African Women Break Barriers, Land Leading Roles in U.N. Peace Operations

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African women are making a difference in the United Nations’ global peacekeeping efforts, particularly in the lives of women and girls they meet during security operations.

Téné Maimouna Zoungrana, coordinator of the security teams at Ngaragba Central Prison, the Central African Republic’s (CAR) largest prison, is among the many Africans reshaping traditionally held views on women’s roles in peacekeeping operations.

Zoungrana in 2022 was awarded the first U.N. Trailblazer Award for Women Justice and Corrections Officers for her work in the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the CAR. She was instrumental in creating an all-female rapid intervention team and recruiting and training other officers at Ngaragba Central.

“In my professional environment, the field of security, women are often placed second or even ignored, because of stereotypical perceptions that men are better suited for the job,” Zoungrana told Italian news agency Inter Press Service (IPS). “I had the courage and strength, and vocation, to break down barriers and assert myself confidently in this field.”

The participation of women in the U.N.’s peacekeeping operations has grown significantly over the past several decades. Only 20 uniformed women served in U.N. peacekeeping missions globally between 1957 and 1989. Now there are 6,200 uniformed women in U.N. peacekeeping missions, half of whom are African. The numbers gradually increased due to initiatives to persuade and incentivize member countries to deploy more women, according to IPS.

Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia are among the nations supplying the most female troops and police officers to U.N. missions.

Ghanaian Navy Commodore Faustina Boakyewaa Anokye in February 2022 was named deputy force commander of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. She took over from the late Gen. Constance Emefa Edjeani-Afenu — the Ghana Armed Forces’ first female brigadier general — who completed her tour of duty in 2021. Edjeani-Afenu, who died in 2022 after a brief illness, was posthumously promoted to major general.

“The world will be a better place with gender equality,” Anokye told IPS. “We should, therefore, continue to challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination, draw attention to biases and seek out inclusion.”

Not all African women involved with U.N. peacekeeping efforts are deployed on the continent.

Serving in the U.N. Interim Mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Ghana Army Capt. Esinam Baah led patrols of the 120-kilometer demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel during a recent 18-month deployment. She led teams that visited local families to ensure their safety.

One of 173 Ghanaian women who served in UNIFIL, Baah regularly visited women and girls still struggling to help rebuild their communities after Israeli troops left southern Lebanon in 2000.

“There are some in the town who are not very comfortable with an unknown man talking to their females so, because I am a woman, I am able to approach any female, in any town, because they see me as a woman and I am not a threat,” Baah told IPS.

Jackline Urujeni, who commanded a force of 160 Rwandan police officers for the

U.N. Mission in South Sudan, said she believes female peacekeepers are making an especially positive difference among women and girls in the areas they serve. Half of the officers she led were women.

“Women here (in South Sudan) have asked me a lot of questions, especially when they understand that I’m the commanding officer of a big group of police officers,” Urujeni told IPS. “They ask me: ‘How can you be a commander? Don’t you have men in your country?’

“I noticed that girls and women here are gradually becoming aware of their rights to become who they want to be,” she added. “They understood that girls don’t exist just to get married and have babies. We are opening their eyes to new possibilities, to new choices that they should be allowed to make.”