Women, Peace and Progress

The UN Security Council in October 2000 passed Resolution 1325 aimed at increasing the representation of women at all decision-making levels, incorporating mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution and expanding the role of women in field-based missions.

The resolution was passed after studies on the impact of armed conflict on women - who make up the majority of refugee populations and are targeted by combatants - found their situation played a major role in peace and reconciliation that had previously been downplayed.

The studies also found that peacekeeping missions were more effective if they included gender advisers and women active in the missions themselves. In addition, there was an awareness that excluding women from peacekeeping missions and keeping them out of the decision-making processes regarding conflicts was out of line with a commitment to gender equality.

The passage of Resolution 1325 coincided with a resolution passed by the European Parliament in November 2000 on increasing the representation of women peacekeeping and reconciliation missions to at least 40 percent of the personnel.

At the time of Resolution 1325's passage, there was only one female head of mission or special representative, and just 3 percent of the military forces and 4 percent of the police in UN peacekeeping missions were female.

Then-UN secretary-general Kofi Annan vowed to achieve gender parity in the number of special representatives by 2015. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) was charged with setting up a gender unit.

Lack of results

Fast forward to 2008 and there is little to show for the much vaunted Resolution 1325, or the European Parliament's resolution on representation of women in peacekeeping missions.

The lack of progress was already noted in 2005 when external pageopenDemocracycall_made ran a series of articles and editorials on the fifth anniversary of Resolution 1325 and most found there was no increase in the representation of women either among peacekeepers, or in the policy-making processes regarding conflict resolution.

In July 2008, Women In International Security (WIIS) issued a external pagereportcall_made called Women in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Increasing Leadership Opportunities analyzing the reasons for the continued underrepresentation of women in key policy-making positions on conflict prevention and resolution within the UN. The report found the hiring and recruitment process within the UN - which relies heavily on an "old boys network," and shows a preference for military experience over development experience in peacekeeping field missions - discriminated against qualified female candidates and effectively excluded women from outside of the UN system from policy-making positions.

Shortcomings of 1325

While the insider networks of the UN and biases towards military men in peacekeeping field missions are much to blame for the exclusion of women, there was a basic flaw with Resolution 1325 itself. Namely, it did not provide for any mechanisms to enforce compliance with its goals, relying instead on the goodwill of the UN member states to increase the number of women in UN peacekeeping operations.

Given that women are generally underrepresented in policy-making positions and military missions worldwide, it was difficult to see how nations that do not have proportional representation of women in those positions in their own countries were going to introduce such representation in the UN system.

While Kofi Annan's goal of gender parity in the number of special representatives by 2015 was laudable, there was nothing in Resolution 1325 mandating such a change. The language of the resolution itself uses the terms "urges members," or "encourages," or "requests" when referring to its stated goals. There are no provisions for sanctions for non-compliance or any directives stating that only women should be hired as special representatives until the goal of parity is reached.

Without any teeth, the resolution cannot be enforced, particularly since it has been found that there is a pervasive bias toward known quantities, such as former diplomats or people already in the UN system when filling policy-making positions, and a bias favoring military in peacekeeping field missions.

Overly ambitious

Apart from the lack of any mechanism to enforce Resolution 1325, a look around the world's militaries illustrates that there is a disinclination to allow women a larger role in military field missions in national armed forces and policy-making in regards to military operations, and that disinclination would naturally carry over into UN missions.

Women are generally barred from combat positions, and only make up a minority of the world's armed forces. When the European Parliament passed its resolution on increasing the percentage of women in peacekeeping missions to 40 percent, women made up less than 10 percent of the armed forces in any European state.

Even countries that conscript women into their armed forces - such as China, Eritrea, Israel, Libya, Malaysia, North Korea, Peru and Taiwan - largely limit their roles to medical, administrative and logistical support, but are not inclined to place them in combat roles.

Excluding women from combat roles in UN peacekeeping missions would not be an obstacle for their participation in UN missions, since much of their work would focus directly on gender issues. Since police units are not directly engaged in combat, women have been found to be effective in decreasing the levels of violence against women when they are deployed with police forces and other law enforcement or support groups: Men behave better towards women when other women are on the scene.

It has been widely noted that peacekeeping missions are generally accompanied by an increase in prostitution in the mission's area, the spread of HIV/AIDS and sexual exploitation. In recent years there have been a number of scandals surrounding UN peacekeeping missions over sexual exploitation in Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Liberia, Mozambique, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Somalia. The presence of women in peacekeeping positions would have a mitigating effect on the extent of sexual exploitation and would offer support for women in the peacekeeping zones, since many women are more comfortable reporting sexual crimes to other female rather than to male authorities.

Women in the military

While the percentage of women in uniform is generally under 10 percent in Europe, some countries have been actively trying to recruit more women into their armed forces. Israel has a relatively high percentage of women soldiers, as conscription there has been in force since the country's creation in 1948. Yet even though women make up 33 percent of the conscripted armed forces, they are still largely barred from combat positions, although they can take them on voluntarily such that 3.5 percent hold combat roles.

India has also adopted an active program to integrate women into its armed forces, although it places limitations on combat duties, and reports find the integration has been working well.

The militaries in both Canada and the US are composed of about 15 percent female soldiers. In Canada, all military occupations, including combat posts, have been open to women since 1989. The exception was submarine duty, but that was changed to allow women to serve in 2000. In the US, women can fill about 95 percent of all military jobs, although they are also barred from combat positions. There is debate about changing that as the nature of warfare evolves and even serving in support positions can put one in a combat position, but so far combat posts are still officially off-limits to women.

Integrating women into UN missions

While there are many cases of successful integration of women into militaries, the overall numbers are still small compared to men, and there are some limitations on their duties. That has carried over into how the role of women in field missions is perceived within the UN. The emphasis has been on military experience, but WIIS noted in its 2008 report that more qualified women have development or humanitarian experience that is more appropriate for UN field missions, which are not military campaigns to take territory, but more often peace-building and reconciliation missions with strong development components.

Keeping the development and reconciliation aspects of UN missions in mind, it becomes clear that women have a contributing role to play. That is especially true since Resolution 1325 also linked the protection of citizens, gender issues, sexual violence, HIV/AIDS and other issues to the mandate of peacekeeping forces. Women are ideal for dealing with a number of those tasks, especially when dealing with women refugee populations, or other women in conflict and post-conflict environments.

As for the inclusion of women at all levels of policy-making bodies, that can only be resolved with a change in attitudes from those already in policy-making positions to include women on an equal footing, and likely an overhaul of the UN's recruitment system to allow more qualified outsiders to join from outside of the "old boys network."