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Peacekeeping in the African Union: Gender, Women and the Battle Against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

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Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Regional and Global Security

Abstract

Sexual exploitation and abuse committed by UN personnel in United Nations Peace Operations undermines the very peace the intervention aims to facilitate. By default, this also undermines the legitimacy of the United Nations as a key driver of liberal interventionism. International institutions have developed a series of policies, strategies and initiatives which focus on human security and securitisation of women; namely, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda serves as the overarching strategic framework for addressing gender inequality in conflict and post-conflict situations. Regional organizations, including the African Union, have also implemented their own women and gender-related protocol with a goal of improving security and stability on the continent. This chapter broadly looks at the interests and interactions of the UN, African Union and other actors in pursuing the WPS agenda, especially where it relates to adoption and implementation of instruments designed to securitise women, promote gender equality and address sexual exploitation and abuse in Peace Operations. The chapter identifies the key barriers to progress and concludes that regardless of the various issues surrounding motivation of various actors and human-security oriented instruments, there is a need to meaningfully engage with feminist scholarship and civil society organizations in order to find sustainable solutions to the problem.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), 2242 (2015) and (contestably) 2272 (2016). For an overview of the resolutions, please see Peace Women: http://www.peacewomen.org/resolutions-texts-and-translations.

  2. 2.

    UN General Assembly 2003. Investigation into Sexual Exploitation of Refugees by Aid Workers in West Africa. A/RES/57/306.

  3. 3.

    Resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015) and (contestably) 2272 (2016). For an overview of the resolutions, please see Peace Women: http://www.peacewomen.org/resolutions-texts-and-translations.

  4. 4.

    For example, as of May 2017, 66 states have also adopted National Action Plans (NAPs) to demonstrate their strategies for implementation of the WPS Agenda (Peace Women).

  5. 5.

    Including the 2003 Bulletin on SEA: Zero Tolerance Policy; 2005 Zeid Report (updated 2015): DPKO Conduct and Discipline Unit/Teams; 2013 General Recommendation 30 (CEDAW Women in conflict and post conflict); 2014–2018 DPKO/DFS Gender Strategy; 2015 SG Report on Special Measures for Protection from SEA; 2015 Global Leaders Meeting on Gender Equality and Empowerment.

  6. 6.

    Dissolved in 2001.

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  1. Regent’s University London, London, UK

    Sabrina White

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  1. Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Paweł Frankowski

  2. Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Artur Gruszczak

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White, S. (2018). Peacekeeping in the African Union: Gender, Women and the Battle Against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. In: Frankowski, P., Gruszczak, A. (eds) Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Regional and Global Security . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75280-8_8

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