This paper uses a gendered lens to explore some ramifications and lasting implications of peacekeeping economies, drawing on examples from four post-conflict countries with past or ongoing United Nations peacekeeping missions: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liberia, and Haiti.
The paper is particularly concerned with the interplay between the peacekeeping economy and the sex industry. It examines some of the characteristics and impacts of peacekeeping economies, arguing that these are highly gendered – but that the “normalization” of peacekeeping economies allows these effects to be overlooked or obscured. It also contends that these gendered characteristics and impacts have (or are likely have) broad and lasting consequences.
Finally, the paper considers the initial impacts of UN efforts to tackle negative impacts of peacekeeping economies, particularly the zero-tolerance policy against sexual exploitation and the effort to “mainstream” gender and promote gender equality in and through peacekeeping. The paper suggests that the existence and potential long-term perpetuation of a highly gendered peacekeeping economy threatens to undermine the gender goals and objectives that are a component of most peace operations.
Key findings:
- Different peace operations have different mandates, goals, and objectives related to gender. Within missions, gender advisors and gender units have been established; these serve as focal points in the mission’s efforts on gender aimed at the host society, in addition to intra-mission efforts to integrate a gender perspective. There are attempts to ensure the presence of more women peacekeepers in both the military contingents and the civilian components, including at high-level command or managerial levels. The inclusion of more women is assumed to reduce demand for sexual services among peacekeepers, as well as to help change the militarized, masculinized culture of UN peacekeeping operations.
- There seems to be a fundamental mismatch between the organization’s goals of mainstreaming gender and promoting gender equality, and its participation in and perpetuation of a peacekeeping economy. This has concrete and often negative impacts on the local women and men it encompasses, as well as on the gender relations being negotiated and renegotiated within the wider society.
- Existing UN policy that is relevant – the zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and abuse of locals by UN personnel – may have some effect on demand for transactional sex (or simply drive more activity underground), but is unlikely to change the fundamentals of the highly gendered peacekeeping economy, which include extreme (and typically gendered) income inequality, an informal and exploitable labour force, corruption and criminality, and a lack of accountability or sustained investment on the part of individuals and institutions associated with the peacekeeping.
- The UN’s prevailing approach of ignoring the direct socioeconomic impacts of its presence – either because they are not seen, or are considered outside the mandated priorities of the mission, or are considered “normal” and temporary – is neither a sustainable nor desirable option. The failure of international actors to think critically, and act responsibly, about the highly gendered implications of their presence – both in terms of the overall political economy but also, more directly, in terms of human lives and welfare in peacekeeping areas – implicates them in the negative effects of that presence, in the same way that they are associated with the positive outcomes of peacekeeping.
