India hosts first 'Global South' meet on women in UN peacekeeping

India hosted a two-day conference on women peacekeepers from the “global south” in New Delhi earlier this week. India and 34 countries in the geography that contribute troops to the United Nations participated in the discussions, which ranged from the challenges peacekeeping faces amid geopolitical uncertainties to the prevention of sexual misconduct during missions – an issue the UN has grappled with for long.

 

The UN has 11 ongoing peacekeeping operations on three continents. The rules of engagement for the troops deployed are consent of the parties involved in a conflict, “impartiality” and the non-use of force unless in self-defence or in defence of the mandate, under authorization of the UN Security Council. The peacekeepers are mostly serving military or police personnel.

 

Business Standard spoke to three foreign military attendees at the India conference who have been on UN peacekeeping missions.

 

Colonel Khongor Mijiddorj, from the Mongolian Army, who worked with the UN Mission in South Sudan as an observer over 2023-24, said, there are not enough women in leadership roles in peacekeeping, especially from the developing countries, where societies are patriarchal. “You see few women in decision-making from Asia or Africa.”

 

Lieutenant Colonel Houzou Prenam, a doctor from Togo, in West Africa, went to Sudan between 2017 and 2018 during one of the many internal conflicts, and witnessed abject poverty and dismal health care. She said better gender representation in UN peacekeeping operations is needed. “The toll of war is most on women and children, so it’s important to have more women on the ground.”

 

Karla Cano of Peru’s First Nation Army, who, in 2012, was part of the UN’s “multidimensional integrated stabilization mission” in the Central African Republic, a landlocked country bordering Sudan and South Sudan, said, in 2012, women peacekeepers can be “good problem-solvers” in conflict situations. “The relationship with civilians is built on trust.”

 

The UN’s own data shows slow progress. In 2022, women made up 5.9 per cent of military contingents, 14.4 per cent of police contingents, and 43 per cent of “justice and corrections government-provided personnel” in peacekeeping missions.

 

Member states are ultimately responsible for deploying uniformed women, as part of their contributions, the UN says.

 

Deployed women comprise 0.8 per cent of India’s troops for UN peacekeeping, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institution.

 

Public speakers at the conference such as Brigadier Joyce Sitienei of Kenya told the audience the UN must define its role in peacekeeping clearly, especially on the sustainability of funding for its operations in Africa.

 

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, UN Under Secretary-General, Department of Peace Operations, said the role of women in peacekeeping needs to be strengthened. He added that in a divided world, countries should work together to resolve funding problems.

 

India, which has contributed some 200,000 troops to UN missions over the past 70 years (according to Indian government data), holds training sessions before such deployment for many countries. The government now wants to expand on that.

 

Indian diplomats who spoke at the event, said India wants the voice of the “troops- contributing countries” that are largely in the “global south” to be heard.

 

The Ministry of External Affairs along with the Ministry of Defence organised the event, billed as a first of its kind. This comes at a time when India and China are seen vying for leadership of the developing world.