Our second speaker will be Captain Sophie Piper, who recently served with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.
And Captain Piper was commissioned from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 2013,
and she spent time serving in Germany on Operation Tosca as part of the UK support to the United Nations mission in Cyprus.
She's also served in the pool with the Gurkha Welfare Trust and as a Gurkha programme manager in the UK.
And her recent experience with the United Nations mission in South Sudan was as part of the UK operation to support it.
Morning, everyone. Richard, thanks very much for the introduction and Dutch as well.
Thank you much for a very insightful view on Sudan.
So my presentation, I'm just going to talk and introduce you into what the role of the military
currently play on Iraq missions and specifically to my experience in South Sudan,
and then talk about my experiences on Sudan and then kind of end with any key observations and hopefully open up the floor for some discussions.
So there are seven kind of main responsibilities, which are all U.N. uniform persons have,
and they are to protect civilians and U.N. persons there to monitor disputed borders.
That's your monitor and observe peace processes in post-conflict zones that provide security during elections to assist in country.
Military personnel on training and to assist ex combatants implementing peace agreements.
Now, in two thousand and eleven. South Sudan was considered a threat to the international peace and security.
So the UN's mandate mainly focussed on constitutional development.
However, in 2014, the UN reprivatized its mandate and focussing towards protection of civilian human rights,
monitoring and support for humanitarian aid and distribution assistance.
So this change, the mandate kind of changed the way in which military personnel were were employed in South Sudan or utilised in South Sudan.
And this then led to a change in or shift towards protecting,
monitoring and controlling around the protection of civilian accounts where the IDP were living.
So you got numbers for a moment. So according to the U.N. Web site, in March 2020.
And there are sixteen thousand and one hundred and seventeen uniformed personnel currently in South Sudan.
Of that 16000, that's U.N. poll and also troop contributing countries.
Oh, that's sixteen thousand one hundred seventeen person. Seven percent.
Those are women. Now, the U.N. set out targets eyes by 2028.
They want to try and reach 15 percent of all military contingents who are deployed on U.N. operations to reach fifteen percent.
So we've got eight years to pretty much double the numbers if we're using South Sudan's example.
So I suppose we are on the right strategy. So with Gaza troop contributing countries are here.
Who were the military base over in South Sudan? So obviously the military forces were bad.
The top U.N. troop contributing countries to unnice were Rwanda and continue to be Rwanda, India, Ethiopia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Ghana.
So what was I doing out that so just a little contact.
So as Richard mentioned, I was part of the UK's commitment to to unnice.
Our role was enablers. So we weren't what was considered kind of frontline security.
We were enabling the UN to do their job correctly.
And as an as an engineer, we were there to build hospitals of which we built the hospital,
which was accessible to 7000 U.N. staff, both civilian and military personnel as well.
So so my exposure was very kind of limited as to the job role in which the UK were were over there doing.
Our camp, however, was was pretty much opened up into the PSC.
You say, well, front gate every time you left. You went straight into the PIERCEY.
So our Day-To-Day exposure with children was. Was it was it was quite a lot.
They'd say it's there to the children actually. Which was really good.
But were the guards the security we had provided our own kind of or got security I suppose, for our camp.
But within that as well,
we were then protected by the likes of the Rwandans and the Indians who were also protecting at the IDP who were living within the PEOC.
So I had three main roles over in South Sudan.
One was to monitor and coordinate the day to day activity that the engineers were required to complete by the end of our mission there.
And the second one was to coordinate the return. Will UK troops, after serving in South Sudan for five years.
And the third one was to run the outreach programmes on behalf of the UK military over in South Sudan.
So everywhere doing ECAC, the military go, we run outreach programmes, which is basically kind of community work.
And that was where my main concern, of course, was. Now, as ever know, as everyone knows, collaborating, working is important in any organisation.
And in particular, a lot of the people on the panel have had an experience of working in the U.N. and
collaborative work couldn't be more important than working in the UN's fulness.
And so I identified quite early on three key areas and three parts of which look within within my responsibilities
of people that I need to have exposure to talk to in order to implement these outreach programmes.
