Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping with Sabrina Karim

Before 2016, US foreign policy looked much different than it does today. Upon her confirmation as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton moved US foreign policy towards advocating for women's, rights and equality. In a WAPPP seminar, Sabrina Karim argues that while these actions weren't necessarily a feminist foreign policy, they did put gender equality on the frontlines, not only as an issue of development, but as one of peace and security.

The UN’s Resolution 1325 “Women, Peace, and Security” also affirmed the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and in post-conflict reconstruction. Moreover, the Resolution stresses the importance of women’s equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security.

The Resolution also applies to the UN’s peacekeeping missions. A peacekeeping mission is a negotiated settlement, where UN forces are deployed to provide security, and peacebuilding support post-conflict. The UN cites peacekeeping to be one of the most effective tools to help countries return from conflict to peace. Peacekeepers are composed of civilians, soldiers, and police officers. It is other developing countries that provide the military, and these countries often profit from sending their soldiers because the UN pays more than what the soldiers would have made in their home countries.

With her award-winning book Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping; Women, Peace, and Security in a Post-Conflict States, co-authored with Kyle Beardsley, Professor Karim finds that there are many gender inequalities that exist within peacekeeping missions.

Question:

To begin her research Professor Karim asks “To what extent have peacekeeping missions achieved gender equality in operations and been vehicles for promoting gender equality in post-conflict countries?”

To answer that she looks at multiple ways in which gender inequality could take place in peacekeeping missions, specifically she asks:

1. Are there women included as peacekeepers?
2. Are the peacekeepers perpetrators of abuse?
3. Are there specific protections against wartime sexual violence?

To answer her first question, Professor Karim analyzes years of data from the UN’s peacekeeping missions. She finds that after passing Resolution 1325 the UN had set a goal of having 10% women for the military peacekeepers, and 20% for the police peacekeepers, by 2014, almost 15 years later, they had not met that goal. The highest proportion of women peacekeepers existed in missions in Cyprus and Nepal, and even these countries did not reach 8%.

Many scholars would agree that including women in peacekeeping missions would lead to better outcomes. The presence of female peacekeepers helps reduce conflict and confrontation. In addition, it helps women and children feel safer, improves access and support for local women, and makes peacekeepers more approachable to women. However, women who are included often face structural inequities that prevent them from doing their work as peacekeepers.

Problem 1

Women in peacekeeping missions have more informal work assigned to them, than do their male counterparts.

Women in peacekeeping missions are subject to implicit bias that often pushes them towards gendered work within peacekeeping, rather than providing security. All peacekeepers engage in community activities, not formally, but in addition to their work in providing security. However, women peacekeepers, including all female units are more likely to be recognized for facilitating community activities.

In addition, it is often up to the female peacekeepers to police behavior of male counterparts. This presents a whole set of barriers, as it is difficult for women to report inappropriate behavior because it might pose some issues to their future and careers as peacekeepers. Professor Karim argues that it is these unfair burdens and expectations upon female peacekeepers, which set them up for failure.

Problem 2

Women Peacekeepers are often assigned ‘safer’ placements than their male counterparts.

Although women peacekeepers are supposed to provide security, they are also vulnerable to gendered violence, and require their own protections. As such, safety, security, and cultural factors are all taken into consideration before assigning women to placements. Women tend to be deployed to safer missions, specifically to countries with lower rates of sexual violence. Sabrina Karim argues that if employing women peacekeepers is supposed to decrease sexual violence, it is difficult to do that if they are not assigned to the appropriate missions.

Problem 3

Peacekeepers are often perpetrators of sexual exploitation, abuse, and violence.

Professor Karim notes that of the 50% of the women she interviewed who had engaged in transactional sex, 30% of them had engaged in transactional sex with a peacekeeper. She also notes that the presence of a peacekeeping mission led to an increase in an adolescent’s girl’s first time engagement in transactional sex.

