Adibeli Nduka-Agwu. Civil Wars. Volume 11, Issue 2. June 2009.
Introduction
Although recommendations for gender mainstreaming and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse in United Nations peace support operations have increased in recent years, a comparative analysis of different approaches towards these policy objectives remains wanting. As a result, the effectiveness of the UN guidelines for gender mainstreaming as expressed in Security Council Resolution 1325 has not yet been evaluated and debated academically. By comparing UN missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia, this article provides a summary of the current literature on UN policies on gender mainstreaming and sexual misconduct. Relying on interviews with mission staff, the article argues that although the effects of 1325 look promising, efforts to integrate gender perspectives and prevent sexual exploitation still suffer from staff, funding and enforcement deficiencies. More importantly, it reveals how urgently further field research and an active scholarly debate on UN policies on gender awareness and sexual misconduct are needed.
The issue of gender in the context of peace support operations was first raised in the 1990s when the term ‘gender mainstreaming’ was coined and its importance highlighted. In the age of ‘fourth generation peacekeeping’, peacekeeping has expanded from its original notion of consent, impartiality and the absence of the use of force to a more flexible approach involving delegation, specialisation and civil policing, with the United Nations engaging in both peace enforcement and peacekeeping. This multi-dimensional nature of peacekeeping has increased the likelihood that a UN intervention will have far reaching consequences for the lives of men and women in the host population. Training on the impact of gender is thus no longer ‘a luxury, but a requirement for improving the effective discharge of the mission’s mandate and reducing both harmful forms of behaviour by peacekeeping personnel and unintended negative effects of mission policies and programmes’. It calls for special attention in settings where the specific needs and wishes of the two sexes may conflict and where gendered relations occur across a power disparity, as in the case of male peacekeepers and female civilians for instance. Yet it was only in 2002, when new cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers raised international criticism, that the issue of gender in peace support operations began to receive significant scholarly and practical consideration. Subsequently increased sexual exploitation and abuse of the beneficiary nation were officially recognised as possible unintended consequence of peacekeeping.
Since then, the United Nations have been committed to integrating gender perspectives into their peace support efforts. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security was passed in 2000. It requires gender concerns to be treated as a distinct and relevant component of all mission policies and actions. The Resolution also resulted in a separation of the task of dealing with sexual violence from larger gender objectives on policy and practical levels. The former are now covered by explicit disciplinary mechanisms. 1325 calls for gender mainstreaming, the inclusion of gender considerations with regard to the needs, hardships and opportunities of the different sexes in all aspects of peacekeeping. Hence, references to gender have been included in the code of conduct for peacekeepers as well as peacekeeping mandates and training. Although these efforts are laudable, there is still no centrally co-ordinated approach to gender mainstreaming or sexual abuse prevention nor a central co-ordinating and support mechanism between UN headquarters and field missions. As a consequence, the implementation of the UN gender guidelines has taken place on an ad hoc basis. Detailed evaluations, academic analyses of and debate on the effectiveness of these new gender approaches and strategies remain wanting. Much has been written on the role and effects of gender in the military or on gender policies of specific current peacekeeping missions, but evaluative comparative analyses are lacking.
This article aims to start off such an academic debate. By giving a review of the current state of research, contrasting how gender and sexual abuse policies have been researched and documented in two cases, this article paves the way for academic consideration on a wider scale. The article compares UN peace support operations in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL 1999-2005) and Liberia (UNMIL 2003-ongoing). UNAMSIL started before the crucial UN Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security was passed in 2000, whereas UNMIL’s mandate took the gender requirements of 1325 into account. This allows us to compare how far 1325 has had an impact on UN gender mainstreaming efforts and to analyse which problems persist. It should be noted that UN policy and practice frequently equate gender mainstreaming with ‘increasing women’s rights’. How far this is problematic for the use of gender as an analytical tool is beyond the scope of this article and will need to be discussed elsewhere. In UNAMSIL sexual abuse prevention and response was the task of the mission’s gender advisor. Following Resolution 1325, in UNMIL sexual misconduct is being kept strictly separate from the work of gender mainstreaming. Throughout the article the literature review is complemented by interviews with UNMIL and UNAMSIL staff. UNAMSIL staff were interviewed through email questionnaires as the mission ended in 2005. In addition, I conducted field research in Monrovia in February 2008. UNMIL staff responsible for gender mainstreaming within and outside the mission, personnel dealing with the prevention of and response to sexual misconduct, as well as NGOs working in these fields were interviewed with the aim of acquiring an overview of how far policy objectives are being achieved. These interviews should however be considered preliminary findings only and will need to be corroborated by further in-depth research on a wider scale.
Gender in UN Peacekeeping
Extensive UN guidelines for the implementation of gender mainstreaming were published in 2000. The UN defines the concept of gender as describing the ‘social differences and social relations between women and men. It therefore refers not to women or men, but to the relationship between them, and the way this is socially constructed’. The organisation acknowledges that gender constitutes a highly contested notion and that its meaning is adjusted for different contexts and periods. As such the concept refers to forms of both masculinity and femininity. Implicit assumptions of what is right for men and women to do, think or say underpin virtually all environments, actions or judgements. ‘Gender awareness’ describes the process of unveiling these implicit gender-based prescriptions, which affect the actions of individuals at all times. It presumes a process of gender analysis revealing differences in the lives of men and women including those leading to social and economic inequities. Gender awareness, as defined by the UN, is commonly accompanied by actions and policies to counter such inequalities. Introducing gender perspectives into peace support operations is thus beneficial in several ways. First, it challenges the partiality of the otherwise predominating masculinist accounts. Second, gender perspectives permit alternative, creative ways of thinking, which can lead to innovative solutions in conflict resolution and management.
