United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines

February 15, 2008

The present document aims to define the nature, scope and core business of contemporary United Nations peacekeeping operations, which are usually deployed as one part of a much broader international effort to build a sustainable peace in countries emerging from conflict. It identifies the comparative advantages and limitations of United Nations peacekeeping operations as a conflict management tool, and explains the basic principles that should guide their planning and conduct.

Training Scenarios: Preparing to Prevent

November 26, 2014

Editor: Dwight Raymond, PKSOI

This handbook was developed by PKSOI at the U.S. Army War College in Sept, 2014 – a product of the U.S. AFRICOM conference on Women, Peace, and Security. The handbook contains training scenarios to help military leaders and trainers address conflict-related sexual violence in the context of peacekeeping missions. It begins with an overview of conflict-related sexual violence, then provides situational information as background for the eight training scenarios. Users of this document are encouraged to modify the material as appropriate to support their particular training requirements.

MAPRO: Mass Atrocity Prevention and Response Options

March 6, 2012

This Handbook is designed to be a reference for policy makers to monitor, prevent, and if necessary respond to genocide and other mass atrocity situations. It addresses topics promulgated in the August 2011 Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities (PSD-10) as well as recommendations contained in Preventing Genocide, the 2008 study published by the Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF).

BCT-PRT Unity of Effort

September 15, 2011

This is not a “how-to” manual. Rather, this guide is designed to provide BCT and PRT leaders and staffs a set of tools, approaches, and observations — gathered from recently deployed personnel — which, if properly coordinated, communicated, and planned for during BCT/PRT “Road to War” training, will help improve conditions for “unity of effort.”

Measuring Progress in Conflict Environments (MPICE)

June 4, 2010

MPICE provides a system of metrics that can assist in formulating policy and implementing strategic and operational plan to transform conflict and bring stability to war-torn societies. These metrics provide the content for baseline operational and strategic-level assessments allowing policymakers to diagnose potential obstacles to stabilization prior to an intervention.

MARO: Mass Atrocity Response Operations

May 20, 2010

The Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) Project seeks to enable the United States and the international community to stop genocide and mass atrocity as part of a broader integrated strategy by explaining key relevant military concepts and planning considerations. The MARO Project is based on the insight that the failure to act in the face of mass killings of civilians is not simply a function of political will or legal authority; the failure also reflects a lack of thinking about how military forces might respond. States and regional and international organizations must better understand and prepare for the unique operational and moral challenges that military forces would face in a MARO.

Guide to Rebuilding Public Sector Services

October 9, 2009

In this guide, the authors provide a set of principles and operational guidelines for peacekeepers to help the country restore public infrastructure and services. The extent to which public sector reconstruction takes place is a function of the mission, the level of resources, expertise of the troops, and the host country context. The guide provides courses of action to both planners and practitioners in executing these operations and supplements existing and emerging documents. The material here draws from both theoretical and analytical frameworks as well as from the experience and lessons learned from practitioners.

Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction

October 5, 2009


The manual focuses on host nation outcomes, not programmatic inputs or outputs. It is focused primarily on what the host nation and international actors are trying to achieve, not how they are trying to achieve it at the tactical level. It is not about how to conduct an election or disarm warring parties—it is about the outcomes that these activities support. Excellent “how-to” guides already exist across the U.S. government and partner institutions. These should be accessed regularly and used diligently in the conduct of these missions.