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Fifteen years after Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) called for greater participation of women in resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction, five UN field-based leadership positions working for the police, justice and corrections areas are filled by women in Darfur. Hester Paneras presides over UNAMID’s Police Component; Francoise Simard heads UNAMID’s Rule of Law section with Mary Okumu overseeing UNAMID’s corrections arm; Isha Dyfan heads UNAMID’s Human Rights section; and Surayo Buzurukova leads UNDP Sudan’s Governance and Rule of Law unit.

Putting UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) in Action: Female Global Focal Point Leaders in Darfur

When Hester Paneras sits in UNAMID leadership meetings in the United

Nations’ “Super Camp” compound on the outskirts of El Fasher town, she is usually the only woman in the room.

“I am used to it,” smiles the amiable UNAMID Police Commissioner, “when I started my career in South Africa in 1979, women police officers were not allowed to be in charge of men.”

Today, Paneras presides over the largest United Nations police component* in the world, with 3,500 international police officers reporting to her – most of them are men. Out of the 1,500 civilian police officers, who work most closely with Darfur’s internally displaced persons, only one in five is a woman.

But far from being discouraged, Paneras focuses on the positive: “Actually, we have one of the best ratios of women to men police officers in the peacekeeping world,” she observes.

Police Commissioner Paneras can be credited for breaking down barriers for fellow female police officers – by increasing the percentage of women civilian police officers in UNAMID and demonstrating that female senior officers can live up to the challenge.

Paneras does not like to see her contribution limited to statistics, but rather wants to highlight what female police officers like her bring to the job: under her leadership, UNAMID’s police component was effectively restructured for more effectiveness, efficiency and performance.

Surayo Buzurukova can relate to Paneras’ experience. The UNDP team leader of Governance and Rule of Law has spent much of her career asserting her

authority as a woman manager.

UNAMID Police Commissioner, Ms. Hester Paneras, celebrates the opening of two new classrooms at Zam Zam camp, North Darfur.Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID

“I have long believed that equality for women cannot be achieved without women assuming leadership roles,” she says.

In Sudan, Russian-national Buzurukova is one of Commissioner Paneras’ counterparts in the Global Focal Point (GFP), a working arrangement which brings together United Nations partners to coordinate their interventions in the areas of police, justice and corrections and ultimately to more effectively serve their national counterparts. When interacting with her peacekeeping colleagues in Darfur, the Khartoum-based Buzurukova underlines the need for long-term development solutions in addition to life-saving, protection and peace stabilization processes. “The Darfuris deserve more than only short-term relief. They require access to justice, to be part of the decision-making process, to have a voice and be heard, to have access to land and employment and be part of the overall development process,” she insists.

*Hester Paneras served as Police Commissioner from 28 June 2013 to 27 June 2015

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The synergies created by the complementary priorities of the

peacekeeping mission and country team are valued by another GFP partner, Canadian Francoise Simard. UNAMID’s Rule of Law Section Chief highlights a joint project on Rule of Law and Access to Justice, which has provided an opportunity for her section to collaborate

closely with Police, Human Rights and UNDP.

“From when I first started here in May 2014, I have seen a willingness from UNDP to work with UNAMID under very special circumstances.”

Simard brings to UNAMID a wealth of experience, having spent two decades working on post-conflict justice across Central America, Africa, the Balkans, and the Caribbean, including longer stints in Rwanda and Kosovo immediately after the civil wars. She remembers those deployments as life-changing.

“Obviously the situation was tense. Normal life as we know it did not exist.” She fondly remembers the spirit of possibility – the opportunity, under UNMIK’s executive mandate, to help establish a prison sector from scratch,

to develop prison rules ensuring the functioning of the prison system as a whole, and to set priorities on treatment of mentally challenged detainees or alternatives to imprisonment. “In which other job would I have been able to make such an impact?” she wonders.

Sharing those motivations is Isha Lanla Dyfan, a survivor of the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. A trail-blazing Sierra Leonean lawyer and long-time Chief of

OHCHR’s Women Rights and Gender Section in Geneva, Dyfan is an expert on the United Nations Women, Peace and Security agenda, which has spearheaded UN efforts to improve the representation and retention of women in international field missions. Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and its follow-up resolutions have sought to expand the role and contribution of women in field-based

operations.

Dyfan, who spent many years as an activist with women from other conflict-affected countries across the world,

calls advocating for the passing of this groundbreaking resolution “the jewel in my crown.” Her latest duty station is a primary example for the importance of more women in peacekeeping operations: in Darfur, the vast majority of civilians living in camps and in need of protection are women and children. Hester Paneras for one reports that “things are much easier when we have women on the ground. When civilians see a woman police officer, their faces light up. It’s like they get a connection. They relate.”

