Sabrina Karim

Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing: Token Gestures or Informed Policymaking?

Since the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (2000), which is referenced in most of the mandates for peacekeeping authorizations and renewals as of its adoption, UN peacekeeping forces have begun a process of gender balancing. While we have seen an increase in the numbers of female peacekeepers during the decade 2000–2010 and variation in the distribution patterns of female military personnel, we do not know if female military peacekeepers are deploying to areas that are safest or to areas with the greatest need for gender-balanced international involvement. Because the decision-making authority in the allocation of peacekeeping forces rests with the troop-contributing countries, which might not have bought into the gender balancing and mainstreaming initiatives mandated by the UN Security Council, we propose and find evidence that female military personnel tend to deploy to areas where there is least risk. They tend not to deploy where they may be most needed—where sexual violence and gender equity has been a major problem—and we find only a modest effect of having specific language in the mandates related to gender issues.

Explaining sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping missions

Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) is an endemic problem in UN peacekeeping missions. It is not only a gross human rights violation, but also threatens to challenge the legitimacy of the peacekeeping mission and undermines the promotion of gender equality in host countries. We examine if the composition of peacekeeping forces along two dimensions – the proportion of women and the records of gender (in)equality in the contributing countries – helps explain variation in SEA allegations. Analysis of mission-level information from 2009 to 2013 indicates that including higher proportions of both female peacekeepers and personnel from countries with better records of gender equality is associated with lower levels of SEA allegations reported against military contingents. We conclude that substantial reductions in SEA perpetrated by peacekeepers requires cultivation of a value for gender equality among all peacekeepers – improving the representation of women may help but still stops short of addressing the root of the problem.

Equal Opportunity Peacekeeping: Women, Peace, and Security in Post-Conflict States

Reading an academic International Relations book that focuses on the promotion of gender equality is both energizing and inspiring. The use of a positivist approach is methodologically sound given the research question driving this work. That is, to what extent do Peacekeeping Operations (PKOs) promote gender equality both in missions and through them? (p.4). Since the authors are invested in analyzing correlations between variables, observations of different data sets are both necessary and appropriate. Maybe the book does not have the captivating narrative of some feminist critical works, but it does test its hypothesis on the expected manifestations of gender power imbalances in PKOs.

Establishing the Rule of Law in Weak and War-Torn States: Evidence from a Field Experiment with the Liberian National Police

How to restore citizens’ trust and cooperation with the police in the wake of civil war? We report results from an experimental evaluation of the Liberian National Police’s (LNP) “Confidence Patrols†program, which deployed teams of newly retrained, better-equipped police officers on recurring patrols to rural communities across three Liberian counties over a period of 14 months. We find that the program increased knowledge of the police and Liberian law, enhanced security of property rights, and reduced the incidence of some types of crime, notably simple assault and domestic violence. The program did not, however, improve trust in the police, courts, or government more generally. We also observe higher rates of crime reporting in treatment communities, concentrated almost entirely among those who were disadvantaged under prevailing customary mechanisms of dispute resolution. We consider implications of these findings for post-conflict policing in Liberia and weak and war-torn states more generally.