MRC : Lampros Bisdounis : MR/N013468/1

As of March 2016, a total of 104,773 uniformed personnel from 123 countries were serving in 16 peacekeeping operations around the world. Where foreign soldiers - during war, occupation or peacekeeping operations - are on foreign soil, military-civilian relations develop, including those between soldiers and local women. Peacekeepers have increasingly been associated with sexual exploitation and abuse of the vulnerable populations they had been mandated to protect. Many of the intimate relations between peacekeeping personnel and local women, of both voluntary and exploitative nature, have led to pregnancies and to children being born. These so-called 'peace babies' and their mothers face particular challenges in volatile post-conflict communities, reportedly including childhood adversities as well as stigmatization, discrimination and disproportionate economic and social hardships. The network connects two strands of inquiry around 'peace babies' - from the academic world and from within the development sector - in a spirit of conversation and collaboration, to examine challenges of humanitarian intervention in a transnational historical context. Building on the firm belief that history's focus on causality and long-term processes of change is indispensable for appreciating the complex dynamics of socio-cultural change, the network contributes a deeper understanding of development and aims to affect practice. It provides an historical complement to the wealth of available analyses - internal and external - of the contemporary humanitarian environment. Specifically, the network proposes an in-depth-study of the situation of 'peace babies' by exploring the children conceived by personnel from or associated with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). MINUSTAH is among the missions that have been associated with allegations of a range of abuses, not least related to sexual and gender-based violence and consequently the unintended legacy of children fathered by UN personnel. The UN has recently acknowledged that 'peacekeeper babies' exist. Yet, an evidence base relating to the welfare of children fathered by UN peacekeepers (globally or in Haiti) is virtually non-existent, and it is clear that the existing UN policies and support programs are inadequate. This multidisciplinary collaboration between scholars from Queen's University, the University of Birmingham, the Centre of International and Defence Policy, and Haitian-based Enstiti Travay Sosyal ak Syans Sosyal (ETS), along with civil society organisations, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and Haitian-based Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, will address this knowledge gap and enhance our historically-informed understanding of the challenges faced by peace babies and their families as well as the obstacles to accessing support. Beyond the core UK-Canada-Haiti partnership, the network will include a further four ODA-recipient countries (Cambodia, Bosnia, Liberia and the DRC) and will apply insights from Haiti to PSOs more generally in discourse with academic and non-academic participants from those countries with extensive PSO experience. The network is structured around three network meetings (two workshops and a network conference, the latter supplemented by an early-career research workshop) which will create a sustainable partnership that focuses on co-creation of knowledge as well as a collaborative mobilisation of this knowledge to inform academic and non-academic stakeholders interested in peacekeepers' children. The findings of the workshops and the final conference will inform both academic outputs and - going forward - the development of an intersectoral research agenda; furthermore they will frame a special journal edition on 'Peace Babies' and will be at the core of the network's activities beyond the funding period, both as a platform for continued transnational and intersectoral conversation and of collaborative research