PeaceWomen has announced the launch of a new Women, Peace and Security News Sources index. Women, peace and security issues are making the news everywhere, everyday, it is often simply a matter of knowing where to look. PeaceWomen relies on a variety of websites, listservs, e-newsletters, and other e-news services for information on women, peace and security issues. Some sources provide women, peace and security-specific news updates, some include a regularly updated women and gender category which regularly includes peace and security information, and some are mainstream news services which provide occasional coverage of these issues. If you have suggestions for news sources to include or other comments and suggestions, please email: [email protected].

The World Organisation against Torture (OMCT) has published a fourth collection of reports, Violence Against Women: 10 Reports/Year 2003, within the framework of its Violence against Women Programme. The publication forms part of the Programme's work in the field of integrating women's human rights and a gender perspective into the activities of the United Nations human rights treaty monitoring bodies.

Evidence shows the benefits of adult literacy for women in a variety of developing countries, but others argue that the results of adult literacy programmes are poor. Research from rural Mali suggests that the participation of women in literacy programmes does not necessarily improve their socio-economic attitudes and practices. Why should this be the case and should development agencies therefore continue to assume that literacy programmes are always a good way to improve the lives of women?

In today's global economy, supermarkets and clothing stores are sourcing their products from farms and factories worldwide. Workers at the end of these supply chains - who pick and pack fruit, sew garments and cut flowers - are mostly women. Their work is fuelling valuable national export growth and could be providing the income to lift them and their families out of poverty. Instead, women workers are being denied their fair share of the benefits of globalisation.

The UK African Women's Leadership Institute (AWLI) is inviting applications for a one week residential training event for African women in the UK from 25th July to 1st August. The event aims to develop the leadership potentials of African women through training in critical thinking on gender issues, personal empowerment and organisational development.

More than a million women have died because rich nations have failed to honour their commitments to promote sexual and reproductive health, a group of NGOs said at the launch of a new campaign in London last Thursday. About three-quarters of a million pregnant women and newly delivered mothers in the developing world died over the five-year period between 1996 and 2001, the groups say. But the total number will be considerably more in the ten years now since the developed countries made their commitment at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, say the non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Gyude Bryant, the chairman of Liberia's transitional government, said on Monday he was disappointed at the low number of women applying to join the country's new police force and appealed for more female candidates to come forward. The UN international police force in Liberia began training an initial batch of 150 police cadets on Monday, but only 10 of them were women.

The article by Isabella Matambanadzo (Pambazuka News 162) on women and HIV/AIDS was great and brought out the amazing realities of how the pandemic is affecting women in particular. This article "Women and HIV/AIDS" shows that gender cannot be divorced from HIV/AIDS, given the accurate definition of gender. Well done Isabella for continuing with the women's movement.

Women'sNet is hosting a SADC regional workshop to build awareness on the use of open source software in women's organisations. Talking to tectonic (www.tectonic.co.za) about the conference, the organisers declared that 'being able to use information technology strategically and effectively is an important source of empowerment and skills development for women who often feel isolated and disempowered by rapidly advancing technological change.'

The objective of this course is to focus on developing the skills of women in understanding human rights issues and documenting the experiences of women in situations of armed conflict. Women who participate in this course will learn strategies for building sustainable peace at community, national, regional, and international levels.

It was late at night when the woman farmer came out of her house in the village of Joru in Sierra Leone to go to the lavatory. She saw a large white truck that had stopped about 50 metres from her home. It was an unusual sight, so she hid and watched what was going on. Inside were two white men and a black woman, who was yelling, 'leave me alone'. 'The door was open and one of them was on top of her', recalled the farmer,'K', who is in her fifties. 'The lady was really struggling. I saw that one was holding her down while the other was raping her …I saw both of them have their turn on her. After they had finished, I saw one of them drag her out of the cabin and put her in the back of the big truck. They then drove off' (Stuart, 2003).

Currently, there are over 55,000 military personnel and police from 97 countries serving in 16 Peace Support Operations (PSOs) around the world. These personnel have to confront a range of complex challenges involving mass movements of people, war crimes including torture, rape and ethnic cleansing, as well as confronting child soldiers - frequently within hostile environments. Overall these men (and considerably less women) contribute a great deal to the peace, stability and reconstruction of post-conflict states and their traumatized and displaced populations.

