PRESS CONFERENCE ON 'NAMIBIA PLAN OF ACTION'

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON 'NAMIBIA PLAN OF ACTION'

Gender issues must be incorporated from the initial stage of peacekeeping operations, during the time of negotiations, in order to ensure that the operations are successful, Netumbo Nandi-Ndiatwah, Minister for Women's Affairs and Child Welfare of Namibia, told a United Nations Headquarters press conference today. She was outlining some of a issues raised at a three-day seminar in Windhoek on "Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations.

She said that the seminar also felt that when the United Nations Secretariat developed the mandate for a specific operation, it must ensure that there was a gender component at every level and that the leadership of the operation should at all times be aware of the issue of gender. Recruitment of staff from the Secretariat and Member States should also ensure that there is adequate representation of women and men.

"In the area of training, troops should be able to understand the gender concept during training", she added. "There must be a mechanism that would see to it that the gender component must be in the reporting process. Evaluation of the mission must also consider gender and people must be made aware of the importance of this."

Elizabeth Rehn, former Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary General for Bosnia and Herzegovina, who also took part in the seminar, suggested that there should be an advisory board responsible for putting together a list of competent women who could be considered as Special Representatives of the Secretary-General or senior staff on missions. She added that often people claimed there were no competent women, when in fact there were. Governments should also be obliged to propose men and women when making their recommendations, which would give the Secretary-General greater choice when appointing Special Representatives.

"Training is especially important, because very often people working on peace support operations are not always aware of the situation of the country", she continued. "They don't know the culture, the habits and religion of the people and can make terrible mistakes. As one of the few Special Representatives, I have had to send people home for offending the culture and religion of the country we were operating in, so pre-training is one of the most important parts of peacekeeping missions."

In response to a question on whether they expected any resistance to the Windhoek Declaration, and the Namibia Plan of Action, Mrs. Rehn said that there would be resistance, but it would be difficult to dismiss such concrete proposals. She said she relied on the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which had hosted the Windhoek seminar, and the Secretary-General to ensure the recommendations are implemented.

Mrs. Netumbo-Ndiatwah said that resistance should be expected, but was not a deterrent to moving forward. Participants at the seminar said as long as the United Nations and Member States were committed, then the plan should succeed. Mrs. Rehn said that if everyone was serious about successful peacekeeping, then women had to be involved, as they made up more that half the population in many countries. Special Representatives should also made aware of gender mainstreaming as one of the many tasks that they had to carry out.

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