Publications
The Civilian Capacities Initiative and Gender-Responsive Peace-building: An Inclusive Approach?
Gender perspectives in UN peacekeeping innovations? The case of MONUSCO in the eastern democratic Republic of Congo
The UN Operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) has experienced some military victories, as exemplified by the recent defeat of the M23 rebel group. MONUSCO has also instigated some crucial innovative measures aimed at improving its peacekeeping and protection practices. This policy brief examines three such innovations – the Community Liaison Assistants (CLAs), Community Alert Networks (CANs) and Joint Protection Teams (JPTs) in South Kivu province – with a critical discussion of some challenges of gender mainstreaming in these approaches and potential measures. The findings indicate that several areas need further attention in order to improve gender mainstreaming at the local and mission level. First, it is essential to draw on the experience of the CLAs for internal gender training within the mission at the civilian as well as military level. The CLAs have excellent skills in understanding local communities, and their knowledge is important for improving gender perspectives at the mission level. Secondly, experiences with these community-targeted innovations could be used to improve cooperation between UN sections on gender perspectives, where it seems to be low levels of institutional cooperation. It is important to address the gendered roles within communities that obstruct or enable the possibilities of security changes, not least the passivity of men who now rarely leave their homes and their stakeholder roles as formal and traditional representatives. One could say that Congolese men are unable to fulfill their masculine roles as breadwinners and heads of household. Moreover, there is a need to address the gap between what gender issues entail and how this affects the regular liaison work and reporting mechanisms of CLAs and JPTs. A focus on gender issues does not mean working also with women, but rather working with the entire society and understanding how actors and their institutions are informed and reproduced by gender relations in society, and in turn how these relations facilitate or obstruct the desired outcomes.
Countering ‘Malestreaming’: Integrating the Gender, Peace and Security Agenda in Peace Operations in Africa
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (2000) was hailed as a pioneering step in acknowledging the varied roles of women in conflict and promoting their participation in peace processes and in peace-building. Both before and after this resolution there has been pressure for integrating gender perspectives in all UN activities. This policy brief takes a critical look at the inclusion and exclusion of Resolution 1325 and the agenda of integrating gender perspectives in peace operations in Africa. ‘Gender perspectives’ are usually taken to mean adding women in these operations. Peace operations in Africa are indeed male-dominated, with on average 3% women in uniform (police and military), and about 29% international and 17% local women among the civilian staff. However, focusing solely on the number of women in peace operations is not sufficient. This brief takes up some of the more qualitative aspects of gender perspectives in these operations: gender mainstreaming and gender units. There is a potential for ensuring gender-mainstreamed approaches through these units, as well as challenges entailed by creating separate units that are de facto ‘in charge of’ gender perspectives. Rather than gender-mainstreaming, these operations often tend toward gender malestreaming: the male and masculine dominate the areas of security sector reform, including the army, strengthening of state institutions and rule of law. Gender mainstreaming is often viewed as a process that should fit in with existing structures or institutions, rather than challenging these structures which have ignored gender issues in the first place. This brief argues that the masculine discourses within such institutions (army and other state-building aspects), combined with the dilemmas of insecurity in the operative context, are central to the analysis of and bottlenecks to gender mainstreaming and gender-sensitive approaches. Gender mainstreaming and implementation of UNSC Res. 1325 will remain at the rhetorical level unless major changes are made in the masculine, militarized architecture of peace operations. It is recommended that the UN peace operations devote more time to gender mainstreaming the institution of the United Nations, as this may be the first step towards reform.
Pami Aalto (ed.): EU–Russia Energy Dialogue. Europe's Future Energy Security
Giving Moscow a taste of its own medicine: Azerbaijan's strategy on Russia