By Veronica Haglund
The UN's missions have shown that women are better able than men to assist female victims in conflict zones while they also act as positive role models in these tattered places.
A major impetus behind incorporating more women came in October 2000, when the Security Council passed Resolution 1325 on women and peace and security. This mandate reaffirmed the important role women play in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and stressed the value of their participation in maintaining peace.
Since 2000, the drive to hire more females in civilian, military and police levels has also entailed deploying gender advisers in every mission.
"Gender is now a natural fit" in peacekeeping zones, said Clare Hutchinson, a gender affairs officer at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York. Hutchinson worked in the Kosovo mission and wrote two doctoral theses, one on women terrorists and another on empowerment.
"Women in post-conflict zones, the issue of women, comes up automatically. Before Resolution 1325, it didn't come up," she said. Nevertheless, the UN has "made big steps but has a lot further to go."
More Police and Military Officers Needed
In 2009, campaign to attract more women was introduced in May to coincide with International Peacekeepers Day. Another push occurred in August and this fall to raise the number of female police officers to 20 percent by 2014, up from its current 8 percent.
Nearly 50 percent of civilian officers are women. (There are 6,000 international civilian personnel and about 15,000 local civilian staff.) The staff work in human rights, political affairs, legal affairs and the gender office, among other business. The civilian level is usually headed by a special representative of the UN secretary-general. Until recently, just one of the 17 missions was lead by a woman, in Liberia. Last week, a new UN envoy to Timor-Leste was appointed; Ameenah Haq will also lead the peacekeeping mission there.
As of November 2009, women military experts numbered about 4 percent of 2,350 people; those in military troops made up about 2.5 percent of the 83,000 total. The military remains the backbone of the agency, focusing on the basics of keeping peace and order. The police unit, with 7,000 officers, helps support and build the peace, instilling law and order. This is one aspect where women officers have proved essential, as they are more likely to talk about, say, sexual abuse, with other women, Hutchinson said.
Senior management levels in the peacekeeping department are also lacking. A work-life study is under way to determine how the peacekeeping department can encourage and retain more women in all areas.
"The commitment to include gender perspective in peacekeeping has changed a lot in the last 10 years, Hutchinson said. "UN leadership is taking the gender issue more seriously than ever before. The number of female civilian peacekeepers has increased in the last years, and the DPKO is now aiming for the same development within the military and the police sector."
[More urgently, the Haitian mission has about 7,000 military and police personnel there, with 139 of them women; and about 2,000 in police, of whom about 90 are women. On Monday, the UN confirmed a total of 46 staffers were dead; a gender breakdown was not available at press time.]
Women Make Good Listeners
It has been well documented that women peacekeepers make a critical contribution in not only providing security but also in reforming state institutions and supporting political processes.
Female staffers often help communication with local women, serve as career models in post-conflict countries and inspire women in these regions to participate in politics or peace processes.
"We have noticed from several missions that the knock-off effects of female peacekeepers are incredible," Hutchinson said. "One good example is the all-female police unit deployed in Liberia, whose presence has inspired Liberian women to join the local police force. Since the unit was deployed in early 2007, the number of women officers in Liberia's own police force rose 15 percent."
Another indirect, more subtle benefit occurred in Darfur, where local women saw female peacekeepers driving and asked that they be taught.
Moreover, women enhance investigations into gender violence in peacekeeping zones, including the reporting of sexual crimes committed by UN officers themselves. In some regions, like Sudan, cultural mores discourage women from discussing sexual matters, making the presence of female officers especially important for the locals to report such problems.
Yet, the question persists: why are there so few women in the military and police sectors?
"Getting women to work in areas that are traditionally seen as typically male, like peacekeeping, can be hard," Hutchinson said. "But as people see more and more female role models in the field, attitudes are changing.
"Moreover, all peacekeepers, both men and women, encounter rough conditions. Military and police are still sectors where most staffers are men, and just like in other male- dominated areas, women peacekeepers sometimes face discrimination because they don't follow the male norm."
Women civilian staff come from many different countries, but most women military personnel are contributed by Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana, all of which are large contributors of troops over all.
UN peacekeepers often work in the most inhospitable places around the world, facing disease and violence on a daily basis. The work requires the blue helmet staff, as they are called, to spend long periods away from their family. Women civilian peacekeepers enjoy good policies from the UN for maternity leave - four months, but people in military or police jobs are generally employed by a given country, offering benefits based on national policies.
The UN will mark the 10th anniversary of Resolution 1325 by showcasing its progress in attracting women.
As Hutchinson said: "We hope to appoint another woman as a mission leader, launch new comprehensive guidelines to help member states attract more women within police and military forces and launch a new project where we'll be looking on the work-life balance for the women peacekeepers. The coming years will be important for gender parity."
