Research Paper
The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 6, Issue 2, DIP: 18.01.012/20180602
DOI: 10.25215/0602.012
http://www.ijip.in | April - June, 2018
2018 © Negi P S , Sharma N & Tomar; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
Emotional Climate in UN Peacekeeping Organization: An
Exploratory Study
Parvender S. Negi
1
*, Nity Sharma
2
, Abhishek Tomar
3
ABSTRACT
UN peacekeeping missions involve the participation of military personnel from different
countries, and all the interactions between soldiers take place in a culturally diverse military
environment. Deployment in a foreign soil, away from family and home creates a lot of
physical and emotional challenges for the soldiers; therefore the emotional climate of the
military base gains importance. This paper aims to explore the emotional climate and the
factors influencing it in a UN military organization in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
Africa. The data was gathered from 5 officers of Indian Armed Forces deployed in DRC,
using e-mail interviewing technique in which participants’ responses were gathered using an
interview schedule of open-ended questions. The findings suggest that overall a positive
emotional climate of security and trust exists in the organization. Political context,
commanders’ practices and the relationships among soldiers are the factors influencing and
shaping the emotional climate. Future research into these factors is important to help identify
positive climate practices (PEC) which have several implications for the soldiers’
performance, motivation, and well-being.
Keywords: Emotional Climate, Peacekeeping, Emotional Well-being.
The United Nations (UN) has been deploying military personnel from all different nations
for peacekeeping operations since 1948 when UN military observers were authorized by the
Security Council for deployment to monitor the Armistice Agreement between Israel and its
Arab neighbors. The idea of peacekeeping is to maintain and restore peace in the places
where conflict and non-violence are prevalent, and the peacekeeping soldier is expected to
cooperate with other members coming from different nations and with civilian personnel of
international assistance organizations (Hundt, 1996). The interaction and cooperation among
these peacekeeping soldiers, coming from different nations, doesn’t just take place in
1
Masters Student at Department of Psychology, University of Delhi (North Campus), India
2
Scientist ‘D’ at Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR), New Delhi, India
3
Lt. Col in Indian Army, India
*Responding Author
Received: March 13, 2018; Revision Received: April 5, 2018; Accepted: May 20, 2018