The UN describes ‘gender mainstreaming’ as,
the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of women and men an integral dimension of design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequalities are not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality [within and outside the mission].
In the context of UN peacekeeping this means that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) must ensure that the different experiences, needs and priorities of women, men, boys and girls are being considered in all aspects of the mission. This is necessary to ensure that the entire population benefits equally from peacekeeping efforts and that members of both sexes have equal opportunity to contribute to consolidating peace and rebuilding a new society. Thereby the UN stress that the implementation of gender mainstreaming is the joint responsibility of DPKO, headquarters and mission staff of all levels.
The peacekeeping department subscribes to the gender definitions outlined above. However, in the context of its policy, gender frequently ends up being conflated with unspecified ‘women’s issues’. For instance, Resolution 1325 calls for gender awareness training of all UN peacekeeping personnel, which is then equated with learning about the ‘protection, rights and the particular needs of women, as well as on the importance of involving women in all peacekeeping and peace-building measures’. Here gender is used as synonymous with ‘women’, whereas men, masculinities and how these are socially construed and with what consequences remain unmentioned. Such incomplete and skewed portrayals of the concept of gender appear particularly problematic because the military tends to constitute an all-male environment that promotes a particular type of masculinity. Hence, it would appear of special interest to analyse the ‘male side’ of gender and look at the particular performance of masculinity in the military context rather than limiting oneself to women and their ‘protection, rights and … particular needs’. As a result, in UN practice gender mainstreaming often lacks practical activities to challenge dominant ideas of masculinities and instead focuses on increasing women’s rights.
Even though policies to achieve gender mainstreaming were introduced in 2000, the two sexes are still far from being represented equally in the United Nations. Data for 2007 revealed that of the 71,673-military staff in UN peacekeeping operations only 1,034 are women. The UN police counts 454 females among its 8,482 personnel. Of the 27 current peace support operations run by the UN only UNMIL in Liberia has a female head of mission, with Ellen Margrethe Løj serving as Special Representative to the Secretary-General. This severe under-representation of women may affect working conditions for the scarce female personnel involved. Women’s presence in peacekeeping forces improves the conditions for local women, because it fosters support for the mission and renders male peacekeeping staff more responsible and reflective. Additionally, it widens the skills available within the mission, thereby often reducing conflict and confrontation. It has also been noted that the number of cases of sexual exploitation and abuse in all peacekeeping capacities declines significantly with an increased presence of female staff. The visible presence of women in peacekeeping provides a symbol of female empowerment and can encourage civilian women to feel more inclined to take an active part in the process of conflict resolution and peacebuilding initiatives.
Mechanisms and Instruments for Effective Gender Mainstreaming
For the UN the ultimate objective of gender mainstreaming is gender equality, i.e., equality with regard to responsibility, opportunity and rights for men and women, boys and girls. Since the adoption of Resolution 1325 in 2000, all successive multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations have been equipped with a unit dedicated to raising awareness of the role of gender; a gender advisor has been appointed for headquarters and pre-deployment training has been modified to include gender awareness. Gender concerns are systematically introduced into all new peacekeeping mandates and the number of partnerships between UN organs, member states and NGOs has been augmented to reinforce gender mainstreaming efforts. Gender mainstreaming in peace support operations is the joint responsibility of the department of peacekeeping operations and all mission staff. Thus the peacekeeping department must incorporate gender perspectives into all levels of its own work and assist the efforts of the host population to include gender perspectives in the reconstruction of administrative order, law-enforcement mechanisms and institution-building.
Before Resolution 1325, prevention of and response to sexual misconduct was seen as the task of UN staff working to raise gender concerns. However, with the introduction of gender mainstreaming as a distinct dimension of UN peacekeeping, gender advisors now exclusively work towards the objective of including gender concerns in the daily work of the UN apparatus. To achieve this, the Office of the Gender Advisor (OGA) has been created. It is charged with facilitating and monitoring the integration of gender perspectives into peacekeeping operations, i.e., to identify the sometimes diverging needs, opportunities and desires of the two sexes and address them with appropriate policy. Hence, OGA staff in the UN missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia consistently excluded issues of sexual exploitation from their work in order to be able to concentrate on the bigger picture of gender awareness and equality. OGAs are to give technical guidance to the heads of missions and work to incorporate gender perspectives into all functional areas of peacekeeping. Since this primarily results by ensuring an increased participation of women, once again policy literature and UN practice often end up equating gender mainstreaming with ‘increasing women’s rights’. Although this is of course a worthwhile objective, it nevertheless alters the meaning of the concept of gender.
As part of a mission’s planning process the UN gender office is required to consult with UN organs, government and civil society organisations to determine a mission focus that is in line with both national and mission gender mainstreaming priorities. OGA should lead the mission in developing an overall plan for gender mainstreaming based on input from all mission sections, which is shared with all relevant internal and external parties. Gender awareness training should ensure all ranks of peacekeepers are aware of the particular needs and rights of women and the importance of their involvement in peacebuilding (men, once again, remain unmentioned). Such training should assure that all peacekeepers share an understanding of the values, including gender equality, non-discrimination etc., that they uphold in their work for the UN and the social context they are working in. The main responsibility for training peacekeepers lies with member states. The extent to which gender is included in such pre-deployment training thus largely depends on the policies and priorities of the various troop contributing countries. The UN peacekeeping department has developed training materials for member states and offers advice and training events for regional and national training centres. However, since the majority of peacekeeping personnel presently come from countries with limited resources and capacity to train their troops, these troops often receive very little training on non-technical issues including gender mainstreaming.
Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping
It is difficult to separate the themes of military and gender within the context of peacekeeping. Elisabeth Prugl points out that war and gender are ontologically connected, and thus ‘it is difficult to “do war” without “doing gender” and vice versa’. Sexual violence by peacekeepers against civilians can only truly be understood through the prism of gender. Paul Higate reminds us that peacekeepers are at the core militaries trained in a ‘hypermasculine milieux’ where gender is used to draw sharp distinctions between the sexes and where an aggressive and often misogynist heterosexuality is celebrated. Higate points to the common over pre-occupation with sex in such an environment, citing Deborah Harrison, who suggests that ‘members of especially macho [military] units celebrate their shared maleness by objectifying women, viewing pornography films and joking about making women the targets of violence’. Simultaneously, military indoctrination implies acquiring the ability to de-humanise the ‘other’. Women as a socially subordinate group frequently become victims of this ‘othering’. ‘When a macho culture promoting aggressive heterosexuality is combined with strategies designed to strip away the humanity of others, the possibilities for sexual violation of women and girls increase significantly’. This may take the form of massacres of women, mass rape as a strategy of warfare or, as Cynthia Enloe points out, the tendency of the military to encourage prostitution around their bases. Such military masculinities are also at play in the type of post-war environment in which the UN operates, especially because the majority of UN peacekeepers were originally trained as ordinary soldiers. It is important to acknowledge that the majority of peacekeepers do not rape or indulge in sexual exploitation. However, an awareness of common military-affiliated patterns of behaviour is crucial in order to develop effective policy. At the same time, Higate urges caution not to reduce sexual abuse in (post-)war environments simplistically to crude forms of military masculinities. He points to humanitarian workers or even ‘sex tourists’ who have engaged in similar patterns of sexual exploitation without having been exposed to ideas of military masculinities. He further cautions us to avoid conflating military masculinities with sexual exploitation by asking how such theories would then account for all those military men who do not exploit local civilians sexually while on mission.
The outbreak of war pre-supposes a process of societal militarisation, which is not limited to the fighting soldiers, but equally affects women’s lives. Enloe argues that the militarisation of individuals and the privileging of masculinity are the result of deliberate policies at senior level and aim to achieve national security and military effectiveness. Such militarisation affects women on all levels; female soldiers, military nurses, wives or mothers of militaries, prostitutes and women raped by soldiers. In ethnocidal wars, as Cynthia Cockburn reminds us, women’s lives are often militarised by mass rape by the winning side. These violations are commonly conceded as ‘booty’ to the victors, who use them to foster ingroup solidarity and to humiliate the defeated side by wounding their masculinity in proving them incapable of protecting ‘their women’.
Post-conflict environments are typically marked by the absence of a rule of law and extreme power differentials between local civilians and peacekeepers. Thus the host population’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation at the hands of peacekeepers is increased significantly. It is crucial to understand that sexual relations between a soldier in a (post-)conflict environment and a civilian woman (or man), even if they are consensual, occur in a very difficult context. During and after wars women commonly suffer from extreme economic hardship. Often widowed, they become the sole caretaker of entire families in circumstances when jobs are scarce, agricultural activities have often ceased and women have received little or no formal education. As widows, and/or if they have suffered rape during the war, they become stigmatised in their communities. As a consequence, engaging in commercial sexual activities often appears as the only means of survival for these women. It will appear particularly appealing if the clients are peacekeepers with dollar-salaries and the potential of offering not only material relief through food or money, but also physical protection in a hostile environment. Therefore, it is common that women actively pursue peacekeepers to offer commercial sex. In addition, racialised inequalities may come into play when peacekeepers originate from what is perceived (or perceives itself) as an ethnically different (and/or superior) country as Sherene Razack suggests in her analysis of the role of race and racism in the UN mission in Somalia during the early 1990s. Adding the adversities of living in an uprooted and violent post-war-environment women (or men) enter commercial sexual relations under extreme circumstances, which can hardly be described as purely ‘voluntary’. It is through this prism that the UN’s decision to categorically prohibit its personnel from engaging in commercial sexual activities must be understood.
The prohibition was also provoked by the long history of sexual exploitation and abuse of the local population at the hands of peacekeepers. In 2007, nine UN entities reported having received new allegations of sexual misconduct, with a total of 159 new allegations, including 127 from the DPKO. In 2006 there were 371 new charges, with 357 coming from peacekeeping. The Graca Machel report had already revealed in 2001 that in half the post-conflict environments of the 1990s, the arrival of peacekeepers coincided with a rapid and significant increase in child prostitution. Keith Alldred contends that the presence of military personnel abroad contributes significantly to trafficking women as modern-day sexual slaves. What was previously condoned under a ‘boys will be boys’-label and seen as peacekeepers simply trying to satisfy their ‘natural urges’ is now regarded as unacceptably closely linked with organised crime, forced prostitution and sexual slavery. A study by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the NGO Save the Children UK documented that in post-conflict Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone the exchange of sex for money or small gifts was commonplace. The situation is further complicated by indications that peacekeepers have been obstructing investigations into allegations of sexual exploitation by bribing or intimidating witnesses. The UN officially acknowledges the problem of sexual abuse and exploitation and in 2004 Kofi Annan appointed the permanent representative of Jordan to the UN, HRH prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein as his special advisor on the matter. Under his leadership the ‘Zeid-Report’ was released in March 2005. It constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of the problem of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeeping staff, based on research into the UN mission in Congo. The report makes 59 recommendations to UN headquarters, mission leadership and troop contributing countries for the improvement of prevention mechanisms and effective punishment of perpetrators.
