Engendering Sustainable Peace: Toward a Victim-Centric, Gender Aware UN Peacekeeping Framework
Channel: Citizens for Global Solutions
Date: 2024-03-11

#UN #Peacekeeping 

Proposals for a standing United Nations (UN) peacekeeping body – often referred to as a UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) – have percolated for decades in order to prevent armed conflict and atrocity crimes, protect civilians at extreme risk, ensure prompt start-up of peace-keeping operations, and provide immediate humanitarian assistance in emergencies. However, these discussions have not always engaged with some of the uncomfortable aspects of previous peacekeeping operations, including the failure to adhere to a “do not harm” principle, in particular toward vulnerable women and girls. With the UN Summit of the Future on the horizon and the People’s Pact for the Future is developing apace, UNEPS and similar proposals are gaining support from civil society and States. This panel discussion aims to ensure that such initiatives draw from past experience as they look to the future.

This Q&A panel discussion - hosted by Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) and the World Federalist Movement/Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP)  - draws on lessons learned from past and current UN peacekeeping operations to explore why and probe how all current United Nations permanent peace force proposals should apply a gender-sensitive approach.

Keynote & Chair
Augusto Lopez-Claros, Executive Director, Global Governance Forum. Senior Fellow at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. 

Co-Moderators
Rebecca A. Shoot, Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions 

Alyn Ware, Interim Executive Director, WFM-IGP; Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament 

Panelists
Valeria Babără, Legal and Advocacy Officer, Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice

Major Alistair Plimmer Ret. (New Zealand), Senior Commander of the Bougainville Truce Monitoring Group 

Madeleine Rees, OBE, is a British lawyer and current Secretary General of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, as well as a visiting professor at UCLA (USA) and LSE (UK), and whistleblower in the Bosnia UN human sex trafficking scandal  

Lauren Van Metre, Ph.D., Director, Peace, Climate and Democratic Resilience, National Democratic Institute

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