WUNRN
Not Just a Numbers
Game: Increasing Women’s Participation in UN Peacekeeping
By
Sahana Dharmapuri
Full Report: Download this material in PDF form
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http://passblue.com/2013/08/12/why-un-peacekeeping-falls-far-short-of-female-soldiers/
WHY UN PEACEKEEPING FALLS FAR SHORT ON FEMALE SOLDIERS
By Barbara Crossette • August
12, 2013
Sudanese
police women, part of a network sponsored by the UN's peacekeeping mission in
North Darfur. Fewer than 4 percent of UN peacekeepers worldwide are women
soldiers or police. SOJOUD ELGARRAI/UNAMID
Since Security Council resolutions began demanding
more significant attention to roles for women in conflict areas and the
peace-building that follows, much of the discussion has justifiably centered on
protection of civilians, because women and their children suffer most in war
and dislocation. Less attention has been paid to the woeful numbers of women in
uniform fielded by United Nations peacekeeping missions. The two
subjects are not unrelated. Women in uniform can be a potent symbol and solace
to those who quickly become the innocent casualties of war.
Yet fewer
than 4 percent of UN peacekeepers globally are women in uniform, as soldiers or
police, says a new report, “Not Just a Numbers Game: Increasing
Women’s Participation in UN Peacekeeping,” published in July by the International
Peace Institute in New York, a nongovernmental organization with
close ties to the UN. The study, by Sahana Dharmapuri, an independent gender
adviser and trainer, turned a glaring spotlight on the thin ranks of women. It
concluded that both troop-contributing countries and UN peacekeeping officials
share the blame for the shortfall of women and the responsibility to correct
the imbalance. The outlook is not sunny.
“The UN is
unlikely to reach its goals for gender equality in peacekeeping missions
because it is not fully implementing its own two-pronged approach: increase the
number of women in peacekeeping operations and integrate a gender perspective
within these missions,” Dharmapuri wrote.
Three
problems that are familiar to those who follow issues in the field of women,
peace and security have created and sustained the situation, Dharmapuri said in
her report. First, member states show “a lack of understanding” — a kind way to
put it — of the groundbreaking Security Council resolution, 1325, and UN
policies toward gender equality. Second, there is “a gap in data and analysis
about women’s participation in national security institutions globally and in
UN peacekeeping in particular.” Third and most important, the author wrote, is
“the prevalence of social norms and biases that perpetuate gender inequality
within the security sector.”
The top
three troop-contributing countries to UN peacekeeping since 2000 have been
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, none of which have a significant number of
women in their armed forces or efforts to recruit more, the report noted. On
the other hand, some possibly unexpected countries are leaders in including
women in their troop contingents: Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda, among
them.
Arguably the
global data vacuum needs to be tackled first, as officials in the UN system
know well from experience on other issues. Determining the incidence of
violence against women, for example — and an agreed definition of what
constitute it — are instrumental in changing the attitudes of governments and
cultural leaders, as this year’s session of the Commission
on the Status of Women heard repeatedly. Statistically barren pleas
for attention to women in any area can easily be denied or ignored by political
and military leaders, most of whom are men. Presented with credible data,
governments are more apt to listen.
Dharmapuri
pointed out in her report that the UN began collecting data on women in
peacekeeping missions only in 2000, incorporating statistics going back just to
1994, when Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali sought
a 50-50 gender balance across Secretariat posts, which would include the
peacekeeping department. International studies of the world’s militaries
do not disaggregate by sex, and “very few countries produce country-specific
assessments of female participation in their national forces or in their contributions
to UN peacekeeping,” Dharmapuri wrote. (Exceptions, she footnoted, are Britain
and the United States.)
There have
been efforts to fix imbalances and to advise military officers in peacekeeping
missions on sensitivity to women’s equality. Gender advisers are attached to
missions, and some have told me that they need to approach not only men in
societies (and the soldiers that they send to the UN) but also women who are
constrained by cultural norms that discriminate against them in numerous ways.
Women in UN
uniforms also make a difference on the street. India, for example, introduced
all-female rotating UN police units in 2007 in Liberia, where they go on public
security patrols. Indian women in the unit told me in 2010 that the excuse that
separation from their families made the deployment of women abroad impossible
was outdated. Internet connections at their base allowed them to talk with
their children, husbands and other family members, in some cases daily. Women
in all-female police units from Bangladesh, Peru and Samoa have since been
deployed in Haiti, Timor-Leste and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In Liberia,
women from several Nordic countries were also serving as UN police but in mixed
national contingents. One woman described how she was greeted on her morning
jogs in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, with huge smiles from Liberian women,
in a country with one of the highest levels of violence against women anywhere.
In conservative societies, women are much more apt to talk with other women when
rape or other human-rights abuses, including domestic violence, are at issue.
At UN
headquarters, peacekeeping officials have developed and promulgated policies on
women, peace and security since 2006 (the new report outlines them). Dharmapuri
recommended that existing policy guidelines outlined by the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Field Support now “need to be
operationalized through a comprehensive strategic plan supported by strong
leadership.” In 2011, Hervé Ladsous, the new chief of the peacekeeping
department, said that among the pressing issues he would
address was protecting the rights of women.
Dharmapuri
makes five concrete recommendations that include more research and coaching in
UN member nations.
Why press
this issue, and why now? Dharmapuri has this to say: “Lessons learned from
NATO, the UN, and member states show that information gathering and analysis is
improved when the differential impact of armed conflict on women and men is
taken into account. Attention to both men’s and women’s distinct experiences in
conflicts reveals comprehensive information on the area of operation, including
the identities of local power brokers; division of labor; access to resources;
kinship and patronage networks; and community security threats, risks,
interests and needs. Such thorough information gathering about the impact of a
peacekeeping operation on the local population — men and women — can increase
the capacity of the mission to effectively accomplish its goals.”