And that was other TCC. So other troop contributing countries. It was also members of the PCC and also members of the the UN as well.
So the outreach programme which I initiated, was working in conjunction with the human rights department.
And the main focus was to try and establish a human rights advocate programme for members for youth members within the PEOC.
So we identified use to our contacts within the youth centre to come up with a sustainable
plan which could last beyond the acase decades tenure and the content of the programme.
We looked as to who the contributors were, and it was going to be UK Military and human rights department and then actually the U.S. themselves.
So the human rights department, obviously,
they focussed on the main areas mandated by within within the UN to them in particular was oversee human rights,
but also conflict related sexual violence from a military perspective and in the context of the discussion of women in uniform.
You know, I was thinking, what can the military bring to help educate but also provide opportunities for people?
So the contributions from a military perspective with was teaching skills that we take for granted, you know, organisation communication,
accountability, employing some form of values and standards and dare I say,
discipline to some extent with your goals to making sure you telephone time.
And then thirdly, as or the last part,
the context of the some of the content of the programme was was driven by the people who were chosen to go on the programme themselves.
So quite early on, they identified issues, the mafiosi, which they want to stress as as U.S.
They highlighted that there were a lot of problems with with suicides within the PHC,
unemployment, illegal abortions and also just general inequality and now into injured.
Interesting enough. Very little was actually brought up on gender.
So throughout the kind of four months pregnant women were running,
we we adjusted it based on what the demand was of for used on the topics which they wanted to discuss.
And it was on equality, on food and equality, access and equality to things like medicine, jobs and not necessary gender.
So from a female's perspective, that was a very, very interesting observation to make, especially then.
And that was kind of echoed amongst the human rights departments as well.
They were surprised as to how few gender issues were actually brought up by these use.
And very much the ECB working with their ages, varied from the youngest, who's 18, and the oldest is twenty four as well.
So we're moving on to another group of people that I associated with, and that was the other troop contributing countries.
Now, as a as a military person, a female, a female in uniform,
I have to say that the only issues I came across when working out back was with the other and troop contributing countries and.
When working with certain countries, that was a time in which I was made to feel like it's like a female rather than like a soldier.
Not once during my time and exposure to any member of within the PRC was I ever made to feel like a woman.
I was made to feel like a like a soldier, which is obviously what you want.
So it's a very interesting observation.
That's and, you know, it it the issues of gender was not necessarily from within those that were receiving the support from the UN,
but was actually amongst contributors to the organisation as well.
Which understandably was quite disappointing to too, I suppose, experience.
So you kind of some key observations of my experience over in South Sudan is that I think being a woman in uniform,
in peacekeeping, it provides you with an opportunity to influence and have an impact.
But I think this is by virtue of the fact that, you know, women,
peace and security and gender parity and gender equality is so high up on the UN's agenda.
So I think being a female within uniform, it provides an opportunity.
You have to be the right person to then go and actually make a difference and make an impact.
So going back to the beginning of the discussion, so if it meant picking a representation and I mentioned that the UN's ambition
of having 15 percent of females and all military contingents by 2020 eight,
I think that the ambition for that. I think it's realistic if it can happen.
But I would be a bit sceptical about the impact and what those top 15 percent would have on potentially decision making.
You know, I think you way over 90 percent of people who women who end up getting you are in the military.
Do you end up going on U.N. missions? We. We find ourselves every circumstance and presently on a humanitarian heart.
I've been very lucky and privileged to get the opportunity to work on a number of your missions, long side and NGO as well.
When I was working in the pool.
But that's my personality, which has opened up opportunities and a lot of people, people don't join the military to necessarily be a humanitarian.
So the impact of raising that number to 15 percent, I think in principle this is wonderful.
But then most importantly, we need to get the right people into the roles and not necessarily get them there because of their gender.
So I think on that note, I'd be finished my presentation and a thought to any questions, and hopefully that will create some good discussions.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Sophie.
And that was an excellent presentation. We've got quite a lot of questions that have been coming in.