Women in Peace Operations : Female Representation within MINUSTAH’s Uniformed Personnel

Abstract

The peacekeeping mechanism is arguably the most important tool the United Nations can resort to when dealing with threats to international peace and security. Since the end of the Cold War, a number of Security Council resolutions and peacekeeping policies have acknowledged the importance of increasing the number of female peacekeepers in the uniformed components of UN missions in order to adapt to the changing nature of violent conflicts and to address new security threats. This study focuses on the integration of women in peace operations and their impact on both the mission and the host population by exploring the case of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). MINUSTAH was seen by Haitians as a return to international occupation, which was exacerbated by the many cases recorded of sexual violence by peacekeepers against the host population. The MINUSTAH case tests the argument that women peacekeepers improve a UN mission’s operational effectiveness because of their assumed inherent ability to connect with the host community and tame the violent behaviour of their male counterparts. This study argues that without addressing issues of men and violent masculinities in military institutions, providing female peacekeepers with proper pre-deployment training, and deploying more women in front-line positions, simply raising the number of women deployed in the field is insufficient to really improve the operational effectiveness of UN missions. Keywords: UN peacekeeping, gender mainstreaming, women peacekeepers, UNSCR 1325, MINUSTAH, Haiti