United Nations: India plays an important role in peacekeeping operations by spearheading the campaign to bring to justice those committing crimes against peacekeepers, according to Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations. "The lead from India on the accountability for crime against peacekeepers” is an important contribution to peacekeeping beyond the contribution of troops and police, he said on Thursday.

India is the leader of the 39-member Group of Friends for Promoting Accountability for Crimes Against Peacekeepers, which it founded in 2022. That same year, it pushed through the Security Council a resolution calling on countries hosting peacekeeping operations to investigate and prosecute attacks on peacekeepers, to provide support to those countries to deal with impunity, and to create a UN database of attacks.

So far this year, five peacekeepers have been killed in attacks. Lacroix, who was in New Delhi at the first Conference for Women Peacekeepers hosted by India this year, said that besides wanting to increase the number of women peacekeepers, the UN wanted more of them in leadership positions. “We would want to have more senior female generals, you know, applying for positions of Force Commanders”, so that there could be more of them, he said.

He called it a work in progress, pointing to Major General Cheryl Ann Pearce, the military adviser for the Department of Peace Operations, who was seated next to him. Lacroix said that besides wanting to increase the number of women peacekeepers, having women in leadership roles “guarantees a more effective peacekeeping” through more empowerment of women, he said. Of the 5,375 Indian blue helmets serving the UN, 151 are women.

 India contributed the first all-women Formed Police Unit (FPU) to a UN mission when they were deployed to Liberia in 2007. Kiran Bedi in 2003 became the first woman to become the UN’s civilian police adviser. 

(IANS)