WUNRN
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Members
of an all-female Indian police unit of the UN mission in |
NEW
YORK, 20 May 2010 (IRIN) - A five-year campaign to boost the number of UN
female peacekeepers is progressing steadily in police units, but "seems to
be stuck" at a minuscule percentage in military contingents, Lt-Col
Alejandro Alvarez of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), told
IRIN.
The UN
Secretariat has repeatedly emphasized the proven benefits of having more female
peacekeepers, especially in regions where sexual violence has been or still is
a serious problem, but there are hiccups.
"The
Secretary-General can set any number [of female peacekeepers], but ... It
depends on the will of the countries that are contributing the troops. They
say, 'We don't have enough female troops, so we cannot send them'; there is
also always the case of countries having the women, and just not sending them,
but that is an internal problem," Alvarez, a personnel
officer, said.
Advantages
The advantages of a strong presence of female peacekeeper in conflict and
post-conflict zones include creating a safer space for girls and women who have
suffered sexual violence, said Marianne Mollman, advocacy director of women's
rights at Human Rights Watch, a global watchdog organization.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a campaign in August 2009 to lift the
percentage of women peacekeepers to 20 percent in police units by 2014, and to
10 percent in military contingents.
Yet only 2.3 percent of the 88,661 military peacekeepers serving in 17
different missions are women, whereas in 2008 they made up 2.18 percent of
military contingents, Alvarez said. Approximately 8.2 percent of the 13,221 UN
police are women, a figure that jumped from 6.5 percent in April.
In 2000, Resolution 1325 of the UN Security Council called on the
Secretary-General to "progress on gender mainstreaming throughout
peacekeeping missions and all other aspects related to women and girls."
Subsequent Security Council resolutions outlined more comprehensive methods for
using peacekeeping missions to protect women and girls from sexual violence in
conflict and post-conflict zones, including increasing the number of women
peacekeepers.
A lot of member states
are beginning to understand that when it comes to peacekeeping missions, you
really do need to have both women and men in the military and police equally
represented |
The first all-female Formed Police Unit (FPU), deployed in
The UN Mission in
Women police were often placed in the front lines in riots, as they can
reportedly help calm raucous crowds, Biason said, and the presence of women in
uniform also appeared to encourage Liberian women to report instances of sexual
violence.
The UN Secretariat plans to send an all-female FPU from
In Darfur, western
Work in progress
Comfort Lamptey, a gender adviser to DPKO, told IRIN that gender scenarios in
troop-contributing countries were reflected in the peacekeepers they sent.
"If we look globally, you see more women in national police units than you
do in the military - the countries then have more women to send for their
[peacekeeping] police units."
Alvarez said countries that could send women sometimes refrained out of concern
about the conditions they would be working under, and it was not always certain
that they would be working alongside their male counterparts.
Women might constitute 20 percent of peacekeeping units by 2014, but Lamptey
acknowledged that some officials thought it "completely unrealistic"
to try replicating this on the military front.
"It's a work in progress," she said. "A lot of member states are
beginning to understand that when it comes to peacekeeping missions, you really
do need to have both women and men in the military and police equally represented;
they are beginning to understand the merits of that."
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