2024, Bristol University Press

Edited by Jasmine-Kim Westendorf and Elliot Dolan-Evans

In 2003, the UN adopted a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers and aid workers. The policy arrived amid a series of scandals revealing sexual misconduct perpetrated against the very people peacekeeping and humanitarian missions were meant to protect.

This edited collection, including contributions from academics and practitioners, highlights the challenges of preventing and responding to abuse in peacekeeping and aid work, and the unintended consequences of current approaches. It lays bare the structures of power, coloniality and racism that underpin abuse and hinder accountability while charting a path for future action.

This eye-opening book will appeal to academics and students of the politics and practice of peacekeeping and humanitarianism, and to practitioners, policy makers and those working within the field.

“An impressive group of grittily knowledgeable contributors reveal the hard feminist lessons learned over the last 30 years of transforming UN and humanitarian organizations: lessons about stubbornly patriarchal institutional cultures, about implementation failures when gender inequity persists at the operational ground level and, crucially, why justice for women and girls in crisis zones is the sine qua non for sustainable peace.”

Cynthia Enloe, Clark University

“This collection is essential reading for those of us working on questions of gender, power and violence in humanitarian and peacekeeping contexts. The volume challenges conventional boundaries and forges connections between scholars and practitioners.”

Lucy Hall, University of Amsterdam

2020, Cornell University Press

Jasmine-Kim Westendorf's discomforting book investigates sexual misconduct by military peacekeepers and abuses perpetrated by civilian peacekeepers and non-UN civilian interveners. Based on extensive field research in Bosnia, Timor-Leste, and with the UN and humanitarian communities, Violating Peace uncovers a brutal truth about peacebuilding as Westendorf investigates how such behaviors affect the capacity of the international community to achieve its goals related to stability and peacebuilding, and its legitimacy in the eyes of local and global populations.

As Violating Peace shows, when interveners perpetrate sexual exploitation and abuse, they undermine the operational capacity of the international community to effectively build peace after civil wars and to alleviate human suffering in crises. Furthermore, sexual misconduct by interveners poses a significant risk to the perceived legitimacy of the multilateral peacekeeping project, and the UN more generally, with ramifications for the nature and dynamics of UN in future peace operations.

Westendorf illustrates how sexual exploitation and abuse relates to other challenges facing UN peacekeeping, and shows how such misconduct is deeply linked to the broader cultures and structures within which peacekeepers work, and which shape their perceptions of and interactions with local communities. Effectively preventing such behaviors is crucial to global peace, order, and justice. Violating Peace thus identifies how policies might be improved in the future, based on an account of why they have failed to date.

"Violating Peace is a richly detailed and fascinating read full of hard truths about the nature of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. An absolute must-read for scholars, practitioners and policymakers, this book will be central to debates about sexual exploitation and abuse—and how to prevent it—for years to come."

Dara Kay Cohen, Harvard Kennedy School, author of Rape During Civil War

"Westendorf tackles an important subject in the world of peace operations and has managed to identify a missing angle in the growing literature about sexual exploitation and abuse. Her insightful book makes an important intellectual and practical contribution."

Paul D. Williams, George Washington University, author of Fighting for Peace in Somalia.

"A UN Secretary-General defines sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers as 'a cancer on our system.' Westendorf probes further—Has it spread? Is it fatal?—and offers a holistic treatment plan to encourage and inspire all who believe that UN peacekeeping is well worth saving."

Paula Donovan - Co-Director, Code Blue Campaign.

2015, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Why do so many post–civil war societies continue to be characterized by widespread violence and political instability? Or, more succinctly, why do peace processes so often fail to consolidate peace? Addressing this question, Jasmine-Kim Westendorf explores how the international community engages in resolving civil wars—and clarifies why, despite the best of intentions and the investment of significant resources, external actors fail in their reconstruction efforts and even contribute to perpetuating the very conditions of insecurity and conflict that they are trying to alleviate.

"An outstandingly comprehensive, clear-eyed, and practically very useful analysis.... [It] should be required reading for anyone in the peacebuilding business.... This is a fine example of how academically well-grounded research   can at the same time have a real policy impact."

Gareth Evans, Australian National University

"A well-researched, strongly argued, and stimulating new approach to studying peace in the aftermath of war."

Julia Strasheim, Democratization