Peacekeeping

The Peacekeeping theme focuses on a gendered approach to multi-dimensional peacekeeping missions, predominantly through gender mainstreaming of peace support operations and the increase of female recruitment in peacekeeping, military, and police.

The Security Council calls for an increase in the number of women in peacekeeping operations (1325,OP6).

It is also important to note that the issues of gender and peacekeeping should never be reduced to the number of women recruited as peacekeepers. Promoting security is about providing real human security for the population, not about the militarisation of women. The point is not to achieve gender parity for its own sake, but rather to draw on the unique and powerful contribution women can make to peacekeeping.

The Security Council commits to include a gender component in UN field operations (1325,OP5), and requests that the Secretary-General’s reports to include information on the progress of gender mainstreaming within each operation (1325,OP17). Without a gender perspective, it is almost impossible to adequately create an inclusive security, which forms the basis of promoting sustainable and durable peace. Gender training, pre-deployment, on the ground, and post-deployment is effective for ensuring peacekeeping personnel have sufficient knowledge and skills.

Peacekeeping missions are increasingly being mandated to address sexual violence (1960,OP10), and training can increase the prevention, recognition, and response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and sexual exploitation and abuse (1820,OP6). The implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda varies greatly among Peacekeeping Operations. This variation is a result of the peacekeeping mission’s mandates and also structure, leadership, funding, whether there is a designation of a separate unit to address gender, and the number of gender advisors. These key gaps were highlighted in DPKO’s Ten-Year Impact Study on Implementation of Resolution 1325 in Peacekeeping.


These measures can trigger positive changes for women within conflict and post-conflict situations, such as increased physical security, employment-related benefits, capacity building for local women’s organisations, and increased awareness of women’s rights. Additionally, positive role models and examples of women’s leadership have a positive effect on the environment and contribute to the success of peacekeeping missions.

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INTERNATIONAL: Women in Blue Helmets: A Source of Strength and a Force for Good

while working as a gender-based violence consultant for my first UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I was surrounded by victims of violence. I thought constantly about their plight and what was missing in the response by the international community.

At film screening, Ban reaffirms zero tolerance for sexual abuse

The United Nations today screened The Whistleblower at its New York Headquarters, using the film's theme of a contract worker fired for investigating the alleged complicity of UN peacekeepers in sex trafficking to reaffirm its policy of zero tolerance for any such abuses.

Secretary-General Comments on Film on Issue of Sex Trafficking, Stressing Need for Wider Awareness, 'Zero Tolerance' Policy Response

These are the remarks, as prepared for delivery, of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a panel discussion in New York today after a screening of the film, The Whistleblower: What you have just seen is based on real events. It sheds light on an important issue — and a critical area of the UN's work. Regretfully, the film's protagonist, Kathryn Bolkovac, cannot join us this evening. I understand her son is getting married this weekend.

INTERNATIONAL: Former Lincoln Cop Discusses Movie 'Whistleblower' of Her Work with UN

Kathryn Bolkovac was looking for adventure when she left Lincoln in 1999 to join the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. The Lincoln police officer got her adventure. But not as she planned. Working as a member of the International Police Task Force, she found young women from Eastern European countries being brought to Bosnia as sex slaves to service the internationals who flooded the country after its brutal ethnic civil war.

AFRICA: African Women Prepare for a Bigger Role in Peacemaking

African women who bear the brunt of the continent's conflicts now demand to play a defining role in peacekeeping.

A resolution to foster women's political participation in the domain of peacekeeping and conflict management was accepted on Friday at the 2011 Women's Platform for Action in Africa (WPAA).

INTERNATIONAL: UN Peacekeeping Nations Consider Haiti Abuse Case

Foreign ministers and defense chiefs from the Latin American countries that have more than 12,000 peacekeepers in Haiti called a meeting Thursday to consider how the alleged sex abuse of a Haitian teenager by Uruguayan sailors might affect the future of the U.N. mission.

INTERNATIONAL: "The Whistleblower" Film Sharpens Issues of Sex-Trafficking at the UN

In 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac, a single mother from Nebraska and a seasoned cop, joined the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia, a country still in tumult after its brutal civil war. Her job was to investigate the sex trafficking of young women from Eastern Europe. Once she began collecting evidence from the victims she discovered that a number of U.N.

HAITI: Ban Ki-Moon Sends Delegation to Haiti after Peacekeeper Rape Scandal

The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent Wednesday in Port-au-Prince three senior UN officials as part of the corrective measures proposed after the scandal gang rape by four Uruguayan peacekeepers on a young Haitian 18, in the town of Port-Salut (south).

INTERNATIONAL: UN Sex Crimes Whistleblower Wrongfully Dismissed

Madeleine Rees, a former U.N. human rights official and the inspiration for one of the heroines in the film The Whistleblower, was wrongfully dismissed from her job with the Geneva-based U.N. Office of the High Commission for Human Rights in March 2010, according to a ruling by the U.N.'s administrative disputes tribunal.

HAITI: Senior UN Team Heads to Haiti in Wake of Alleged Sexual Abuse by Peacekeepers

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has sent a senior team to Haiti to enforce the United Nations' zero-tolerance policy on misconduct by its personnel following the alleged sexual assault of an 18-year-old Haitian man by Uruguayan members of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Caribbean nation.

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