January 11, 2019: Women play a vital role in United Nations peacekeeping operations. From conducting patrols, to providing medical assistance and interacting with the communities, UN women peacekeepers not only serve in furthering peace, they also serve as great role models.

That is why the UN is putting added emphasis on having more women serve in peacekeeping operations.  And there is lots of room for improvement in the numbers of women in uniform.

Between 1957 and 1989, only 20 uniformed women served as UN peacekeepers. In 1993, women made up only one per cent of deployed uniformed personnel in UN peacekeeping missions around the world.

Twenty-one years later, in 2014, out of approximately 125,000 peacekeepers, women constituted three per cent of the military personnel. That number increased to over four per cent as of 30 November 2018.

UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) is one of the peacekeeping missions where currently roughly five per cent of its some 10,300 peacekeepers are women. That is a slight increase from nearly four percent in 2010, and the Mission, mandated by the UN Security Council, is putting added emphasis to bring numbers up.

Among UNIFIL’s current 42 troop-contributing countries, and with 105 women in uniform, the Republic of Ghana is leading the way with the highest number of women peacekeepers. This is about 12 per cent of the Ghanaian Battalion’s total strength in UNIFIL.

See story: Women Working For Peace – The Story Of Ghanian Battalion (unifil.unmissions.org)

‍