America
India for greater female participation in UN peace efforts
United Nations, Jan 3
To protect women caught
in conflicts, India has called for greater female participation in UN
peace efforts and a broader approach that focuses on "peacebuilding"
rather than concentrating on traditional peacekeeping operations.
India's
Permanent Representative Asoke Kumar Mukerji told the Security Council
Friday: "The participation of women in all aspects of the prevention and
resolution of conflicts is an important policy measure which the
Council should encourage while mandating peace operations."
Speaking
in a debate on protecting civilians in armed conflict, he drew on
Indian women's participation in peacekeeping operations and said, "Our
experience in Liberia showed that the actual requirements for addressing
issues confronting women in armed conflict were related to the concept
of peacebuilding, rather than peacekeeping."
A representative of
non-governmental organizations (NGO), who was invited by the Council to
speak about the issues facing women, said the UN should increase the
number of women staff in peacekeeping operations, in both military and
police components. Ilwad Elman of the NGO Working Group On Women, Peace
and Security said that when there are female peacekeepers and police,
women in areas of conflict are better able to communicate their concerns
about safety and request protection.
Mukerji said India was the
first UN member to bring about the active participation of women in
peacekeeping operations when it sent an all female police unit to the UN
peacekeeping operations in Liberia in 2007. He recalled what the
then-US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said of India at the Council
in 2009: "They have set an example that must be repeated in UN
peacekeeping missions all over the world."
India now has a total
of 137 women participating in UN Peacekeeping Operations, 112 of whom
are from the police and 13 are from the military. Of them 102 serve in a
police contigent in the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
Setting
out a strategy to deal with the problem, Mukerji said the Council should
now split up "the complex multidimensional nature of its peacekeeping
mandates, and focus on addressing issues confronting women in armed
conflict situations through focused peacebuilding activities, so that
the transition to a post-conflict society can be sustainable."
This
approach would give greater scope to humanitarian and development
programs and fight the exploitation of women caught in armed conflicts,
he said.
The nature of armed conflicts has changed since India
first contributed troops to UN operations under the traditional mandate
when "keeping the peace, was the best guarantee for protection of
civilians caught up in armed conflicts," he said.
"Whereas
earlier, our peacekeepers were deployed to keep the peace between
states," he said, "we are now witnessing a steady increase in the
deployment of UN peacekeepers in situations of internal conflicts within
member states."
The impact of the instability and violence in
the areas of conflict due to the breakdown of government "has been felt
by the most vulnerable of the civilian populations, especially women and
girls," he said.
Mukerji pointedly drew attention to how the
working of the Council itself has contributed to the situation. "The
evident inability of the Council to address and nurture sustainable
political solutions to such conflict situations" was a major reason for
the "open-ended" situations of conflict and instability that took a toll
on women.
India speaks authoritatively on UN peacekeeping
operations as it is the single largest contributor to these missions,
having sent over 180,000 troops to 43 of the 68 operations which have
claimed the lives of 156 Indians.
Nearly 70 nations spoke at
Friday's session because of the growing concern over the victimisation
of civilians - - and women in particular - - in conflicts around the
world.
"Sexual violence during armed conflict is a violation of
international humanitarian law," Helen Durham, a director at the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said. "It is not
inevitable. It must and can be stopped. What is required is a concerted
effort by everyone concerned to prevent and put an end to it."
(Arul Louis can be contacted at [email protected])