Mechanisms to Prevent and Respond to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
As previously mentioned, owing to the asymmetrical power relations between peacekeepers and local civilians the UN categorically prohibits the use of sex workers. This rule applies even if prostitution is legal in the host country. With the same rationale, the UN prohibits any forms of sexual exploitation and abuse, which are defined as: ‘any actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust, for sexual purposes, including but not limited to profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another’. Similarly the exchange of goods or services for sexual favours and sexual relations with anyone under the age of 18 years is forbidden, even if the age of consent of the host country should be lower. Here the UN conflates sexual exploitation with sexual abuse and collectively treats them as the corpus delicti of ‘sexual exploitation and abuse’, known as ‘SEA’ in UN terminology. The categorical prohibition is understandable given the history of abuse and the skewed power dynamics, but it raises a number of problems. Diane Otto argues that the so-called ‘survival sex’, commercial sexual relations entered into by women under severe economic pressure, should be considered distinct from outright sexual offences like rape, forced prostitution or sexual slavery. She contends that regardless of the economic destitution, commercial sex involves consent and a sense of agency and negotiation. This is a highly contentious argument, especially when considering that the economic pressure experienced by local women is aggravated by the hyper-masculinised conditions of the peacekeeping environment. Still, it should be questioned whether a (post-)conflict environment must invariably imply that women lose any sense of agency and control over the use of their bodies. Noelle Quenivet argues a similar line when she suggests that the categorical prohibition of commercial sex appears to be underpinned by the assumption that local women lack the capacity to make an informed choice as to whether they wish to engage in such activity or not. Still, former secretary-general Kofi Annan repeatedly stressed his zero-tolerance policy for acts of sexual misconduct by UN-affiliated staff. Otto laments the failure of this policy to address the circumstances that give rise to civilians offering transactional sex in the first place: the abject poverty of the local population. UN policy focuses on prohibiting survival sex rather than confronting the failure of the UN’s humanitarian efforts to provide alternative incomes for civilians. By rendering commercial sex illegal, the UN ‘makes the survival of the “victims” it claims to protect even more precarious’.
Acknowledging how strongly the military environment is gendered, it makes sense that the subject of sexual abuse and exploitation has long fallen under the umbrella of ‘gender’ in the UN context. However, in the aftermath of the above mentioned ‘sex scandals’, a separate unit was appointed to deal with peacekeepers’ sexual misconduct: the Conduct and Discipline Units (CDUs). Heads of mission are assigned a special responsibility for creating and maintaining an environment that prevents sexual abuse. They are to appoint an official at sufficiently high rank as focal point for receiving reports on sexual misconduct and an equivalent of the opposite sex. In addition, they are to ensure that all civilian staff obtain a copy of the ‘Bulletin on Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse’ and that locals and mission staff are sufficiently informed about the role of the lead person or ‘focal point’, regarding sexual misconduct. Conduct and discipline teams have been introduced in a number of missions including UNMIL and UNIOSIL (UNAMSIL’s political successor mission) to act as principal advisors to the mission leadership regarding issues of sexual misconduct of all staff categories. These teams are also in charge of developing and delivering training on the UN policy towards sexual misconduct to UN staff and the host population. All UN personnel are required to report suspected or witnessed sexual misconduct by mission personnel.
The ‘Compilation of Guidance and Directives on Disciplinary Issues of Personnel Serving in United Nations Peacekeeping and Other Field Missions’ was issued in March 2004. It applies to military members of national contingents, military observers, civilian police and personnel and details how to deal with perpetrators of ‘SEA’. Disciplinary measures include suspension without pay, fines or summary dismissal. The measures taken by the department of peacekeeping operations to prevent and punish sexual misconduct involving their staff appear to have yielded their first results. In January 2006, 97 allegations were filed, whereas in December 2006 only 12 cases were reported.
Gender Mainstreaming in UNAMSIL, Sierra Leone
Starting in March 1991, Sierra Leone’s civil war resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, two million displaced people and the total breakdown of the state system. The Lomé peace accord of July 1999 ended the hostilities. In October 1999 the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was authorised by the Security Council. UNAMSIL had a maximum deployment of 17,368 military, 87 UN police and 322 international civilian staff. As UNAMSIL’s mandate was passed prior to Resolution 1325, gender or women’s issues did not receive any special consideration within the mandate. UNAMSIL had no separate office dedicated to gender concerns. The mission was a member of the UN country team gender task force, however, and included a gender specialist as part of its human rights division. Gender specialist Theresa Kambobe was tasked with raising awareness of how policies and actions may affect men and women differently and how best to counter resulting inequalities. She worked within the mission as well as with civil society and government. She and gender advisor Jebbeh Forster of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) carried the chief responsibility of including gender perspectives in UN policies and organs. Both gender advisors worked in gender-related capacity building for community support organisations and government agencies. This involved teaching about the meaning of gender and how the concept can help to understand inequalities and how to counter them.
A UN gender theme group was established in Sierra Leone providing a forum for UN agencies, including UNAMSIL, to debate gender issues within the UN, civil society and the national government. The group initiated activities including training on gender concepts, analysis and mainstreaming for senior program staff and worked to raise awareness of gender concerns among the heads of UN agencies. Gender training and women’s empowerment were also key themes in HIV awareness programs for UN peacekeepers. The gender advisors worked to advocate for gender and women’s human rights targeting local councils, traditional leaders or teachers. As a result, today gender and women’s rights are part of most training programs of the police, army and local councils in Sierra Leone.
