompt the construction or regeneration of a certain degree of
  infrastructure - including housing stock and an entertainment infrastructure comprising restaurants, bars, clubs, brothels, etc - it is debatable how much they contribute to wider and lasting economic development, beyond the immediate stimulus effect
  
• peacekeeping economies can also be problematic - owing to their inflationary impact on the cost of living and the local housing market, and the distortive effects of the 'local hire' syndrome - but also generally perceived of as temporary
  
• there seems to be a fundamental mismatch between the UN’s goals of mainstreaming gender and promoting gender equality, and its participation in and perpetuation of a peacekeeping economy that frequently has negative impacts on the local women and men it encompasses
  
• UN and other international actors need to start taking the issue of peacekeeping economies seriously. Existing UN policy that is relevant – the zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation
  and abuse of locals by UN personnel – may have some effect on demand for transactional sex but is unlikely to change the fundamentals of the highly gendered peacekeeping economy
  
• these fundamentals include extreme (and typically gendered) income inequality, an informal and exploitable labour force, corruption and criminality, and a lack of accountability or sustained investment on the part of individuals and institutions associated with the peacekeeping boom.