Women peacekeepers: making a difference.

• Author: Lloyd, Jane

The Security Council on 27 October 2005 marked the fifth anniversary of its adoption of resolution 1325 (2000), a landmark document that addresses the impact of war on women and stresses the importance of women's participation in all aspects of United Nations peacekeeping operations. It discussed the progress of the historic resolution's implementation and heard statements from 48 speakers on the topic of women, peace and security.

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Rachel Mayanja, Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, presented the UN Secretary-General's system-wide 2005-2007 action plan for further implementation of resolution 1325, saying that since its adoption it had "fundamentally changed the image of women, from that of being exclusively victims of war to that of active participants, as peacemakers, peacebuilders and negotiators".

Dubravka Marijanovic-Prolic is an example of this transformation. In 1992, she fled Sarajevo with her two children to a refugee camp in Croatia, running from a conflict that saw her husband kidnapped and her brother wounded by snipers. An experienced architectural engineer and urban planner, she secured a job a few months later with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), where she initiated the "Winterization Project". This involved distributing plastic sheeting to cover broken windows, damaged walls and destroyed roofs to people in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has since stayed with the United Nations and is now Chief of Operations Unit at the Engineering Section of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). Her work takes her to countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq and Liberia, where she is responsible, among others, for providing engineering oversight and support to special political and peacekeeping missions. She told the UN Chronicle that she had seen an increase in the number of female civilian personnel employed by DPKO since the adoption of resolution 1325. With a total of 15 engineers in her Section, she has gone from being the only female engineer in 2001 to one of three in 2005--an increase that she has personally had a hand.

Although Ms Marijanovic-Prolic has encountered some prejudices during her peacekeeping mission work because of her gender, she stressed that women peacekeepers should not take such gender bias too personally. Cultural differences could often make it difficult for others, especially men, to accept a woman...