Paul Higate’s field research in 2003 noted a heightened ‘gender sensitivity’ among UNAMSIL staff, which he attributed to the 2002 UNHCR/SCUK report, which had called international attention to peacekeepers’ sexual misconduct. In spite of this Higate observed that UNAMSIL staff struggled to recall gender-awareness strategies. More recent information is scarce, but Jebbeh Forster, who co-operated with UNAMSIL as part of her work for UNIFEM, indicated that the understanding of gender and women’s rights among incoming UNAMSIL military personnel was low. Theresa Kambobe, UNAMSIL’s gender specialist, went further in explicitly stating that the process of raising gender awareness was hampered by a reluctance and even resistance of UN employees to recognise the importance of the issue. Some departments, civil affairs and human rights being notable exceptions, were not fully supportive of UN efforts to do justice to gender considerations. UNAMSIL’s focus was on quick impact delivery programmes; thus, agencies were hesitant to commit to long-term projects like gender equality or women’s empowerment. Kambobe further reports that her efforts to raise gender awareness and implement gender mainstreaming were significantly impeded by insufficient staff and funding. After Resolution 1325 was authorised, the situation improved only marginally. Even though a gender mainstreaming mechanism was introduced, according to Kambobe the efforts were held back by lack of a gender advisor at senior level. Funding, respect and appreciation of the gender efforts undertaken within UNAMSIL did not increase significantly.
Dealing with Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UNAMSIL
In UNAMSIL the work of the gender advisor included raising awareness of the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse. Gender specialist Kambobe was involved in awareness raising programmes on the corpus delicti of ‘SEA’ and how to prevent and respond to it. Poster and radio campaigns and training workshops for UNAMSIL and NGO staff, national police and military were arranged. Following complaints that uniformed UN peacekeepers were offering as little as US$1 to children for sexual favours, the UNAMSIL personnel conduct committee was created in March 2002. Its 16-member committee was charged with responding to misconduct by all staff categories and developing and implementing programmes to raise awareness of the code of conduct and the UN zero-tolerance policy regarding gender-based violence. The committee was however criticised for keeping allegations ‘in-house’, rather than having an external, independent body. Information sharing among stakeholders was alleged to have been limited, thus rendering the enforcement of the zero-tolerance policy for over 18,000 peacekeepers ‘unrealistic’. UNIFEM’s Jebbeh Forster indicated that towards the end of UNAMSIL’s mandate, the mission had developed a stronger ‘SEA’ unit. It ran weekly radio shows, which involved strong public participation and enjoyed a high popularity. By encouraging the population to report witnessed or suspected sexual misconduct, the programme helped to reduce the frequency of ‘SEA’ incidents. In addition, UNIFEM supported local communities in raising the incomes of women and girls to decrease their dependence on commercial sex, thus addressing the problem of sexual exploitation from the supply side in making women less vulnerable to offers for transactional sex.
UNAMSIL participated in a coordinating committee for the prevention of sexual misconduct set up by UN agencies, international NGOs and the national government. Its four sub-committees engaged in the areas of community reporting, empowerment, training and procedures were involved in developing prevention and response initiatives. They also trained UNAMSIL, NGO and humanitarian staff on gender-based violence. Higate’s field research in 2003 reflected high gender awareness among military observers; interviewees were cognisant of the particular vulnerabilities of women and children in post-conflict contexts and that the associated desperation might drive some to engage in forms of prostitution. Yet simultaneously, his research noted that after the UNHCR/SCUK report in 2002 military personnel in general became more secretive about their use of sex workers. They tended not to wear uniforms in establishments known as ‘pick-up-sites’ for sex workers and stayed low-key in their activities. A civilian interviewee insisted that sex ‘definitely’ continued to be exchanged for food or money between minors and a minority of peacekeepers. This indicates that a mere awareness of the plight of vulnerable groups did not suffice to deter UN staff from engaging in sexual exploitation. This impression is backed up by the NGO Human Rights Watch, which notes in its 2003 report that UNAMSIL’s investigations into sexual exploitation and abuse indicated ‘a lack of appreciation for the seriousness of the problem of sexual violence committed by UNAMSIL military or civilian personnel’. According to Human Rights Watch, the official zero-tolerance policy ‘had no teeth and therefore no impact on changing behaviour’. Gender specialist Kambobe lamented that resources for effective prevention and sanctioning of sexual misconduct were insufficient. She felt that she could not fulfil the full potential of her work because ‘SEA’ training programmes were restricted to mainly civilian police and military personnel rather than encompassing all staff categories including senior and non-military personnel.
Gender Mainstreaming in UNMIL, Liberia
Liberia’s civil wars (1989-97 and 1999-2003) led to circa 150,000 deaths and 850,000 refugees and internally displaced persons before the Liberian parties signed a peace agreement in Accra in August 2003. The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) came into being in September 2003. It is currently authorised until 30 September 2008 and is expected to be extended. UNMIL is a multi-dimensional operation, including 15,071 military personnel, 1,240 police officers and the appropriate civilian component. Resolution 1325 was already in place when UNMIL’s mandate was written, thus strategies for gender mainstreaming were explicitly incorporated. From its inception UNMIL has included an Office of the Gender Advisor (OGA). It trains all incoming mission personnel on how to analyse the impact of gender on policies, actions and environments to allow for the integration of gender perspectives into all policies, evaluations and programmes. All incoming staff attend a compulsory two-day gender training session. OGA advises all UN departments on how to develop their own programmes for gender mainstreaming as required by Resolution 1325. Substantive gender advisors are present in all mission sections. UNMIL gender advisor Mugo Muriithi reported that UN staff had been largely supportive of OGA’s work and departments have developed their own gender action plans.
However, UNMIL’s gender mainstreaming efforts suffered from insufficient staff capacity from the beginning. Sarah Martin, in research carried out for the NGO Refugees International, noted that at the beginning of the mission the gender advisor in charge of ensuring that the disarmament-demobilisation-reintegration process (DDR) included female combatants who had only started work three months after UNMIL’s first attempt at DDR in December 2003. When it came to training the incoming 15,000 military troops, in 2003 the gender office was staffed only by a volunteer, who was ‘too junior to have meaningful influence on the leaders of the mission’. As of 2008 the UNMIL gender office is again understaffed: Only seven of the nine designated positions are filled and the position of senior gender advisor is vacant following Joana Forster’s departure after the completion of her assignment in January 2008. However, more recently DDR included strong gender perspectives. Resolution 1325 ‘encourages all those involved in the planning for DDR to consider the different needs of female and male ex-combatants’. Acknowledging the distinct roles of women and men during times of war, OGA has advocated a broadening of the definition of ex-combatants to allow for a greater inclusion of women. Instead of exclusively targeting active fighters UNMIL has worked to include ‘women associated with fighting forces’ (WAFF) in the DDR process, that is, women who supported the fighters in any way, including as cooks or sexual slaves. As a result, 21,000 women and girls, rather than the originally estimated 2,000, were disarmed and demobilised.
