Sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers - PeaceWomen

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Carlyn van der Mark
Political Science Master Thesis - Sexual exploitation and UN peacekeepers
U.N adopts an organizational responsibility approach with, „just add gender and stir. The
U.N‟s measures and recommendations presented by the Zeid Report is to include more
women into peacekeeping missions, and provide gender training before missions.
1.4 Failure of the Zero Tolerance in combating social masculinities and the military
peacekeeper
One of the main strategies from the U.N to combat the social masculinities aspect is the
inclusion of more women in peacekeeping operations. The inclusion of more women will
result in a better environment that discourages sexual exploitation and abuse (A/59/710).
Another reason for including more women in peacekeeping operations is due to the fact that
victims and their spokespersons tend to be female (A/59/710). Women and teenage girls may
feel more comfortable speaking with a woman than a man. This may also encourage more
abuses to be reported (A/59/710).
The Zeid Report specifically argues that the “presence of more women in a mission,
especially at senior levels, will help to promote an environment that discourages sexual
exploitation and abuse”(A/59/710, p.19). Resolution A/60/640 further demonstrated that
equal gender representation in selecting staff for senior positions, will help enforce better
mission leadership and prevent future allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse
(A/60/640). It appears as if the inclusion of women in peacekeeping missions will influence
the level of sexual exploitation and abuse. To test if the Zeid Report‟s assumption of
including more women will indeed create less of an environment for sexual exploitation, this
thesis will investigate the number of allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse alongside
the number of women in the peacekeeping operation. If more women in a peacekeeping
mission correlates with fewer allegations then hypothesis I could be tested positive; that the
more gender strategies there are, then there will be a decrease in the levels of sexual
exploitation and abuse.