More female peacekeepers will not in itself reduce sexual exploitation

Despite that South Africa deploys the highest numbers of female soldiers in the United Nations Organisation Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), significant challenges to changing a military culture that tacitly accepts sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of local populations in the DRC remain.

A new DIIS policy brief discusses the measures taken to adress SEA in MONUSCO. In the South African contigent in MONUSCO, 18% of the military personnel are women compared to the average of 3.8% for UN peacekeeping missions.

The brief argues that strengthening in-mission gender training and investigtative capacities will be small, yet realistic, steps forward. Furthermore, the UN the should put more pressure on troop contributing countries to hold their defence leadership accountable for effective command and control enforcement.

The policy brief is based on a collaborative research between DIIS and the Royal Danish Defence College, RDDC.