Outside the mission OGA works to strengthen women’s participation in the peacebuilding process. It does this through workshops that aim to inform about women’s rights and encourage women’s leadership and participation. According to NGOs interviewed in Monrovia UNMIL’s initial gender work was somewhat ineffective, as locals often did not understand the language of UNMIL’s international staff. However, these NGOs described UNMIL as receptive to their criticisms regarding the language barrier and as a result locals were put in charge of gender awareness training, speaking local languages, with UNMIL focusing on monitoring. OGA works with national institutions to draw up mechanisms for them to integrate gender perspectives and concerns regarding the different needs of the two sexes into their respective work. In reforming the security sector the office pressed for inclusion of human rights and gender dimensions in the training of national security personnel. It supported gender-related capacity building in the Liberian national police and contributed to introducing a recruitment process that aims to include at least 20 per cent women by 2010.
The work of OGA is guided by Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security and by Resolution 1509, which established UNMIL in 2003. OGA aims ‘to ensure that gender issues are integrated in all policies, programmes, processes and activities within and outside the mission’. Within the mission this implies warranting that all units include gender perspectives in their work and policies. Outside the mission, OGA works directly with the host nation and civil society in tasks including DDR, security sector reform or elections. OGA acts as an advisor and capacity builder through workshops on themes like women’s human rights for emerging civil society and governmental bodies. The other key aspect of the Gender Office’s work is advocacy. In 2005, gender-balanced election participation was promoted. Collaborating with partner organisations women groups were mobilised to join political parties. The gender office advocated a 30 per cent female representation in political party listings and provided leadership training for potential women candidates. An almost equal participation of both sexes was achieved in the 2005 election. OGA has provided technical support on integrating gender in the development of the (interim) poverty reduction strategy, the UN assistance development framework (UNDAF) and Liberia’s truth and reconciliation commission, which was established in 2005. Currently OGA is supporting the implementation of the national action plan on sexual and gender-based violence and the development of a national action plan on the implementation of Resolution 1325. In 2007 an all-female UN contingent took up their work in Monrovia – an initiative that had been strongly advocated for and supported by the Gender Office. The 105 women of the Indian Formed Police Unit (FPU) primarily worked to support the Liberian national police. Interviewed NGOs reported that this female presence has had a significant positive effect by proving that women are capable of serving in the military or police.
Overall, NGOs voiced positive opinions about the gender work of UNMIL and explicitly welcomed the UN’s efforts to include gender perspectives in Liberian civil society and in governmental policies. They agreed that the situation of women in Liberia had improved considerably over recent years with girls being more likely to attend school and strive for careers. They attributed this to a female president and widespread gender programmes, including UNMIL’s gender awareness efforts. However, challenges remain. The gender office identified a stronger female presence in policymaking as a key future objective. Moreover, it is noteworthy that none of the interviewed NGOs were able to list key achievements of UNMIL’s gender programme. If achievements were mentioned, these were related to raising awareness of sexual exploitation and abuse. This indicates that either the Gender Office has failed to publicise their activities sufficiently or that their activities have not yet had a tangible impact on Liberian society.
Dealing with Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UNMIL
As mentioned earlier, since the introduction of an explicit policy of gender mainstreaming, sexual exploitation and abuse is no longer being dealt with by UNMIL’s gender advisors. Instead, the Conduct and Discipline Unit (CDU) has been charged with preventing and punishing any type sexual misconduct, which are once again treated as the conflated offence of ‘SEA’. By placing sexual misconduct under the responsibility of the CDU, the gravity of such misdeeds is immediately emphasised. Moreover, this permits the UN a more specialised treatment of the matter, while relieving the workload of the Gender Unit.
The CDU is responsible for sensitising UNMIL troops towards the issue of sexual misconduct, rigorously enforcing the code of conduct and taking remedial action to assist victims. In 2005 Sarah Martin, writing for Refugees International, lamented that UNMIL was slow in installing mechanisms for reporting, investigating and preventing sexual misconduct. The then-head of mission, Jacques Klein, was criticised for having appointed a ‘focal point’, a lead worker, for women’s trafficking who had previously been objected to for lacking training and experience. Moreover, victim advocates complained that Klein failed to follow up victims’ charges. During my field research in February 2008, UNMIL appeared to have taken these shortcomings to heart: Conduct and Discipline Unit and gender NGOs stressed that Alan Doss, head of UNMIL 2005-07, was passionately committed to fighting ‘SEA’. He ensured that the mission’s leadership was tightly involved in ‘SEA’ prevention and created a conduct and discipline advisory board which included all top management officials. UNMIL has taken part in an inter-agency meeting, producing an action plan to respond to allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse. The resulting report alleged, inter alia, widespread sexual misconduct by law enforcement authorities including UN peacekeepers. Subsequently UNMIL has augmented awareness programmes for local communities through training sessions by a national consultant. As part of the outreach program for local communities (especially those in UN-troop proximity) the consultant conducts training on how to protect oneself from and how to respond to sexual abuse. The training targets primarily NGOs, women and youth groups, traditional leaders and teachers. It aims to raise awareness of the danger of sexual abuse by militaries and peacekeepers, explain which groups are most vulnerable and what to do when one suspects or has witnessed sexual misconduct. In 2007 UNMIL increased its training sessions for ‘SEA’ focal points from three to four. In the second half of 2007 UNMIL trained 60 local NGOs/community-based organisations on sexual misconduct, compared to the 35 organisations trained in the same period of 2006.
