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Engendering Sustainable Peace: Toward a Victim-Centric, Gender Aware and Culturally Sensitive UN Peacekeeping Framework

February 12, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST

Proposals for a standing United Nations peacekeeping body — often referred to as a UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) — have gained increasing support, but discussions have not always engaged with the uncomfortable realities of past peacekeeping operations, including failures to adhere to a “do not harm” principle toward vulnerable women and girls. This hybrid panel discussion addressed those critical gaps head-on.

About This Conversation

Hosted by Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) and the World Federalist Movement/Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP), this Q&A panel drew on lessons learned from past and current UN peacekeeping operations to explore why and how all current United Nations permanent peace force proposals should apply a gender-sensitive approach. With the UN Summit of the Future on the horizon and the People’s Pact for the Future developing apace, UNEPS and similar proposals were gaining momentum from civil society and states alike, making this conversation particularly timely.

Speakers

  • Augusto Lopez-Claros (Keynote & Moderator), Executive Director, Global Governance Forum; Senior Fellow, Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University; Former Director, Global Indicators Group at the World Bank
  • Rebecca A. Shoot (Co-moderator), Executive Director, Citizens for Global Solutions
  • Valeria Babară, Legal and Advocacy Officer, Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice
  • Madeleine Rees, OBE, Secretary General, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Visiting Professor at UCLA and LSE; Whistleblower in the Bosnia UN human sex trafficking scandal
  • Maj. Alistair Plimmer (Ret.), Senior Commander, Bougainville Truce Monitoring Group
  • Lauren Van Metre, Ph.D., Director, Peace, Climate and Democratic Resilience, National Democratic Institute
  • Alyn Ware, Interim Executive Director, WFM-IGP; Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament

Key Themes

  • Why gender-sensitive frameworks are essential to any proposed standing UN peacekeeping force
  • Lessons learned from the systematic failures in preventing and prosecuting sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers
  • The Bougainville case as an example of culturally sensitive, community-centered peacekeeping
  • How UN Security Council Resolution 1820 on Gender, Peace and Security should inform future peacekeeping design
  • The intersection of peacekeeping reform with the broader Summit of the Future agenda

Details