Limited scholarly research has been undertaken to investigate why the Government of Botswana stalled the support to UN peacekeeping operations. Among the many hypotheses that try to explain this, this paper will explore one such hypothesis: Public opinion in Botswana has not been in support of the Botswana Defense Force partaking in peacekeeping operations.  To explore this hypothesis, the paper will first attempt to develop a deeper understanding of the public opinion in Botswana and on peacekeeping in particular. It will subsequently investigate the segments of the population that are likely to support and those that are likely to oppose the participation of Botswana in peacekeeping operations. Based on the findings, the paper will draw out predictions about whether an individual’s gender or geographic location or age is likely to influence their opinion. Finally, a survey questionnaire will be generated for further investigation and to validate the hypothesis. 

Botswana’s participation in the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations has been intermittent. These missions were either coordinated through the United States (US) or the United Nations (UN) and all missions were conducted in Africa (Orth, 1996). Botswana’s first foray into peacekeeping operations was its involvement in the Somali Civil War, between 1992 – 1994, when Botswana sent a token contingent of peacekeeping soldiers under the supervision of the United States and later the United Nations (Orth, 1996). It is unclear if the Botswana Defense Force suffered any casualties during these operations; and likewise, there is little information about their operational successes and failures. The Government of Botswana, in the same decade, also sent a small force to Mozambique in 1996 (Dube, 2006). Much like in the case of Somalia, the details of the peacekeeping operation in Mozambique remain unknown. Thereafter, Botswana retired from peacekeeping missions for over a decade. This policy of isolationism ended in 2021, when the Government of Botswana announced it would send 296 troops to join the South African Development Community’s (SADC) peacekeeping mission to Mozambique (Dube, 2006).

This paper attempts to investigate why the Government of Botswana pulled out of peacekeeping for the period that it did. The primary hypothesis of this paper is that this could be due to lack of public support, in that, public opinion was not in favor of partaking in peacekeeping operations. Outside of public opinion, a few other determinants that may have influenced Botswana’s decision, could be the nation’s underdeveloped economy and a small military (CIA, 2022; World Population Review). Currently, Botswana spends about an average three percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on armed services that in 2019, totaled to 550 million dollars (CIA, 2022). From this budget, Botswana employs roughly 9,000 active personnel to its military (World Population Review). Therefore, the small size of its military and lack of adequate financing support may be considered as factors that hindered Botswana’s consistent participation in peacekeeping.

The full paper can be viewed below.