GFP

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Fifteen years after Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) called for greater participation of women in resolution of
conflicts,peace negotiations,peace-building,peacekeeping,humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction,
five UN field-based leadership positions working for the police, justice and corrections areas are filled by women in
Darfur. Hester Paneras presides over UNAMID’s Police Component; Francoise Simard heads UNAMID’s Rule of Law
section with Mary Okumu overseeing UNAMID’s corrections arm; Isha Dyfan heads UNAMID’s Human Rights section;
and Surayo Buzurukova leads UNDP Sudan’s Governance and Rule of Law unit.
Putting UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000)
in Action: Female Global Focal Point Leaders in Darfur
W
hen Hester Paneras sits
in UNAMID leadership
meetings in the United
Nations’“Super Camp”compound
on the outskirts of El Fasher town,
she is usually the only woman in
the room.
“Iamusedtoit,”smilestheamiable
UNAMID Police Commissioner,
“when I started my career in
South Africa in 1979, women
police officers were not allowed
to be in charge of men.”
Today, Paneras presides over the
largest United Nations police
component* in the world, with
3,500 international police officers
reporting to her – most of them
are men. Out of the 1,500 civilian police officers, who work
most closely with Darfur’s internally displaced persons,
only one in five is a woman.
But far from being discouraged, Paneras focuses on
the positive: “Actually, we have one of the best ratios of
women to men police officers in the peacekeeping world,”
she observes.
Police Commissioner Paneras can be credited for breaking
down barriers for fellow female police officers – by
increasingthepercentageofwomencivilianpoliceofficers
in UNAMID and demonstrating that female senior officers
can live up to the challenge.
Paneras does not like to see her contribution limited to
statistics, but rather wants to highlight what female police
officers like her bring to the job: under her leadership,
UNAMID’s police component was effectively restructured
for more effectiveness, efficiency and performance.
S
urayo Buzurukova can relate to Paneras’ experience.
The UNDP team leader of Governance and Rule
of Law has spent much of her career asserting her
authority as a woman manager.
UNAMID Police Commissioner, Ms. Hester Paneras, celebrates the opening of two new classrooms at Zam Zam camp, North Darfur.
Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID
“I have long believed that equality for women cannot
be achieved without women assuming leadership
roles,”she says.
In Sudan, Russian-national Buzurukova is one of
Commissioner Paneras’ counterparts in the Global
Focal Point (GFP), a working arrangement which
brings together United Nations partners to coordinate
their interventions in the areas of police, justice and
corrections and ultimately to more effectively serve
their national counterparts. When interacting with her
peacekeeping colleagues in Darfur, the Khartoum-
based Buzurukova underlines the need for long-term
development solutions in addition to life-saving,
protection and peace stabilization processes. “The
Darfuris deserve more than only short-term relief. They
require access to justice, to be part of the decision-
making process, to have a voice and be heard, to have
access to land and employment and be part of the
overall development process,”she insists.
*Hester Paneras served as Police Commissioner from 28 June 2013 to 27
June 2015

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T
he synergies created
by the complementary
priorities of the
peacekeeping mission and
country team are valued
by another GFP partner,
Canadian Francoise Simard.
UNAMID’s Rule of Law
Section Chief highlights a
joint project on Rule of Law
and Access to Justice, which
has provided an opportunity
for her section to collaborate
closely with Police, Human Rights and UNDP.
“From when I first started here in May 2014, I have seen
a willingness from UNDP to
work with UNAMID under
very special circumstances.”
Simard brings to UNAMID a
wealth of experience, having
spent two decades working
on post-conflict justice across
Central America, Africa, the Balkans, and the Caribbean,
including longer stints in Rwanda and Kosovo immediately
after the civil wars. She remembers those deployments as
life-changing.
“Obviously the situation was tense. Normal life as we
know it did not exist.” She fondly remembers the spirit of
possibility – the opportunity, under UNMIK’s executive
mandate, to help establish a prison sector from scratch,
to develop prison rules ensuring the functioning of the
prison system as a whole, and to set priorities on treatment
of mentally challenged detainees or alternatives to
imprisonment.“In which other job would I have been able
to make such an impact?”she wonders.
S
haring those motivations is Isha Lanla Dyfan, a
survivor of the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. A trail-
blazing Sierra Leonean lawyer and long-time Chief of
OHCHR’s Women Rights and Gender Section in Geneva,
Dyfan is an expert on the United Nations Women, Peace
and Security agenda, which has spearheaded UN efforts
to improve the representation and retention of women
in international field missions. Security Council resolution
1325 (2000) and its follow-up resolutions have sought to
expand the role and contribution of women in field-based
operations.
Dyfan, who spent
many years as an
activist with women
from other conflict-
affected countries
across the world,
calls advocating for the passing of this groundbreaking
resolution “the jewel in my crown.” Her latest duty station
is a primary example for the importance of more women
in peacekeeping operations: in Darfur, the vast majority
of civilians living in camps and in need of protection are
women and children. Hester Paneras for one reports that
“things are much easier when we have women on the
ground. When civilians see a woman police officer, their
faces light up. It’s like they get a connection. They relate.”
“In which other job would I have been
able to make such an impact?
”-Canadian Francoise Simard
UNDP’s Surayo Buzurukova, UNAMID’s Isha Dyfan and a UN Women colleague discussing the progress of a joint GFP programme / UNPhoto

