Women peacekeepers: making a difference.

The Security Council on 27 October 2005 marked the fifth anniversary of its adoption of resolution 1325 (2000), a landmark document that addresses the impact of war on women and stresses the importance of women's participation in all aspects of United Nations peacekeeping operations. It discussed the progress of the historic resolution's implementation and heard statements from 48 speakers on the topic of women, peace and security.

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Rachel Mayanja, Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, presented the UN Secretary-General's system-wide 2005-2007 action plan for further implementation of resolution 1325, saying that since its adoption it had "fundamentally changed the image of women, from that of being exclusively victims of war to that of active participants, as peacemakers, peacebuilders and negotiators".

Dubravka Marijanovic-Prolic is an example of this transformation. In 1992, she fled Sarajevo with her two children to a refugee camp in Croatia, running from a conflict that saw her husband kidnapped and her brother wounded by snipers. An experienced architectural engineer and urban planner, she secured a job a few months later with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), where she initiated the "Winterization Project". This involved distributing plastic sheeting to cover broken windows, damaged walls and destroyed roofs to people in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has since stayed with the United Nations and is now Chief of Operations Unit at the Engineering Section of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). Her work takes her to countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq and Liberia, where she is responsible, among others, for providing engineering oversight and support to special political and peacekeeping missions. She told the UN Chronicle that she had seen an increase in the number of female civilian personnel employed by DPKO since the adoption of resolution 1325. With a total of 15 engineers in her Section, she has gone from being the only female engineer in 2001 to one of three in 2005--an increase that she has personally had a hand.

Although Ms Marijanovic-Prolic has encountered some prejudices during her peacekeeping mission work because of her gender, she stressed that women peacekeepers should not take such gender bias too personally. Cultural differences could often make it difficult for others, especially men, to accept a woman in a position of power, she said, adding that "it's not that they have something against you, it's just not a habit". This was illustrated during her time in Afghanistan, where the local workers she was supervising called her "sir", an indication that they wanted to address her respectfully, but were simply not familiar with the female equivalent. She believed that much gender prejudice could be overcome with professionalism and hard work. When Ms. Marijanovic-Prolic was introduced to the Chief Military Observer of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, he commented: "In my army, a chief engineer is usually 2 metres tall, 120 kilos heavy, with moustache." Then when she oversaw the seemingly impossible task of building and erecting a 19-metre bridge in two weeks and discovered that she did not need to have a moustache to earn the Chief's respect, the two became fast friends (see photo above). The petite engineer said: "All the time we are trying to be like men--equal--and I think we're better; so all of this fighting to be equal to men, I think, is useless."

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Michelle Lee, coordinator of the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Cambodia, worked from 1998 to 2001 in an administrative capacity in UN peacekeeping missions in such countries as Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Namibia, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. She recalled to the UN Chronicle: "One of the first shocking experiences for any female UN staff member working in a peacekeeping mission is you find yourself in a male-dominated environment. Not only do you need to learn how to interact with them professionally but you also need to learn how to deal with them socially. You basically work and live with these people 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

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Ms. Lee said she often felt like a peacekeeper, or the "buffer zone", within the mission itself, as many of her male colleagues would come to her when they needed someone to mediate some conflict among themselves. It is this accessibility, she believed, that makes women invaluable to any peacekeeping mission, commenting further that "women are seen to be much less threatening and much more accessible to the local population than men, particularly when you go to a community of mostly women and children. I think we can be much more effective in that way than our male colleagues". She added that it is "important to interact, to spend some time, whenever you can, with the local population".

While on mission in Pakistan, Ms. Lee volunteered to teach English at a local convent, where she made a point of taking portrait photos of every woman residing there for their own keepsake, as "I wanted to show them how beautiful they are". She admits that she had an agenda then: "What I really wanted to teach them is to be proud of being a person, because in that society women, in general, are not treated equally."