The Conduct and Discipline Unit places a clear emphasis on prevention of sexual misconduct. It works to ensure that all employees are aware of the existence of the code of conduct and its implications. Widespread poster campaigns explain the details of the code. Messages are translated into the respective languages of the various contingents. Since the code applies to all UN-affiliated staff, ‘SEA’ focal points have been established in all involved units. They receive a training of the trainers (TOT) to enable them to pass on the rules regarding sexual misconduct to their respective units. In the second half of 2007, 2,602 UN military staff were trained on ‘SEA’.
UN staff are banned from places where commercial sex is commonly offered due to the categorical prohibition from engaging in transactional sex. Off-limits teams patrol these environments. However, informal talks with UNMIL staff indicate that a number of staff frequented such establishments, albeit none of them indicated they had purchased commercial sex. Although no case of alleged prostitution has been recorded since mid-2006, UNMIL describes transactional sex as one of the key challenges presently faced by the Conduct and Discipline Unit. If this or other sexual misconduct occurs, UNMIL attends to victims. The sexual assault and rape rapid response team (SARRRT) includes a medical officer, police commissioner, legal advisor, HIV advisor and UNICEF representative, who all come to the aid of a victim. Possible victims are attended to within 72 hours, so that medical and psychological needs as well as criminal and legal follow-up can be ensured. CDU and quick impact projects (QIP) assisted the Liberian NGO THINK (Touching in Need of Kindness) to construct a safe home for victims of sexual exploitation and gender-based violence. THINK has assisted over 600 victims of ‘SEA’, two of whom were child victims of rape involving UNMIL personnel.
UNMIL’s more recent approach to sexual misconduct has yielded its first results. From July to December 2006 nine ‘SEA’ incidents involving UN staff were recorded, while only two cases were recorded July to December 2007. Up to the end of this research there had been no allegations of ‘SEA’ against non-uniformed personnel, though UNMIL recognises the possibility of under-reporting. Overall, Liberians expressed positive attitudes about UNMIL’s presence. There was agreement that UNMIL’s campaigns to raise awareness of the matter had been successful in decreasing numbers of incidents of sexual abuse. Yet difficulties remain. The Conduct and Discipline Unit is understaffed and only employs five staff instead of the seven envisaged. CDU officer Damianus Masinde indicated that some UN unit managers were still not sufficiently committed to following-up misconduct. Thus, managers’ and commanders’ responsibility and accountability for their subordinates’ actions is presently being emphasised. If a case of sexual misconduct is reported and the manager of the respective unit appears inactive, s/he too will be treated as a perpetrator. The unit has introduced special manager training courses to raise awareness of this circumstance. Another problem is that despite a memorandum of understanding with troop-contributing countries, often no sanctions are taken against repatriated ‘SEA’ offenders once back in their home country. This difficulty will need to be addressed at headquarters level.
Comparative Analysis
In both UNMIL and UNAMSIL gender concerns, including those associated with sexual misconduct (whether treated as part of the overall gender work as in UNAMSIL or as distinct from it as in UNMIL), received considerable attention and were actively pursued. However, gender was attended to through different means and with varying effects within the respective missions. Both peacekeeping operations brought in staff who appeared to be working dedicatedly to include gender perspectives and concerns in their respective missions. UNAMSIL and UNMIL further have in common that their efforts for gender mainstreaming and against sexual misconduct were hampered by staff shortages. However, in UNMIL staff had been augmented to the seven employees envisaged, which compares positively to the single gender advisor in UNAMSIL. Employees of both missions lamented that much was lacking in terms of capacity building and described this as an obstacle towards more effective gender and ‘SEA’ work. Both missions’ gender efforts suffered from shortages in funding. Here, Resolution 1325 appears to be taking effect only slowly. UNMIL’s senior gender advisor of 2003 reported that budgeting had been completed the week before she arrived, even though the Secretary-General had specifically stressed that ‘the necessary financial and human resources for gender mainstreaming be a part of the mission budgets’. However, in 2008, there were no specific funding-related criticisms voiced by UNMIL staff, suggesting that funding shortages may have been overcome or at least alleviated.
The position of the gender advisor within the mission has a significant impact on his/her effectiveness. A position within the office of the head of mission and the opportunity to attend senior management meetings both increase the likelihood that s/he will give the gender advice demanded by Resolution 1325. Although UNAMSIL brought over a gender specialist, she was not of sufficiently senior level to be able to influence policy. My field research indicated that her influence centred upon civil society and government rather than having a significant impact on UNAMSIL itself. However, the situation changed in the aftermath of 1325. The succeeding head of mission, executive representative of the Secretary-General Victor Angelo, was described as deeply committed to gender issues and frequently verbalised this publicly. Subsequently, the gender advisor was included in the senior management team. At least initially, UNMIL too suffered from insufficient superiority of its gender personnel. Even though the Zeid-Report specifically urges missions to appoint individuals ‘who have experience in investigating sex crimes’, the individual chosen as UNMIL ‘focal point’ for trafficking and ‘SEA’ had previously been criticised sharply for lacking the relevant training and experience. During my research in 2008, the position of senior gender advisor was once again vacant in UNMIL. Mugo Muriithi of UNMIL’s Gender Unit blamed this on a shortage of qualified gender experts of sufficient seniority.
