International organisations (IOs), such as the UN, are often tasked with assisting states classified as failing or weak. This assistance, ranging from development aid to peacekeeping, is ostensibly aimed at levelling the playing field and reintegrating conflict-affected nations into the community of well-governed and resilient states. However, such interventions have been criticised for resembling past colonial practices, undermining local ownership, and imposing unsuitable governance models.

Research to date has paid little attention to the role of racial biases in these processes. IO officials may hold views about the characteristics, capacities, and aspirations of host societies that perpetuate, rather than challenge, racial hierarchies in the international system.

This paper investigates what biases (if any) IO officials hold and whether and how such biases affect their work, using an in-depth case study of UN peacekeeping. Based on more than 200 interviews with officials across several peacekeeping operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, it demonstrates the pervasiveness of racial beliefs among IO officials that maintain racial hierarchies, even though such officials perceive themselves as working towards more egalitarian and inclusive forms of multilateralism.