Women and Peace Operations

During the past decade, gender has become an increasingly relevant factor in the design, implementation and evaluation of international peace support operations. On the one hand, awareness of the gender dimension of armed conflicts and the need for gender mainstreaming into this type of operations emerged as a major requirement in the political agenda of international defence and security organisations. The brutal evidence of the disproportionate degree of sexual-based violence in conflicts (IRIN, 2007; Seifert, 1992; Skjelsbaek, 2001; Bastick et al., 2007), as well as of peacekeepers’ sexual misconduct and involvement in human trafficking and exploitation (Allred, 2006; Baaz and Stern, 2009), were at the basis of what some have called a new gender regime in international security (Carey, 2001).