The Peacekeeping Mandates Dataset

United Nations (UN) peacekeeping is a central instrument of international conflict resolution. Since the end of the Cold War, peacekeeping operations engage in an increasing number of ambitious tasks, ranging from reforming security sector institutions to reconciling communities, promoting human rights and organizing elections. The Peacekeeping Mandates (PEMA) dataset provides systematic information on this variation in peacekeepers' tasks.

PEMA includes information on 41 different activities that UN Security Council resolutions authorize peacekeeping operations. The dataset currently includes missions in Africa between1991 and 2017 and is currently being updated to include other UN missions outside of Africa. For each mandated activity, it records three categories of engagement: monitoring, assisting and security provision. It also includes information on whether the activity is requested or merely encouraged by the UNSC. The dataset includes "founding" resolutions that establish a PKO, resolutions that extend the mandate of a PKO, resolutions that add or subtract activities, and resolutions that completely overhaul the mandate.

In the PEMA dataset, each UN Security Council resolution was coded by two coders and discrepancies were reconciled in accordance to the rules of the codebook.  

The website for the PEMA Data is here. The Codebook and the data (with future updates) can be found on PEMA's Data Repository on the Harvard Dataverse.