Reluctance to be separated from partners and children may be one reason why many women choose not to join the peacekeeping missions, she said, as "somehow women tend to be affected by this more than men". Ms. Lee, whose husband is also a UN peacekeeper, acknowledged that working in such a mission could take a toll on relationships. "I certainly don't recommend this kind of life for everybody, for every marriage, because it's really hard."

Comfort Lamptey, Gender Adviser at DPKO, told the UN Chronicle that her Department recognized that women's obligations to their families may deter them from joining the peacekeeping missions. She said that DPKO is currently developing a number of proposals, including "making our mission environment more conducive to women's ability and willingness to serve on peacekeeping missions". Since the adoption of resolution 1325 in 2000, DPKO has employed full-time gender advisers in 10 of 17 UN missions. Ms. Lamptey's position involves providing policy guidance and support to these advisers, a role she assumed in August 2004. These appointments illustrate the DPKO commitment to gender mainstreaming, but it still has to achieve the United Nations balance target of 50 per cent of civilian personnel to be made up of women. In the civilian sector of peacekeeping missions, only around 30 per cent of international staff and some 24 per cent of nationally recruited personnel are women. However, the percentage rate in the uniform sector is difficult to determine as it fluctuates depending on the personnel put forward by Member States, but this was significantly lower than the percentage in the civilian sector, Ms. Lamptey acknowledged. She said that DPKO constantly urged Member States to deploy more women, but "the reality is that many countries do not have a great percentage of women in their military or national police services".

Due to the transient nature of employment within peacekeeping missions, Ms. Lamptey said that "one has to keep building [gender] awareness". She is determined to do so in her new role, saying that while "it's still evolving, we still have a long way to go in terms of ensuring that there is an understanding among personnel in all peacekeeping functions that the contribution of women is actually key to ensuring the success of peacekeeping missions". This success is strengthened by the participation of local women in all aspects of the peace process. "With the experience of war, women oftentimes assume more responsibilities outside of the home", and the presence of women peacekeepers can act as "a galvanizing force for their own aspirations to equality in their society", Ms. Lamptey added.

Ms. Marijanovic-Prolic believes that although there are not many women employed as peacekeepers, all women have a role to play in the peace process. She said that "all of those soldiers have mothers, daughters, wives. Throughout history, women have tremendous power to influence them in a positive and also a negative way". She went on to say that "we are not innocent observers of what's going on in the world" and should take responsibility in and outside of DPKO.

RELATED ARTICLE: WOMEN AT THE UN AND IN PEACEKEEPING

1985 The World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievement of the United Nations Decade for Women is held in Nairobi, Kenya, adopting the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies that examine the results of the UN Decade, focusing on peace and security.

1993 The World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna, recognizes that violence against women during armed conflict is a violation of human rights.

1995 The Fourth World Conference on Women is held in Beijing, China. The issue of women in armed conflict is identified as one of the 12 critical areas of concern to be addressed by Member States, the international community and civil society.

1997 The Office of the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women is established.

May 2000 Adoption of the "Namibia Plan of Action", urging the UN Secretary-General to take up and ensure the effective implementation of the action plan. This document would form the basis for resolution 1325 (2000).

June 2000 The "Beijing +5" review conference on "Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century" is held at UN Headquarters in New York. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called for women's full participation in all levels of decision-making in peace processes, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

October 2000 The Security Council adopts resolution 1325 (2000), which addresses the impact of war on women and stresses the importance of women's participation in all aspects of UN peacekeeping operations.

October 2002 The Secretary-General submits a report on "Women, Peace and Security", which outlines the impact of conflict on women and girls and their role in peacekeeping processes. The assessment report of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, "Women, War, Peace", is published.

March 2005 The Secretary-General presents his report, titled "In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All", proposing a number of initiatives for women and girls in conflict and post-conflict areas.

September 2005 The 2005 World Summit Outcome document reaffirms the commitment of world leaders to implementing resolution 1325 (2000).

October 2005 The 2005-2007 system-wide action plan for further implementation of resolution 1325 is presented to the Security Council.