Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), addressed the 2019 United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial meeting on the theme of “Uniformed Capabilities, Performance and Protection”.
Read the speech on: https://medium.com/unpeacekeeping/angelina-jolie-unhcr-special-envoy-speaks-at-un-peacekeeping-ministerial-4d08674ffcea
Gender equality and women’s rights are fundamental to global progress on peace and security, human rights and sustainable development. We can only re-establish trust in institutions, rebuild global solidarity and reap the benefits of diverse perspectives by challenging historic injustices and promoting the rights and dignity of all.
Read the story on: https://medium.com/unpeacekeeping/gender-equality-and-womens-rights-are-fundamental-to-global-progress-on-peace-and-security-a991757942dc
Women are rarely given centre stage in the political arena of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Gender specialists within the country’s UN peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) calculated that women typically receive less than 10% of all air time. In an attempt to carve out a space for women’s equal political participation, MONUSCO’s gender affairs team launched an initiative with Radio Okapi that brought Congolese women into the studio and on the air throughout the 2018 national elections. Through this concerted effort, participation of women in two of its most important political programmes increased to more than 50% and reached an astonishing 93% in another of the station’s weekly broadcasts. Listeners were thrilled.
Read the story on: https://medium.com/unpeacekeeping/uns-radio-okapi-sets-gender-equality-standards-for-media-in-dr-congo-9c53f6346bbd
Some 8,000 women are currently deployed in our 14 peacekeeping missions across the world, more half of them wearing the police and military uniform. However, as the United Nations strives to reach gender parity by 2030, women represent less than 5% of the total uniformed personnel within our peacekeeping missions. Recruiting and retaining women in the field — including those in uniform — is an operational imperative, says Bintou Keita, Assistant Secretary-General for UN Peacekeeping Operations, in an interview with Medium UN Peacekeeping.
Read the story: https://medium.com/unpeacekeeping/women-in-peacekeeping-an-operational-imperative-24d4e9a86250
When #women are equal partners, they find political solutions & become instrumental in ensuring accountability to #peace agreements. Creating an environment in which women feel safe encourages their equal participation in political life.
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En Rép. centrafricaine, Mali et Soudan du Sud, la participation des femmes aux négociations entre groupes armés a permis de mettre fin à l’escalade de conflits et réduire les tensions intercommunautaires. Les femmes jouent un rôle essentiel pour une paix durable.
UN Peacekeeping held an event earlier today on Gender and Peacekeeping to provide an overview of the progress of the implementation of the women, peace and security mandates in peacekeeping operations and to advocate Member States for their continued support, including increasing women’s deployments into peacekeeping operations.UN Peacekeeping has set a target of recruiting 15% of women as military observers and staff officers by the end of the year, and to reach a goal of 20% female police officer deployments by 2020.
“The number of women deployed in peacekeeping remains too low. We still have a long way to go to achieve parity and implement the women, peace, and security mandates,” said Head of UN Peacekeeping Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
The meeting, which was held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, was co-chaired by the UK Mission to the United Nations, the Permanent Mission of Romania to the United Nations, and the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú.
A 94% male military component is ill-suited to a peacekeeping environment. This is what more than 100 top military officials concluded during the 2017 Chiefs of Defence Conference earlier this month in New York.
Today women represent only 6% of deployed UN peacekeepers in the positions of staff officers and military observers.
The Head of UN Peacekeeping, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, welcomed the conference’s focus on gender and he called on all troop contributing countries to increase this number to 15% by the end of 2017, a goal that he described as ‘modest’.
As of today only 16 out of the 120 troop contributing countries meet the required threshold: #Cambodia, #Canada, #Cyprus, #Kenya, #Liberia, #Moldova, #Mongolia, #Nigeria, #Peru, #SouthAfrica, #SouthKorea, #Tanzania, #Uganda, #UnitedStates, #Zambia, and #Zimbabwe. Deploying women in peacekeeping is a matter of efficiency and performance.
Women peacekeepers can empower women in the host communities, interview survivors of gender-based violence, strengthen the situational awareness of the mission by interacting with women in societies where women are prohibited from speaking to men, and assist female ex-combatants during the process of reintegration into civilian life.
Find out about why it is essential to have women peacekeepers here: http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/issues/women
Only through the continued personal leadership of the Chiefs of Defense forces, and others, will we effectively prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse. We are in this endeavor together, and together, we can root out this scourge.
Gender parity in UN peacekeeping operations is essential for missions to be successful. The role of women is fundamental in reaching out to the people UN peacekeepers are mandated to protect.
UN peacekeeping along with the Women Foreign Policy Group (WFPG) and the Women International Security (WISS) is announcing the reopening of the UN Peace Operations Senior Women Talent Pipeline.
Watch video here @wiisnetwork at 12 PM EST
To learn about employment opportunities with UN peacekeeping visit our site here: https://careers.un.org/jobopenings/
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Have you seen our latest film with Goodwill Ambassador @davidbeckham? David’s own tattoos were marks chosen to represent happy or important memories, but millions of children worldwide bear marks of violence that they have not chosen. It’s everyone’s responsibility to speak out against violence and act now. Watch the film, share and help #ENDviolence for good. #nofilter #foreverychild #tattoo #davidbeckham #beckham #tattoos
