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Rwanda: Women Good for Peace Keeping Missions
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
26 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
Kigali
Peace keeping missions that have no women and lack awareness of gender issues can result in unnecessary tensions between peacekeepers and local civilians, the Rwandan military is to be told this week at a high-level seminar.
A better gender balance means that the operation more closely resembles civilian society in which it has been deployed, a concept note for the seminar says. "Its members are therefore more likely to observe social conventions that define civilized behaviour".
The workshop due March 28-29 will bring together high-level representatives from the Rwanda Defense Forces, Military Academies and Colleges and civil society organizations.
The seminar co-organised by the Rwandan military and the UN agency for women will also be attended by conflict management practitioners and scholars, gender advocates, UN agencies and personnel in peacekeeping operations.
The dialogue will also focus on preventing sexual and gender based violence in areas where peace keeping missions are operating.
There is no evidence that women make better peacekeepers, but a great deal of evidence to suggest that the presence of women improves an operation's chances of success, experts have suggested based on experience with some missions.
The concept paper says an understanding of gender issues is critical to peacekeeping activities because of the need for peacekeeping personnel to respond appropriately to the different ways that women, men, girls and boys experience armed conflict.
Of concern, are the devastating accounts of the involvement of peacekeepers in sexual and gender based violence.
Rwanda has had peace operations in the Sudanese region of Darfur and Liberia - in which cases women have been deployed alongside their male counterparts. There have however been no reported cases of soldier-instigated violence against the communities that these forces have operated.
Accusations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers in DR Congo have rocked the 17.000 strong UN mission in the country.
Campaigners say cases of sexual exploitation and abuse of local Congolese women and girls were found to be serious and ongoing. Equally disturbing was the lack of a protection and deterrence programmes.
Civilians, mostly women and children have been increasingly targeted in conflicts. Roughly half of the world's 32.9 million refugees and internally displaced are women, and children under 18 make up just over 45%, according to UN estimates.
The UN refugee agency says among those feeling the brunt of the abuse include over 50% women. Women are subjected to abuses as they flee the conflict zones and in locations where they seek refugee, the Agency says.
At times because peacekeeping missions at all-men, responding to situations where the marauding militias abuse the vulnerable become challenging.
In such situations, as the concept paper for the Kigali seminar says peace keeping operations, military personnel, police officers and civilians are not always trained to effectively recognize and handle gender issues prior to and during conflicts.
"Operation orders issued by central and local commands to restore peace and order in conflict areas may not include gender dimensions", says the paper. "This may perhaps be due to limited awareness or that the number of women on these missions is minimal or none at all."
In collaboration with the UN agency for Women - UNIFEM, the Rwandan army has been sensitized on prevention of such violence against women. The trainings are provided both for military personnel based in Rwanda and those deployed to peace missions.
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The lessons learnt so far, according to the UN, have influenced progressive programming, which targets not only senior level RDF members, but their regional counterparts as well.
The workshop is to raise awareness on and advocate for the effective inclusion of gender equality perspectives in peace keeping operations, and in particular to explore opportunities for increasing women in Rwandan and regional peacekeeping missions.
The Rwandan military will be supported to develop relevant manuals on sexually and Gender-Based Violence for the military in Rwanda and to equip the Gender Based Violence Desks at both the central and provincial levels.
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