“ In which other job would I have been able to make such an impact?”-Canadian Francoise Simard

UNDP’s Surayo Buzurukova, UNAMID’s Isha Dyfan and a UN Women colleague discussing the progress of a joint GFP programme / UNPhoto

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All five women find working in the field challenging. An assignment such as Darfur is obviously physically and psychologically draining: the heat, food, capacity challenges, language difficulties, exposure to human suffering on an immense scale – these are challenges not just for women. But Buzurukova notes that these circumstances can pose an additional burden for women: “For a mother, wife and a daughter, the sacrifice involved in working in the field is immense,” she says. Okumu and Dyfan are living examples of this. With husband George also a UN corrections advisor, the Okumus faced some very hard choices. “When we first went to Liberia, my three children were very young,” Mary Okumu recalls. “We had no choice but to put them in boarding school, and that was very, very tough on the family.” Isha Dyfan had similar experiences. “When I left home, my daughter was 13. And she would be screaming down the phone every time I called.” Few women are prepared to make that choice. Field work is difficult to combine with a partner’s career or family care, or with issues such as aging parents at home. Opportunity costs can be high, particularly with respect to social benefits such as childcare, healthcare and maternity leave or pay; job security is low and, on returning, career prospects back home might have suffered. Francoise Simard highlights that post-conflict work involves long working hours and is often not compatible with a ‘normal’ family life. She found herself facing a choice in her early 40s: return to Canada and focus more on personal matters, or stay in the field. In the end, the choice for her was clear: “I feel that my work makes a difference where I am. I can see the impact and results of my actions.” She mentions an important speech recently made by the Ivorian President in front of the International Organisation of La Francophonie, wherein he specifically highlighted the achievements of justice reform in his country. “This is something I had worked on for nine years,” Simard recalls. “It made me proud to think that my team had made a real difference.”

On working with her female counterparts in the police, justice and corrections sectors, Dyfan sees a fundamental role for the GFP: “Right now, the focus of the UN Mission here in Darfur is on the protection of civilians, but there is a broader way of looking at this. A broken justice sector is the root cause of a conflict and its reform is fundamental for recovery, reconciliation and transition into development. The GFP vision will help us to bring that to the fore with senior management at all levels, both within the UN Country Team and the Mission.”

As head of UNAMID’s corrections unit, Mary Okumu, a veteran of the Kenyan Prison Service and long-standing UN corrections officer who previously

served in Liberia and Kosovo, supervises a team of 16, including three other women. During her tenure at headquarters, Okumu witnessed the development of the Global Focal Point in its early days.

“In New York, we worked very closely with the field and UNDP on developing a vision for joint work in Darfur, in my case on corrections,” she recalls. “Having just taken up my new post here, one of my first tasks will be to go to Khartoum for a number of courtesy calls with the Government – and with Surayo!”

She looks forward to seeing the fruits of her New York labour materialize with the arrival of a GFP consultant in El Fasher who will be working with both the country team and the mission.

Asked what she thinks women contribute to peacekeeping missions, Okumu cracks a smile: “Look, I don’t want to offend my male colleagues, but women bring a lot to the table in terms of integrity, professionalism and respect for people. Men are task-oriented; women are promoters of empowerment and cooperative learning. People are the greatest asset an organization can have. In the end, it is all about people.”

THE CHALLENGES

UN Photo

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There are few visible female role models in this field. Entry barriers thus provide a major first hurdle, which might explain why few women even apply for jobs in the field. A recent UN study found that out of every four candidates for UN peacekeeping posts in the field, only one is a woman; of the 25 percent of candidates who are female, most are external candidates. This seems to suggest that field posts are not attractive for women, even less so for women already in UN employment—possibly because they are afraid of ‘getting stuck’ in family-hostile environments. When asked what advice she would give other women who want to build a career in this field, Okumu says the following: “If you have a family, make sure you discuss the pros and cons with them before coming. You have to have peace within yourself first before you can go out and give peace to others!” Isha Dyfan stresses that things do get easier: “There comes a time when children finally appreciate your sacrifices. But,” she says, “you can get isolated in the field, and many women don’t realise that almost every other woman has been in a similar situation before. To single women in their 30s, I usually recommend moving to a family duty station for a while if they want to build a family.”

All women emphasize the importance of time, stress and people management and the need for support from management. “We are all working together towards one common aim and one universal objective, to do more and find the best possible approach for a joint approach on the rule of law,” Buzurukova says with a smile. “Overlap and stepping on each others’ toes has become a thing of the past.” Ultimately, all five women stress the immeasurable rewards they have gotten out of working for the United Nations in the field of rule of law. Dyfan, who lost family members, her house, and her job to the civil war and who had to start afresh as a refugee and late in her life a new career at the UN, says the losses she suffered were almost unbearable. “But these losses gave way to something new,” remembers this strong woman with a will of steel. “The mentoring I give to young women today, the impact my work has, it all gives me a pleasure that no amount of money could ever buy.” Paneras confesses that her real passion is not the implementation of a dry mandate but the people of Darfur. Meanwhile, Mary Okumu’s youngest daughter, the erstwhile starkest critic of her decision to join the UN, is just embarking on a UN career in New York. So in the end, other women contemplating a career in the field may have just found their role models.

The Global Focal Point is a United Nations working arrangement between DPKO, UNDP and other UN partners such as OHCHR, UN Women and UNODC, which provides joint operational country support in the police, justice and corrections areas in post-conflict and other crisis situations. Based on Secretary-General Decision No. 2012/13 of 11 September 2012, the GFP convenes the UN system for more effective, efficient, coherent and coordinated country-level assistance.

UNAMID police officer interacts with women who receive English classes in Abu Shouk camp for IDPsPhoto: Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID

gfp@un.org