United Nations Radio

Margot Wallstrom

A publication on women and sexual violence was released this week at the United Nations. Called Addressing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: An Analytical Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice, the inventory highlights how UN peacekeeping operations help and protect women. Margot Wallstrom, the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told UN Radio's Gerry Adams that the positive work of peacekeepers needs to be better known:

Duration: 3:41

MW: For example in Darfur, they have introduced this fuel efficient stove so that women don't have to walk long distances to find firewood. And I think that this is an example of how you can combine new more environmentally friendly techniques to actually also protect women.

GA: How do the peacekeepers know what is happening to women? Are the women expressing...

MW: This is also what we want to show by this example - that they have to interact and listen to women - to have the task of protecting civilians does not equal listen only to men but it involves listening to women as well and children because they have different needs and they need to understand where do women meet? Where do women go? What kinds of situations appear where they feel insecure or where we have to help them. Some other examples are these patrols that accompany women to the market for example. And that proved immediately to be also a way to create economic development because if you can sell your stuff or buy other stuff on the market, of course it will bring economic development to your village.

And of course after some time, the men joined. So it was a big ... group of people going to the market.

GA: So once the men in the village see that the peacekeepers are participating, then they want to join in also.

MW: And they will learn that you have to engage with women, with civil society to listen to women, to understand their particular needs. And in a time when peacekeepers are often described as perpetrators, which appears much more in the media, I think it is also good if we can give the good examples and the best practices of peacekeeping.

GA: What about when women peacekeepers participate?

MW: That's another thing which is very, very important that we see more women as police and military representatives on the ground because that would give them immediately access to broader groups of people. And women will feel more confident to walk up maybe to a woman police person or a woman in a blue helmet and I think that this is the experience so far. And we have some very good stories to tell about the all female police unit from India deployed in Liberia. And we want to see more of that. And I also think for the whole UN system to make sure that we have better gender balance and send more women representatives. It's very very important for our own credibility.

GA: Please tell me a little bit more about the inventory.

MW: The inventory is a way to register and make sure that we present all the good examples, best practices we have of peacekeeping operations round the globe where this has been used to protect women in particular and to prevent sexual violence. So these are the very concrete examples of things that the peacekeepers and blue helmets are already doing in different situations to help women to escort them to find water, to escort them to the market place, to make sure that they feel safe at home or the example of fuel-efficient stoves which allows women to stay home and not to have to walk long distances to get firewood, for example. So we feel that there is enough of material and enough of good examples to present it in a book like this one and then we hope that this will be used widely.

NARRATOR: Margot Wallstrom, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, was interviewed by Gerry Adams.