3. J U N E 2 0 1 5 S C R 1 3 2 5 I N A C T I O N : F E M A L E G F P L E A D E R S I N D A R F U R 3
All five women find working in the field
challenging. An assignment such as Darfur is
obviously physically and psychologically draining:
the heat, food, capacity challenges, language
difficulties, exposure to human suffering on an
immense scale – these are challenges not just
for women. But Buzurukova notes that these
circumstances can pose an additional burden
for women: “For a mother, wife and a daughter,
the sacrifice involved in working in the field is
immense,” she says. Okumu and Dyfan are living
examples of this. With husband George also a UN
corrections advisor, the Okumus faced some very
hard choices. “When we first went to Liberia, my
three children were very young,” Mary Okumu
recalls. “We had no choice but to put them in
boarding school, and that was very, very tough on
the family.” Isha Dyfan had similar experiences.
“When I left home, my daughter was 13. And she
would be screaming down the phone every time
I called.” Few women are prepared to make that
choice. Field work is difficult to combine with a
partner’s career or family care, or with issues such
as aging parents at home. Opportunity costs can
be high, particularly with respect to social benefits
such as childcare, healthcare and maternity leave
or pay; job security is low and, on returning,
career prospects back home might have suffered.
Francoise Simard highlights that post-conflict
work involves long working hours and is often not
compatible with a ‘normal’ family life. She found
herself facing a choice in her early 40s: return to
Canadaandfocusmoreonpersonalmatters,orstay
in the field. In the end, the choice for her was clear:
“I feel that my work makes a difference where I am.
I can see the impact and results of my actions.” She
mentions an important speech recently made by
the Ivorian President in front of the International
Organisation of La Francophonie, wherein he
specifically highlighted the achievements of justice
reform in his country. “This is something I had
worked on for nine years,” Simard recalls. “It made
me proud to think that my team had made a real
difference.”
On working with her female counterparts in the police,
justice and corrections sectors, Dyfan sees a fundamental
role for the GFP: “Right now, the focus of the UN Mission
here in Darfur is on the protection of civilians, but there is a
broaderwayoflookingatthis.Abrokenjusticesectoristhe
root cause of a conflict and its reform is fundamental for
recovery, reconciliation and transition into development.
The GFP vision will help us to bring that to the fore with
senior management at all levels, both within the UN
Country Team and the Mission.”
A
s head of UNAMID’s corrections unit, Mary Okumu,
a veteran of the Kenyan Prison Service and long-
standing UN corrections officer who previously
served in Liberia and Kosovo, supervises a team of 16,
including three other women. During her tenure at
headquarters, Okumu witnessed the development of the
Global Focal Point in its early days.
“In New York, we worked very closely with the field and
UNDP on developing a vision for joint work in Darfur, in
my case on corrections,” she recalls. “Having just taken
up my new post here, one of my first tasks will be to
go to Khartoum for a number of courtesy calls with the
Government – and with Surayo!”
She looks forward to seeing the fruits of her New York
labour materialize with the arrival of a GFP consultant in
El Fasher who will be working with both the country team
and the mission.
Asked what shethinkswomencontributetopeacekeeping
missions, Okumu cracks a smile: “Look, I don’t want to
offend my male colleagues, but women bring a lot to the
table in terms of integrity, professionalism and respect for
people. Men are task-oriented; women are promoters of
empowerment and cooperative learning. People are the
greatest asset an organization can have. In the end, it is all
about people.”
THE CHALLENGES
UN Photo

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There are few visible female role models in this field. Entry
barriers thus provide a major first hurdle, which might
explain why few women even apply for jobs in the field. A
recent UN study found that out of every four candidates for
UN peacekeeping posts in the field, only one is a woman;
of the 25 percent of candidates who are female, most are
external candidates. This seems to suggest that field posts
are not attractive for women, even less so for women
already in UN employment—possibly because they are
afraid of ‘getting stuck’ in family-hostile environments.
When asked what advice she would give other women
who want to build a career in this field, Okumu says the
following: “If you have a family, make sure you discuss
the pros and cons with them before coming. You have
to have peace within yourself first before you can go out
and give peace to others!” Isha Dyfan stresses that things
do get easier: “There comes a time when children finally
appreciate your sacrifices. But,” she says, “you can get
isolated in the field, and many women don’t realise that
almost every other woman has been in a similar situation
before. To single women in their 30s, I usually recommend
moving to a family duty station for a while if they want to
build a family.”
All women emphasize the importance of time, stress
and people management and the need for support from
management. “We are all working together towards one
common aim and one universal objective, to do more and
find the best possible approach for a joint approach on the
rule of law,” Buzurukova says with a smile. “Overlap and
stepping on each others’ toes has become a thing of the
past.” Ultimately, all five women stress the immeasurable
rewards they have gotten out of working for the United
Nations in the field of rule of law. Dyfan, who lost family
members, her house, and her job to the civil war and who
had to start afresh as a refugee and late in her life a new
career at the UN, says the losses she suffered were almost
unbearable. “But these losses gave way to something new,”
remembers this strong woman with a will of steel. “The
mentoring I give to young women today, the impact my
work has, it all gives me a pleasure that no amount of
money could ever buy.” Paneras confesses that her real
passion is not the implementation of a dry mandate but
the people of Darfur. Meanwhile, Mary Okumu’s youngest
daughter, the erstwhile starkest critic of her decision to
join the UN, is just embarking on a UN career in New
York. So in the end, other women contemplating a career
in the field may have just found their role models.
The Global Focal Point is a United Nations working arrangement between DPKO, UNDP and other UN partners such as
OHCHR, UN Women and UNODC, which provides joint operational country support in the police, justice and corrections
areas in post-conflict and other crisis situations. Based on Secretary-General Decision No. 2012/13 of 11 September 2012,
the GFP convenes the UN system for more effective, efficient, coherent and coordinated country-level assistance.
UNAMID police officer interacts with women who receive English classes in Abu Shouk camp for IDPs
Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID
gfp@un.org