The All-Female Indian Unit

The UN’s first ever all-female FPU arrived in Liberia on January 30, 2007. The unit was 125 people strong and included 103 female officers and 22 male support staff. All operational officers came from the Rapid Action Force battalions of India’s paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force. Stationed within Congo Town, a suburb of the capital Monrovia¹⁶⁸, the unit joined four other FPUs from Nigeria, Nepal (two), and Jordan. Initially, the unit was supposed to stay for six months, but the deployment was then extended for an additional six months. After that, the unit rotated annually for nine years.¹⁶⁹

Next to the FPUs universal tasks such as “patrol duties, rapid response assignments, crowd and riot control, [and] general back-up support,”¹⁷⁰ the female unit also had some individual tasks like the protection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Liberian President. During the night the Indian FPU tended to carry out patrols with members of the LNP. During these patrols, the LNP officers, unlike the FPU ones, did not carry weapons with them.¹⁷¹

20, 2017); UN DPKO and DFS, DPKO/DFS Guidelines – Integrating a Gender Perspective into the Work of the United Nations Military in Peacekeeping Operations (New York, Office of the Military Adviser, March 2010), 25; Kember, “The Impact of the Indian FPU in UNMIL,” 27.

168 Maps showing the location of Liberia, Monrovia and Congo Town can be found in the Annex starting from page 90f.

169 The Times of India, “All-women RAF contingent to join UN mission,“ October 08, 2006,

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/All-women-RAF-contingent-to-join-UN-mission/articleshow/2120138.cms (accessed April 20, 2007); J. Wesley Washington, “All-female Police Contingent Arrives,” UNMIL Focus 10, December 2006, 12; Kember, “The Impact of the Indian FPU in

UNMIL,” 19 & 27; UN News Centre, “FEATURE: Hailed as ‘role models,’ all-female Indian Police Unit departs UN mission in Liberia,” February 12, 2016,

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53218#.WOIgFhTTynu (accessed April 20, 2017).

170 Thembani Mbadlanyana and Freedom C. Onuoha, “Peacekeeping and post-conflict criminality – Challenges to the (re-) establishment of rule of law in Liberia,” ISS Paper 190, Institute for Security Studies, July 2009,10, https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/105909/PAPER190.pdf (accessed April 20, 2017).

171 Mbadlanyana and Onuoha, “Peacekeeping and post-conflict criminality,” 11; Tristan McConnell, “All-female Unit keeps Peace in Liberia,” The Christian Science Monitor, March 21, 2007,

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0321/p06s01-woaf.html, (accessed April 18, 20017).

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When the unit first arrived UNMIL's Police Commissioner Mohammed Alhassan stated that:

“We hope that the presence of this all-female contingent will serve as an incentive and an attraction to encourage young Liberian women to join the Liberian National Police.”¹⁷² And Seema Dhundia, the commander of the unit, showed confidence in her troop and said:

“I think the Liberian people are going to welcome us with open arms and more of the local population will get inspired seeing these girls properly dressed, well equipped and probably they will get motivated to join the UN police officers, especially the girls.”¹⁷³ UN spokesman Ben Dotsei Malor even voiced that the Indian women “will be able to do the job just as well as their male counterparts are already doing on the ground if not better in some instances.”¹⁷⁴

But in the beginning there seemed to exist a reluctance among the all-female force to be advocates for the local female population. They viewed themselves more “as role models from a distance,”¹⁷⁵ and consciously limited interaction with local women. One officer even declared:

"They [local women] try hard to be friends with us, but we don't want to. We just do what the job requires, that's all."¹⁷⁶ Some people even claimed that the unit “looked down upon the Liberians, and specifically upon their traditional gender roles.”¹⁷⁷ It is speculated that they behaved this way in order to not appear weak. The unit started as a trial by the UN and commander Dhundia had to face doubters who thought that her unit was not as capable as the male ones. The issue seemed to have died down after the unit proved its worth, and over time the unit started to initiate several community outreach programs that focused on women and girls. With each following unit, more and more programs would be added. Rakhi Sahi, the commander of the second unit, which

172 UN News Centre, “In first for UN peacekeeping, All-Female Police Unit arrives in Liberia,” January 30, 2007, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21391#.WPiAqxTTyns (accessed April 19, 2017).

173 UN News Centre, “All-Female Police Unit arrives in Liberia,” 2007.

174 UN News Centre, “All-Female Police Unit arrives in Liberia,” 2007.

175 Kember, “The Impact of the Indian FPU in UNMIL,” 28.

176 Shabnam Grewal, “ All female UN squad a success,” BBC News, June 21, 2007,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6223246.stm (accessed April 18, 2017).

177 Laura Huber, “Power in Numbers?” 37.

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relieved the first squad in January 2008, even expressed the hope to start several community projects. The Indian officers gave classes on self-defense, first aid, and sexual violence, held community cleanups, provided medical services, and even worked together with a local orphanage. These were only some of the many projects that had been initiated by the female FPU. The unit also cooperated with the Office of the Gender Advisor in order to train female officers and spread gender awareness among the recruits.¹⁷⁸Yet, the unit seemed to still be battling between two wishes, on one hand, they wanted to further empower local women and on the other hand they wanted to be seen in the same light as the male units. During a research done by Laura Huber in 2013, which will be introduced more in-depth in the next section, she found that some UNMIL members thought that there was nothing unique about the projects that had been initiated by the female unit, while people that did not work for the UN emphasized on the influence that the female unit’s projects had on local women. In the same study, the unit was also criticized for being limited by its location. It argued that the part of the population that most needs exposure to the all-female unit does not get any as they are all living in rural areas, while the unit is mostly exposed to the people living in Monrovia. But it is believed that gender equality is easier to spread in the capital than in rural areas where gender inequality is very high.¹⁷⁹

After nine years of annual rotations, the last all-female Indian unit departed from Liberia on February 21, 2016, being part of the mission-wide withdrawal plan. During an official farewell ceremony, President Johnson-Sirleaf said that:

“If I had my will, I would have recommended for another unit of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) to leave, so that the Indian Formed Police Unit (FPU) would continue its stay in the country for the time being.”¹⁸⁰

178 McConnell, “All-female Unit keeps Peace,” 2007; Kember, “The Impact of the Indian FPU in UNMIL,” 28f;

Margarete Jacob, Daniel Bendix and Ruth Stanley, Engendering SSR. A Workshop Report (Berlin, 2009), 55; UN News Centre, “All-female Unit departs UN mission,” 2016; Kristen A. Cordell, "Security or Tokenism –

Evaluating Role of Women as Peacekeepers within the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping," PRIO, 7.

179 Huber, “Power in Numbers?” 72ff.

180 UN News Centre, “All-female Unit departs UN mission,” 2016.

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And the numbers do support the all-female unit. Compared to 2007, when only six percent of the LNP were female officers, nowadays women make up about 17 percent of the local police force.¹⁸¹ The Colonel of the last all-female unit, Madhubala Bala expressed that her officers had had a significant influence on local women,¹⁸² and former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon released a statement in which he paid tribute to the unit's hard work and pointed out that:

“The conduct of the FPU served as an example of how the deployment of more female uniformed personnel can help the UN in its efforts to combat sexual exploitation and abuse.“¹⁸³

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of UNMIL, Farid Zarif was confident that while the unit “will not be replaced, [...] its legacy will continue in Liberia and throughout peacekeeping.”¹⁸⁴