As human rights norms increased in importance in the international system, the Protection of Civilians (POC) doctrine became the center of gravity in modern Peace Operations (PO), generating new organiza[1]tional and structural demands on the United Nations (UN), on other in[1]ternational organizations, and on countries that contribute with troops and police (T/PCC). Can POC be understood as a “graft” onto a broader human rights norm? Has POC doctrine become institutionalized? Has the POC norm “cascaded?” Finally, how can we best observe the POC “cascade” and evaluate its effects on the success of peace missions? This article attempts to answer these questions from the perspective of norm evolution or norm life cycle theory, in dialogue with existing more institutionalist and technical as well as political conversations about the successes and failures of peace missions. Our method is a medium-N study of the evolution of PO mandates and reform processes since 1945. We focus on nine missions and three key reform documents (, (the Brahimi report of 2000, the High Independent Panel Peace Op[1]erations [HIPPO] report of 2015 and the Action for Peacekeeping [A4P] Initiative of 2019) and find that POC has followed a path consistent with the “life cycle” approach of international norms. To fully determine the extent to which POC has “cascaded” as an independent norm, we argue that it is essential to pay close attention to the boundaries between the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of peace operations. In partic[1]ular, actors at the operational level play the crucial role of decodifying POC for forces who implement tactics on the ground.

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