The Positive Role of Female Peacekeepers

Love | Peace Around the world women are becoming peacekeepers, part of an expanded UN program to put women into war-torn countries needing estrogen to temper the effects of excessive testosterone and machismo. Women are currently 6% of peacekeeping forces, notably off the international goal of 20%.

Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first African woman elected as head of state in 2005, is particularly blunt about the importance of women peacekeepers:

“What a woman brings to the task is extra sensitivity, more caring,” Mrs. Sirleaf said in an interview. “I think that these are the characteristics that come from being a mother, taking care of a family, being concerned about children, managing the home.”

The softer approach is critical in Liberia. In 2004, a U.N. report criticized peacekeepers in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti for the sexual abuse of young women by trading food and money for sex.

Perhaps relevant at a time when the Catholic Church denies that having only male priests contributes to sexual abuse, in 2005, 47 peacekeepers were accused of sexual abuse in Liberia, compared with 18 peacekeepers who were accused last year, according to the U.N. mission. Note that the head of the UN mission is now also a woman, Ellen Margrethe Loj of Denmark. via NYTimes