UN wants more women police into its peacekeeping operations

By John Chola - 12/08/09

The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations is launching a global effort to recruit more women police into its peacekeeping operations.

The move is part of the campaign launched in May 2009 entitled “Power to Empower” that aims to move the ranks of the world body towards gender equity.

According to Marie-Evelyne Petrus-Barry, United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) Director the recruitment push was centered on increasing the representation of female police officers in peacekeeping operations, while at the same time encouraging national training programmes to support women to join national police services.

Ms. Petrus-Barry said the goal was to have UN Member States raise the number of female police officers serving in peacekeeping missions to 20 per cent by 2014, up from its current number of eight per cent.

The UNIC Director said currently, there were 11,000 UN police officers working in 17 peacekeeping missions around the world instead of 15,000 the Organization was mandated to have.

“We need more female police as soon as we can get them,” said Andrew Hughes, the UN Police Adviser.
“There has been some progress when I commenced in this role in 2007, 6 per cent of the 8,000 police deployed were women, but this progress is not enough, we must accelerate this upward trend,” added Hughes.

UN police perform a vital role in creating trust and upholding law and order.
The UN police help civil societies in countries of operation rebuild following conflicts and they also play an essential role of training and coaching national police services in these situations.

In addition to regular policing duties, female officers bring a much-needed, extra dimension to the role.

“By having more women officers deployed in peacekeeping missions, they inspire more women to join their local police services, and this in turn will in the future give contributing countries a larger base from which to recruit officers,” said Ann-Marie Orler, the UN Deputy Police Adviser.

She added that frequently women and children were more comfortable reporting their experiences to female officers, and the fact that a woman is the authority could be empowering to women and girls.

Mr. Hughes. Said: “When the shooting stops, law and order is what brings security back to civilians, and often the most traumatized in a post-conflict society are women and children. Greater representation of women creates trust and boosts confidence for communities recovering from conflict, and helps the UN police to take into account all the needs of those societies.”

Women serving in UN peace operations were represented at every level, and deployed in whole units for example, in Liberia there is an all-female Formed Police Unit or individually.

Mr. Hughes stresses that the UN was committed to increasing the number of women and would actively seek to recruit female police officers, particularly at a senior level, in order to address the gender disparity.

He said the UN strongly encourages countries which contributes police to the UN also known as police-contributing countries, or PCCs to establish a policy that sets the percentage of their contribution of female police officers at par with their national police gender ratio.

The countries were also encouraged to review their recruitment requirements and procedures for international deployment to ensure that female candidates are not restricted from applying.

Contributing countries are also asked to consider providing incentives for officers who serve in peacekeeping missions.

Ends.