While it is clear that many peacekeepers carry out vital work in tough conditions to improve the security of host populations, in recent years, a significant number of male peacekeepers have been implicated in the sexual abuse of local women and children. These exploitative activities have included the manufacture of a pornographic video by an Irish peacekeeper involving a local woman in Eritrea, the exchange of sex for goods and services in refugee camps in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and the routine use of prostitutes (including girls under the age of 18) in many PSOs (Enloe, 2000; Fisher, 2003; Higate, 2004; Naik, 2002; Rehn and Sirleaf, 2002).

Anecdotally at least, activities of this kind appear to be widespread and almost always involve peacekeepers abusing their positions of trust, power and privilege to acquire sexual services from local women, and young girls and boys. These actions can have negative short and long-term impacts on the victims of such abuse and the wider host population.

First, it could be thought that the presence of peacekeepers might signal a break with the past for local women. Given that many of these vulnerable women have already endured unimaginable experiences of gender-based violence during the conflict, the close proximity of aggressively heterosexual military men might serve as an unwelcome reminder of their trauma. Second, many local women are made pregnant by peacekeepers who then leave the PSO and in so doing renege on their responsibility for paternity. Third, the stigma attached by the wider community and families to the involvement of local women and girls in prostitution may further marginalize individuals who are desperate for income. Fourth, local men may struggle to form relationships with local women as some of their potential female partners are drawn to the power and privilege of peacekeepers with large disposable incomes. In these instances, peacekeepers activities with local women can undermine their broader relations with the local community, in this example causing friction between local men and peacekeepers. Fifth, military men remain a key vector in the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Finally, militarised commercial sex industries can become institutionalised and, after the peacekeepers have gone, become a magnet for sex-tourists disposed to the abuse of young boys and girls. This has been the case for a number of the regions used for 'rest and recreation' by US troops deployed in South East Asia over the last 40 years.

Clearly then, the idea that 'boys-will-be-boys' - signalled by male peacekeepers' fraternization with members of the host population - may not be the benign activity that it is often argued to be. The post-conflict setting is especially sensitive and requires a host of skills including cultural awareness and self-discipline. These challenges need to be balanced with peacekeepers' very real human needs for affection and intimacy. In the remaining discussions of this article I present findings from exploratory fieldwork in the UN PSO in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (MONUC) and Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). Here, I attempt to provide some insight into how male peacekeepers perceive their activities with local women and girls. My aim is to illuminate the ways in which the male peacekeepers in the study both enact and perceive their masculine gender identities.

In the spring of 2003, with the support of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, I spent time in the DRC and Sierra Leone interviewing male and female peacekeepers, civilian UN personnel and representatives of NGOs. I also accompanied peacekeepers on patrol, spent time chatting informally with them and observed their leisure-time activities in local bars and hotels. Throughout this period of fieldwork research, my aim was to learn more about peacekeeper's perceptions of gender in its widest sense, their experiences of gender awareness training and, as the work developed organically, the nature of their relation with local women and girls. I wanted to understand how these experiences helped to shape the peacekeeper's masculinities (Higate,2004).

The operating conditions of the PSO in the DRC are particularly challenging (Ginifer, 2002). Average annual income per capita in the DRC is US$100; life expectancy for men is 47 years and for women 51 years. Sierra Leone has a history of trafficking and sexual exploitation of women. The violent war in the country has involved rape, gang rape and sexual slavery, and is argued to have affected between 215,000 and 257,000 women and girls (Ministry of Gender and Children's Affairs, Sierra Leone, 1996). The documenting of sexual exploitation in refugee camps is likely to represent one aspect of a much wider instance of gender-based violence. Both PSOs have, in common with post-conflict societies more generally, a severe dislocation of the civilian population. This first extract come from a fieldwork diary kept throughout the course of the work:

“I am waiting to brief the Sector Commander as to the details of my research in his geographical area of responsibility; this is an anxious moment for me, given the sensitivities of my developing interests in peacekeepers and prostitution. Three North African peacekeepers (in support roles to the Sector Commander) ask me about the details of the work. I explain that it involves 'gender issues' and 'gender relations', linked to the gender-awareness lecture attended by military observers in Kinshasa. There is an awkward silence, broken by some nervous laughter and quizzical looks. They ask me what I 'mean' by 'gender'. I stall momentarily, and my colleague rescues me by providing an appropriate definition. I find myself surprised that such a question might be posed as I hadn't considered the terms' potential to be interpreted differently from the ways in which I unthinkingly used it” (Extract from fieldwork diary, 20 April).

Participants struggled to recall the gender-awareness strategies in both PSOs. Some remembered the involvement of a woman in the proceedings, with others speaking at length about responsibilities and tasks that chimed more centrally with their roles as soldiers. It was clear that concerns around personal and team safety, patrolling conventions, radio-communication protocols, vehicle maintenance, care of and familiarisation with equipment such as electricity generators and medical problems had been successfully assimilated. Pride is institutionalised through discipline and the structures of units to which individual soldiers can feel loyal; pride in the military context is also masculinised, circulating within discourses of the peacekeeper as 'saviours of the war-torn citizenry' - who inevitably are women who require 'protection' (Stiehm, 2000).

When these sentiments were combined with what might be described as the neo-colonial orientations towards the host population evident in the two battalions from the Indian sub-continent deployed to Sierra Leone, it was possible to make sense of peacekeepers' interventions into local culture. For example, one officer explained with great pride how local women in the villages no longer 'showed their breasts'. He explained how he had held discussions with Paramount Chiefs who had been asked that the women in the villages 'cover up'. Several women had replied that they did not have sufficient clothing to meet the demands of the peacekeeping hierarchy. Members of the battalion then set about distributing clothing so that the women could ensure their breasts were no longer exposed to peacekeepers on patrol.

In another incident, early one night, we were driven around the town by a local NGO worker who expressed concern at the level of prostitution and the apparent impunity of peacekeepers in these activities. The town was alive with activity, and adjacent to one peacekeeper barracks were a fleet of velo-taxis waiting to take peacekeepers to local bars, hotels and a bushy area in which sex was alleged to take place. We were told that members of the contingent had to scale their barrack fence in order to make these liaisons, as they were formally subject to a curfew. Local women and girls were seen dotted around the vicinity of the barracks, as was one young man; their demeanour and location indicated that they were touting for business with peacekeepers.

A UN civilian worker had stated that in one class at the local secondary school 'at least two-thirds of the girls are paying their fees with money made from sleeping with peacekeepers', even though some of these girls were said to have regular local boyfriends as well.

Battalion personnel from a northern region of Africa, deployed in one of the eastern sectors of the DRC, were routinely observed with local members of the female community in bars, hotels and clubs. An NGO participant suggested that they 'weren't strictly allowed to have anything to do with 'sex-workers' although 'a blind eye was turned' to their activities. However, some concern had been expressed in the local town at the outcomes of several of these sexual liaisons that had culminated in pregnancy, leading to controversial paternity issues and further damaging the reputation of the UN.

Commanders did, however, make some concessions to local opinion by declaring certain bars as 'out of bounds' to peacekeeping personnel. To this, several peacekeepers responded by parking their UN vehicles away from the bars and clubs in question, and spending only enough time on the premises to link up with a local woman. Thus, activities of this nature were known to be ongoing, but definitive action tended not to be in force. Peacekeepers in both PSOs also employed other strategies to make their liaisons less visible. These included providing women with mobile phones so that they could be contacted more discretely, and indicating that the women they accompanied in hotels and other public spaces were 'translators'.

By contrast, in Sierra Leone the legacy of the UNHCR/SCFUK report detailing the abuses of refugees appeared to have influenced the extent to which peacekeepers were open about their use of sex-workers. For example, at various bars and clubs renowned as 'pick-up' sites with sex-workers visited during my brief period of fieldwork, peacekeeping personnel did not wear uniform (unlike in the DRC fieldwork site) and tended to be low-key in their activities. The sensitive political climate around the nexus linking peacekeepers, prostitution, sexual abuse and the UN Code of Conduct prohibiting sexual abuse of women under the age of 18 shaped masculine performances in Sierra Leone in ways that differed from those observed in the DRC.

