Soldiers for Peace’: semiotic explorations of UN peacekeepers’ uniforms

Most distinctly recognised by their blue headwear – typically a beret or helmet – United Nations peacekeepers “help countries navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace” (United Nations Peacekeeping, n.d.). While peacekeepers themselves represent individuals of ‘peace’, ‘stability’, and ‘protection’, peacekeepers’ uniforms, on the other hand, represent more complex symbols of culture, identity, and of ways of behaving and interacting. More than mere items of clothing, the unique combination of blue headwear with military battledress arguably sees UN peacekeepers as expressions of economic, social, ideological, aesthetic, and symbolic aspects of both colour and material into one complete uniform. With a focus specifically on military peacekeepers, this paper explores the semiosis of UN peacekeepers’ uniforms in which traditional notions of the militarised soldier have been appropriated and reimagined into the figure of the peacekeeper. Evoking what Rubinstein (2008) refers to as ‘symbolic inversion’, this paper seeks to present the contradictory, and sometimes problematic, nature of UN peacekeeping by discussing UN peacekeepers’ uniforms as symbols that have been used by the UN in order to create and sustain institutional power and legitimacy in world politics.