A police workshop in Italy is the UN’s latest effort to attract more women into the force. The 4-day conference at the UN Training Centre will bring together 30 gender experts from the UN and elsewhere to strategize on ways to encourage Member States to provide more female officers.
Progress has been made over the last two years in attracting more female officers into the UN Police, including the recent introduction into Liberia of an all-female specialized unit, but while the Peacekeeping Department’s (DPKO) Police Adviser Mark Kroeker is full of praise for all his officers worldwide – both men and women, he says the current figure of just 6 per cent of the force made up of female officers is unacceptable.
The Peacekeeping Department’s (DPKO) Police Adviser Mark Kroeker said, “I am extremely gratified by the increase in the numbers of women who serve in police components in UN missions. But this is way too few. Our attempts at getting our Members States to contribute police are difficult but the attempts in addition to add women to their contribution, this is almost impossible: we need to have women police officers so that we send the signal that women are co-equals in police work and that’s the way it should be because they’re available for every assignment as every man is in policing.”