During an interview in Kinshasa, a peacekeeper openly discussed the issue of prostitution:

Peacekeeper: 'These guys want to see what it is like'
Interviewer: 'What it is like?'
Peacekeeper: 'Sex with young girls…to see if it is different.'
Interviewer: 'Erm…right'
Peacekeeper: 'Some of them have daughters who are the same age, 14 or 15, and they want to know…they can have more than one at a time, it's an adventure. The guys might turn them down…but the girls are persistent and then it becomes a challenge for them [the girls] to get [sleep with] him.'

A female civilian UN worker in the DRC spoke of peacekeepers and civilian UN personnel keeping a mental tally of how many women or girls they had had sex with and competing with colleagues. She mentioned how she had seen older men, 'fat and balding' with 'plenty of young girls around them'. She added that in fact she preferred to work with a man who had a sexual outlet of this kind, as he was more likely to be 'controlled' in the office. She considered that 'the girls must have had a smell or something about them' that peacekeepers from overseas found attractive.

Once again, there was no recognition of the women's lack of alternative opportunities to generate income: they were being blamed for their predicament and their response to it. A central theme emerging in accounts from across the sample was that of the local women being 'enthusiastic' in attracting peacekeepers. A female UN civilian reinforced this point by referring to the ways that local women who were 'after peacekeepers' would lift up their skirts to passing UN vehicles to 'show them what they had'. The following excerpt from a military police officer captures this reversal of feminine and masculine roles, exchanging women's passivity for their part in the traditional role of the male in initiating sex:

“We were in a bar one night in [the local town]. It was full of girls, dancing and drinking…all over us. [The name of the peacekeeper] paid one of the women to keep the others away from him, they were hassling so much.”

Other accounts presented as 'vocabularies of motive' - again from both male and female civilian and military participants - drew on this discourse in which peacekeepers' masculinity was (re)presented as vulnerable to the advances of local women intent on 'getting to know them better'. The following account, relayed by a male participant working for an NGO in Sierra Leone, frames the women as 'doing all the running':

“Just as soon as the [nationality of peacekeepers] are rotated, the women are straight up to Lunghi [the international airport in Freetown] to meet the new ones [replacement troops]. You see, they're having relationships, and all in love, and crying and waving them off [the returning troops]…next thing, they're picking out the ones they like, just after they've landed!”

The participant went on to speak of the 'relationships' between the peacekeepers (who originated from a neighbouring African country) and some local women. He injected a degree of glamour into his account, painting the peacekeepers as 'playboys' who were real 'ladies' men', able to provide well for 'their women'. In these terms, any notions of prostitution and the profound inequalities in power and privilege were absent from his understanding, which spoke more of affluence and carefree sexual and romantic liaisons.

In this article I have argued that while many peacekeepers do a good job whilst deployed, a significant number of others abuse their positions of power and trust through their sexual abuse of local women and children. These peacekeepers live out a masculine identity that has negative consequences on a number of local women and children and that may further undermine already vulnerable groups.

Though women in these contexts should not be seen as bereft of human agency, nevertheless, the opportunities and possibilities available to them are extremely constrained. The UN, whilst having in place a range of policies intended to combat the sexually abusive activities of its peacekeepers appears largely ineffective in its response to perpetrators. Many of them go unpunished and act with impunity. Reasons for this are complex and involve delicate political and cultural dynamics at a number of bureaucratic and international levels. However, a significant component of gendered exploitation is argued here to relate to the dominance of masculine world-views and masculine culture that continue to struggle to take seriously the plight of many women and children in the post-conflict context. If we decide - as we should - that there is nothing essential or fixed about masculinities (suggested in the 'boys-will-be-boys' rhetoric), then we should make greater efforts to help change what is considered to be acceptable and unacceptable behaviour for male peacekeepers.

