ENGENDERING SECURITY IN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS

Set against the backdrop of the growing number of reports documenting the sexual exploitation of local females by male peacekeepers in Peace Support Operations (PSOs), this research aims to develop a broader understanding of the impact of male peacekeepers on both female and male beneficiaries through the lens of gendered relations. As part of the ESRC's New Security Challenges Programme, the research explores the ways in which female and male beneficiaries discuss their perceptions and experiences of security within the context of the presence of peacekeepers as part of a wider PSO. The research is informed by a comparative dimension and considers the PSOs in Cyprus, Liberia and East Timor. As well as contributing to understandings of the gender-dynamics shaping security in PSOs, our work aims to develop more theoretical considerations of security. In this way, we will be developing thinking that takes the human-geographical concepts of space and place as point of departure. Our concern here is to capture the ways in which beneficiaries experience the security provided by peacekeepers as somewhat ephemeral and contingent when framed spatially. Overall, through adopting an interdisciplinary approach, we hope to contribute to understandings of the nexus linking gender, security and its social-spatial dimensions.