UNAMSIL’s mandate was passed prior to Resolution 1325 and hence did not insist on gender responsive peacebuilding. The mission focused on supporting peacebuilding through capacity building in key institutions like the judiciary, army or civil service, but not from a gender perspective. UNAMSIL’s lack of a gender office has been described as highly problematic, as the work of the personnel conduct committee was largely reactive (rather than proactive and preventative) towards allegations of sexual misconduct and failed to implement a gender awareness-raising approach. The committee’s efforts to raise awareness of the code of conduct fell short of the aims established in Resolution 1325 and could not be compensated for through the work of a single gender officer. Even though UNMIL’s mandate was passed with 1325 already in place, it appears that not all demands of the Resolution are being met. 1325 calls on peacekeeping missions to ‘support local women’s peace initiatives and indigenous processes for conflict resolution’, yet women NGOs in Monrovia criticised UNMIL for failing to consult them for input on projects and had rather employed them as executors of fixed UNMIL plans. The NGOs called for more one-to-one consultations between UNMIL and women’s and gender NGOs. Although some organisations had brought these criticisms before UNMIL, they had not yet received any signs of change.
Following the passing of Resolution 1325, UNAMSIL experienced a noteworthy change in policy, especially following the Secretary-General’s report on the fifth anniversary of 1325. Jebbeh Forster of UNIFEM reports that 1325 helped UNIFEM’s advocacy work so that other agencies started to be more open to issues of gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment. As a result, UNAMSIL’s political successor mission, UNIOSIL, paid much greater attention to gender mainstreaming and appointed a gender advisor at senior level P4. UNIOSIL keenly supported advocacy for three gender bills passed in June 2007, training of women aspirants for the 2007 national elections and women’s participation in the election through free radio time on the UN radio station. Still, UNAMSIL gender specialist Kambobe describes the impact of 1325 on UNAMSIL itself as limited. Funding did not increase significantly, and awareness of Resolution 1325 only just started to build up during UNAMSIL’s time. However, it was owing to this Resolution that UNAMSIL acknowledged the importance of including women in all aspects of peacebuilding and thus supported the Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET). Although Resolution 1325 resulted in the incorporation of a gender mainstreaming mechanism in UNAMSIL, this remained insufficient and cannot be compared to the mechanisms that were installed in peacekeeping missions like UNMIL, whose mandate was passed when 1325 was already in place.
There are indications that factors besides the formal requirement for gender mainstreaming as established through Resolution 1325 played a role in achieving an effective and systematic integration of gender perspectives and concerns. Since 2005, UNMIL’s leadership has been passionately dedicated to gender mainstreaming and the prevention of sexual abuse and has enforced this agenda among top-level staff. In addition, owing to a comparatively strong female presence in Liberian civil society organisations, there were numerous partner organisations with whom UNMIL could co-operate. It is likely that with the election of president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf conditions sympathetic to the foregrounding of gender issues were created in Liberia, thus aiding UN efforts for gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement. Women NGOs called on the UN to consult national women’s groups more actively, rather than treating them as mere executors of UN-made policies.
Conclusion
Comparative analysis of the UN efforts to achieve gender mainstreaming and prevent sexual exploitation and abuse indicates that UN Resolution 1325 has had considerable impact on helping to integrate gender perspectives into UN peacekeeping and preventing and responding to sexual misconduct. Gender concerns are now being included more systematically and with more zeal and intensity in United Nations peacebuilding. More staff, more financial means and tools like workshops and posters are available to UN staff working in the fields of gender mainstreaming and countering sexual misconduct. Since 1325, the theme of gender mainstreaming appears to have been taken more seriously among senior level staff and mission leadership, which in turn has given the Gender Office more freedom of action and authority to make its demands for gender awareness in policies and actions heard. Thereby it seems that the inclusion of gender concerns into the mandate itself is of great importance for effective gender mainstreaming, since the belated ad hoc incorporation of gender perspectives into UNAMSIL did not yield the same results as the concrete gender dimension of UNMIL’s mandate.
1325 has helped to demarcate the tasks of the gender unit. Staff of the gender office are no longer charged with dealing with matters of sexual exploitation but are free to focus their efforts more specifically on issues relating to gender and women’s empowerment. Through this clear separation both sections, gender and ‘SEA’, have been able to specialise and professionalise their work while receiving separate budgets and staff contingents. However, 1325 has not changed the tendency of UN policy and practice to conflate the concept of gender with unspecified ‘women’s issues’, often equating gender mainstreaming with ‘increasing women’s rights’. Further research will show how far this tendency may be harmful to the objective of gender mainstreaming. Similarly, the UN practice of fusing sexual exploitation and sexual abuse into a single illegal act has not ceased with 1325. Again, further investigations and debate will be needed to assess to what extent this may be problematic.
UNAMSIL, created prior to the passing of 1325, did not meet the Resolution’s gender requirements, not even with the installation of ad hoc mechanisms like the UNAMSIL personnel conduct committee. Yet it is noteworthy that conditions for gender mainstreaming and the promotion of women’s rights did improve. UNAMSIL’s mechanisms for gender mainstreaming and the prevention of sexual misconduct were enforced more strongly and efficiently following the passing of Resolution 1325. In UNMIL too not all requirements of 1325 were met satisfactorily. Co-operation with local women’s organisations for instance appeared deficient. Some problems have remained virtually unchanged in spite of the insistence of 1325 on gender mainstreaming. The efforts for gender mainstreaming and for the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse continue to be hampered by a lack of funding and staff shortages. It must be questioned though whether these shortages are not simply part of a general shortage in manpower and funding with which many UN departments, not merely those working in gender and ‘SEA’, are struggling. Lastly, it appears that factors besides 1325, such as a national government supportive of gender mainstreaming and the prevention of sexual misconduct, are also relevant for effective policy implementation. Further research will be needed to reveal to what extent this is the case.