PRESS CONFERENCE BY PEACEKEEPING GENDER ADVISER

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PEACEKEEPING GENDER ADVISER

The tone was positive, and the participation of some 50 Member States had been encouraging, during a two-day policy meeting aimed at exploring the ways to increase the number of women military and police personnel deployed to United Nations peacekeeping missions, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press conference today. 

The Gender Adviser for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Comfort Lamptey, said that, a few years ago, it might not have been possible to get Member States into the room to talk about these issues, but they were showing up now.  The Department’s meeting with troop-contributing and troop-receiving countries is entitled “Enhancing gender balance among uniformed personnel in peacekeeping missions”.  Joining Ms. Lamptey were Antero Lopes, United Nations Deputy Police Adviser, and Nana Effah-Apenteng, Ghana’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, who is co-chairing the meeting with the delegation of El Salvador.

The creation of a full-time Gender Adviser post at Headquarters was approved by Member States in 2003, to increase coordination with the Gender Advisers in missions.  Of 18 United Nations peace operations, 10 currently have dedicated full-time gender-advisory capacity, including in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kosovo, Haiti and the Sudan, to name a few.  Missions without full-time Gender Advisers have Gender Focal Points, who are full-time mission staff assigned additional gender-related responsibilities.

Ms. Lamptey said it was the first time that the Department had convened a meeting of Member States on the issue of increasing the number of women peacekeepers. The reasons for the meeting were three-fold.  First, there was a mandate from the Security Council to address the issue, under resolution 1325 (2000).  On the Secretary-General’s initiative, the Department had also developed an action plan to look at the question, since the issue of too few women was undermining credibility in the field.  Also, it was difficult to ask countries recovering from conflict to boost the number of women in the military and the police, when the United Nations had so few women in peacekeeping operations.

Women were crucial in the field, she said.  In Liberia, for instance, the presence of women had contributed to disarming and demobilizing more than 20,000 female ex-combatants.  That would not have been possible without women screening women.  And, the zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation was more effective with more women on the ground.  Only 1 per cent of all military personnel in peacekeeping were women -- or 746 women and 63,862 men.  Women comprised only 4 per cent of the police in peacekeeping, or 314 worldwide, as compared to 7,418 men.  The Department was asking countries to both recruit more women and deploy more of them in their services.

The policy dialogue, which would wrap up this afternoon, was also considering good practices, since some countries were doing better than others, in that regard.  It was also important that, when women were deployed, the peacekeeping environments should be friendly to them -- there should be separate toilet facilities, appropriate clothing and so forth.  The third reason for the meeting was to implement the Department’s mandates.  It was asking Member States to double the number of women they deployed each year for the next few years and ensure that, in all reporting they and the Department did, that the statistics were disaggregated by gender.  Finally, the Department was asking that the debate be taken up by some of the regional organizations.

From the discussions of the past two days, Ambassador Effah-Apenteng said it was clear that “we cannot afford to do business as usual”, as that would undermine the credibility and efficiency in the field.  As peace operations increased in complexity and in their impact on the lives of people in the countries they served, greater representation by women was needed to strengthen implementation in such areas as the disarmament of former combatants, security sector reform, electoral support and assistance to victims of rape and other violent crimes.  Another important element of the discussion had been the fact that several troop-contributing countries had a much higher percentage of women in their armed forces and police service than in those they deployed in peacekeeping operations.  Women in Ghana, for example, made up 9 per cent of the military, yet only a fraction of them were deployed as peacekeepers.  His Government would review its current practices.

Stressing that gender mainstreaming and balancing issues were very important in the United Nations policing agenda, Mr. Lopes said, however, that, thus far, women only accounted for 4.1 per cent of the police officers contributed by Member States, and less than 30 police-contributing countries had female officers.  Gender mainstreaming could be carried out by male police officers, and, indeed, local police services were being reformed by United Nations police, in such countries as Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste, where women represented 25 per cent of the police force.  That figure was similar in Liberia, and in Kosovo it was just 14 per cent.  Those figures were rather low, but, through United Nations advocacy initiatives, more and more Member States were becoming engaged.

Asked whether women’s roles should be restricted in any way in peacekeeping operations, Ms. Comfort said women wanted to work, not only in administrative or “women only” areas.  Just yesterday, a female peacekeeper in Haiti had described how the female peacekeepers had been able to calm a crowd during an election, and how the crowd’s reaction had been very different towards the women than towards the men.  In such areas as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, women were needed to screen female ex-combatants.  So, the idea was to involve women in uniform in the whole spectrum of peacekeeping activities.

Mr. Lopes added that India, in a new initiative, had committed to deploy a 125-strong all-female anti-riot unit.  So, that was about competencies and skills, and not about gender.  No decision had yet been made on their place of deployment, but four or five missions could absorb them.  He highlighted a successful endeavour in Burundi, where, with the help of his office, some 200 women ex-combatants had been reintegrated into the local police services. 

In response to a question on Pakistan’s “formidable” police force, he said Pakistan did not deploy as many women as the Department would like, and he hoped to see more.

Replying to another question, Mr. Effah-Apenteng said he would press for a re-examination of resolution 1325 by the Security Council, either during his delegation’s Council presidency in August, or sooner, not to seek to have another such comprehensive text adopted, but to review implementation of the current one.

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