CSS Database on National Troop Contributions to Peace Operations

Dr. Donald Daniel This is a database project intended to analyze what where countries contribute troops during peacekeeping operations. In 2004, the database was begun at CSS at Georgetown University. Beginning with the SIPRI database, we collected the data for peacekeeping operations from 2001. All unit contributors were included, defining a unit contributor as a country that sent at least 100 troops to a single operation in a single year. The database now includes peacekeeping operations from 2001-2010.

The first stage of the project was determining how many troops unit contributors contributed to each operation. The second stage analyzed to which region, organization, and agenda that those troops went. The third stage sought to compare contributors based on the following characteristics: total troop contributions, contributor weight, ground forces size, armed forces quality, and Human Development Index. These characteristics were then aggregated to determine which organizations, regions, and agendas were the most privileged during operations over the ten years.

Master File
Information for all other charts and tables are pulled from this file. This file includes the ten yearly worksheets, total contributions by region, total contributions by organization, and commitment to an organization.

Year Files: 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Information for all other charts and tables are pulled from these files. These ten worksheets are the yearly breakdowns of exactly how many troops each country contributed to each mission, region, and organization. They are each divided into two an upper half and a lower half. The upper half is gives numbers for both specific missions and regions by country. The bottom half gives the total troops contributed by region and organization. The percentages tell what percentage of that country’s troops went to that particular region or organization. Any percentage highlighted in pink demonstrates a de facto troop commitment to that region or organization for that year, defined as a state contributing at least two-thirds of its forces to only one organization or region.

Totals
This file provides a quick overview of the total number of troops contributed to each region and organization by year. The grand totals of region and organization do not match due to rollover missions. Rollover happened when one mission directly succeeded another in the same country in one of two circumstances. Either there is a major change in mandate in a mission but not in the organization assuming administrative authority or there is a change in mission administration as well as mandate. Whatever the circumstance, all or many of the troops assigned to the first mission remained in-country and simply “rolled over” into the second. To avoid upward distortion of a nation’s contribution totals and the aggregate totals of troops operating in a region, we counted rolled over troops only one time. We counted them twice only when assembling organizational totals when there was a change in organizational responsibility.

Contributions by Macro Choice
This file compares troop contributions over ten years by Macro Choice (United Nations cluster, Overlapping Western Agenda cluster, or Other cluster).

Troops to Organization
This file shows the aggregate number of troops that go to different organizations over ten years.

Presentation at the UN on Increasing Troop Contributions to Peacekeeping Operations
This presentation was given in New York City at UN Headquarters on February 13th, 2012.

De Facto Troop Committed States
This chart compares the number of de facto troop committed states for each of the categories. A state is considered de facto troop committed if it gave at least two-thirds of its total contributed forces from 2001-2008 to a single category. This differs from the de facto committed states as you will find them in the Master File because those are only calculated for single years, rather than over the eight years combined.

Operational Experience
This chart compares the operational experience of the countries in each set. The operational experience is ranked based on the number of years countries contributed and the overall troop contribution numbers. The first worksheet is the final ranking totals, and the other ones show the process of determining the rankings.

Ground Forces Size
This chart compares the ground forces sizes for each comparison set. Each country was given a rank of 1 (100,000 troops or more=large), 2 (25,000-99,999=medium), and 3 (less than 25,000=small).

Armed Forces Quality
Armed Forces Quality, compared in this chart, is based on the contributing countries’ total active armed forces divided by its annual defense budget from The Military Balance.

Human Development Index (HDI)
The HDI comparisons are based on annual HDI scores within the Human Development Reports published by the United Nations Development Programme. High human development=3; medium human development=2; low human development=1.

Bottom Line: Privileged Sets
This compilation of the previous charts demonstrates the relative privilege that each comparison set holds. The colors are from the assigned color in each of the previous charts, which were determined based on the largest gaps between sets. The columns show where that comparison set is ranked for each of the variables, and the sets are ordered according to total score.