Brazil in MINUSTAH: exporting a domestic understanding of civil-military relations to a UN peace operation

ABSTRACT Brazil led the military contingent of MINUSTAH during the 13 years of the mission and was also the largest contributor with troops for this mission. This paper argues that what has been described as the ‘Brazilian way’ of civil-military relations in that peacekeeping mission is illustrative of the Brazilian association between notions of security and development at home. The mandate for MINUSTAH is actually representative of Brazilian efforts to promote new paradigms in UN peacekeeping operations going beyond short missions in order to address the roots of the target country’s issues and ensure long-term progress. Nevertheless, if such discourse does hold merit in terms of the deeper approach to peacekeeping it encourages, this approach involves military actors beyond the security realm, into development activities, as visible during MINUSTAH. This paper describes the implications of uncoordinated military-led humanitarian initiatives and demonstrates that this security-development nexus, as it exists currently in Brazil and in the way it is exported by Brazil into peacekeeping operations like MINUSTAH, jeopardises the country’s capacity to build sustainable civilian institutions and mechanisms for longer-term recovery and development.