The United Nations is in a series of peace and security restructuring and management reforms aimed at improving the organization’s response to prevention and conflict. In the midst of these complex and highly political reforms, as the UN Security Council meets today to discuss Women, Peace and Security (WPS), and as Canada prepares to host a high-level summit on peacekeeping, questions remain as to how gender expertise and analysis can be qualitatively improved within UN peace operations—a pressing issue for both the field and New York headquarters. Indeed, as the Informal Expert Group on WPS illustrates, conflicts on the Council’s agenda have distressing gender dimensions, including the use of sexual violence and abuse employed as a tactic of war, as in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Continue reading: UN Peacekeeping: Where is Gender Expertise? (IPI Global Observatory, theglobalobservatory.org)