Although the UN collects data on military and police peacekeepers, civilian peacekeepers are private citizens so the UN does not collect or release data about them specifically. It is also nearly impossible for local people to report sexual assault perpetrated by the peacekeepers to the UN. However, some reports note that civilian peacekeepers are more capable than either military of police perpetrators.

Establishing a Culture of Gender Equality:

Professor Karim provides many insights and recommendations to address the current issues present in peacekeeping:

1. Mission leadership: Choosing leaders who value gender equality may have a trickle-down effect. Professor Karim recommends using performance on gender equality as a prerequisite for leadership recruitment on peacekeeping missions.
2. Promotion and Demotion: Incentivize gender equality within peacekeeping missions.
3. Role Models and Mentors: Establish a network of role models for women in peacekeeping roles.
4. Training and Professionalism: Peacekeepers receive 2-3 hours of training on gender and sexual abuse and exploitation. Professor Karim recommends expanding these trainings and having the facilitator be someone serving in leadership. 

Keeping the Peace: the Case Study of an All-Female Peacekeeping Unit

This week’s WAPPP seminar, “All-Female Contingents on the Front Lines of Peace and Conflict,” covered the case study of the all-female peacekeeping unit in the southern Philippines charged with ensuring that the 2014 ceasefire agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is upheld. Margaret Jenkins, Research Associate at Georgetown University's Institute for Women, Peace & Security and a current WAPPP Fellow, presented her research on the subject, as the first half of a two-year research project on the effectiveness and experience of all-female contingents working in conflict zones.

Despite the goal of having women make up 20% of UN peacekeepers by 2015, under 5% of current peacekeepers are female. Jenkins considers this unit in the Philippines to be an innovative insight into why progress is so slow, calling it an “in your face” example of gender mainstreaming in this field. She argued that the case is so important because it a) amplifies the debate over mainstreaming via an all-female unit and b) lends itself to comparative research with all-male units.

After decades of fighting between the Moro insurgency and the Government, which left 100,000 people dead and thousands more displaced, a political agreement was signed - although not ratified - between the two parties last year. Following this agreement, Mary Ann Arnado, Secretary General of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus, suggested the creation of an all-female peacekeeping contingent in addition to the other, largely conservative, Muslim and all-male units in the area.

As might be expected, there has been pushback in response to the all-female contingent. The women in the unit have noted that they feel like they haven’t been taken that seriously, while some are concerned that their duties as peacekeepers violate their religious obligations to live within strict gender norms. Some outsiders have expressed concern that the unit’s purpose is based on foreign or Western ideas, as well as questioned whether the unit is tough enough or if its members have the necessary skills and awareness for the task at hand. The unit has responded strongly to such concerns, citing international law to defend their legitimacy and building relationships within the communities served.

Though some might assume that fighting gender-based violence (GBV) would be a priority for an all-female unit considering that women are overwhelmingly the victims of gender-motivated crimes, the unit has a particular jurisdiction that does not focus on GBV. They are tasked primarily with monitoring the ceasefire, just like other civilian protection groups in the region. However, Jenkins recounted incidents involving rape in which the local communities and tribes called on the local knowledge of the all-female contingent for help.

Jenkins examined the cohesion and diversity of the unit and found that diversity is central to the contingent. The women serve in a very diverse region with a long history of sectarian violence, to the point where many of the women in the unit had never interacted with a woman of another religion prior to serving together in this mission. The unit itself is comprised of indigenous women, Christian women and Muslim women all from same area, with ages ranging from 22 to mid-60s. A major policy lesson Jenkins took from this case is how the effectiveness of the unit lies in the women’s local knowledge and this dedication to diversity. 

Much of the justification behind creating and maintaining an all-female contingent is based on essentialist arguments - i.e. that women bring something unique to the table, such as their inherent peacefulness, experience as caregivers, etc. - which many in the field find problematic. Jenkins emphasized the need to analyze the effectiveness of such units, the same as how any other peacekeeping unit would be evaluated. She hopes that her future research will focus on a similar all-female peacekeeping unit in Sudan, which has recently been recognized internationally, as well as all-female UN contingents.