* I would like to acknowledge the help of Nadine Puechguirbal, Vanessa Kent (at the ISS), Dr Marsha Henry and the continued support of Katinka and Mo in this and ongoing work.

* Paul Higate is a Lecturer in Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. His research interests are gendered relations in peacekeeping operations and he has recently started a project to further explore the topic in Liberia, East Timor and Cyprus.

* Please send comments to

* See link below for references

The Bambuti Pygmies in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were targeted for extermination by forces controlled by one of the Congo's current Vice Presidents, reveal the findings of the first research mission to take detailed testimony from Pygmy villages in the forests of Ituri and Kivu. Attacks against the Pygmies included mass killings, acts of cannibalism, systematic rape and the looting and destruction of villages. Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has submitted a dossier of evidence to the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The dossier includes shocking video testimony from the victims of crimes carried out since 1st July 2002, the date at which the ICC's jurisdiction over crimes committed in DRC began, and continuing up to the present.

Ninety two representatives of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) from thirty five countries of the Commonwealth, met in Nadi Fiji from 28 to 30 May, 2004. The meeting was facilitated by the Commonwealth Foundation. The purpose of the meeting was to reach consensus on civil society comments to the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015 (PoA) and to provide a forum for civil organisations from across the Commonwealth to share good practices and strategies for the implementation of the PoA.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Right (ACHPR) has for the first time, nominated a woman as Chairperson, Mrs Salamata Sawadogo. Commissioner since 2001, she is also the Ambassador of Burkina Faso to Senegal. As a judge, she held many positions in the Burkina Justice Ministry. She also involved herself in women’s rights defence, namely within the Association of Women Lawyers of Burkina Faso of which she was the chairperson. The latest edition of the Women in Law and Development West Africa newsletter contains a detailed interview with Sawadogo, reproduced in full through the link provided.

About half those living with HIV are women, but women are now becoming infected at a faster rate than men. Many women experience sexual and economic subordination in their personal relationships and at work, and so cannot negotiate safe sex or refuse unsafe sex. This briefing from the International Labour Organization (ILO) claims that governments, employers, and trade unions have vital leadership roles to play in changing attitudes and practice in the world of work and the community at large.

Collaboration between government, companies and civil society organisations at local, national and international levels can contribute to gender equity and sustainable development, says an International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) paper that examines the case of cashew production in Mozambique and India. The paper illustrates the danger of a 'race to the bottom' when companies operating in liberalising sectors face few, if any, incentives for good social and environmental practice. The paper found that workers (particularly women) in this sector generally face low wages, poor working conditions, and discrimination.

In Somalia as well as in Africa and other developing countries, women’s ideas are not valued and their initiatives do not carry as much weight as those of men. This becomes an issue when communities are given responsibility to decide how local resources will be managed and or how conflict will be resolved. If they cannot participate in decision-making, they may not engage in executing plans that will have a positive, long term benefit to preserving natural resources and peace. Women are fundamental to any lasting peace in Somalia, argues this article.

African leaders on Wednesday pledged to place women at the heart of their development agenda, and to intensify the fight against disease. In an 11-point action plan agreed at the African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, they set out a strategy for improving the women's rights on the continent. The newly elected AU chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, told leaders that many African countries still held negative attitudes towards women.

Female journalists are often excluded from informal networks within newsrooms and from access to information about training and resources. For example, while male journalists may enhance their visibility and career opportunities by socialising with colleagues after work, this kind of networking is still considered inappropriate for women in many cultures. In light of this type of "culture", this resource directory is designed to help these women reach out to their colleagues by linking them to institutions and opportunities that can offer them support, training, knowledge, and connections.

Gender violence causes as much of a burden of ill-health and death among women aged 15 to 44 as cancer, and more than malaria and traffic accidents combined. A new report from the Panos Institute (London) reveals that such violence also occurs in the very places where girls and young women should be safe - in schools, universities and higher education institutes. The report, 'Beyond victims and villains - addressing sexual violence in the education sector', cites extensive case studies from around the world to show that girls and young women are subjected to a wide range of violent and aggressive behaviours, from verbal abuse and being groped in the cafeteria queue, to rape.