Peacekeeping Doubles Its Female Mission Chiefs, From One to Two
Ameerah Haq, from Bangladesh, is the new peacekeeping chief in Timor-Leste and one of just two women special representatives of the secretary-general. The other is Ellen Margrethe Loj in Liberia.
One, Ameerah Haq from Bangladesh, has just taken over in Timor-Leste, one of the world's newest countries. Her counterpart, in Liberia, is Ellen Margrethe Loj of Denmark, the special representative of the secretary-general, as these highest-ranking officials in the field are known in the UN.
For Haq, the appointment in Timor-Leste, formerly East Timor, not only caps a long UN career that included difficult assignments in Sudan and Afghanistan but also signals a rise in the ranks of top officials from developing nations who are familiar with the lives, hopes and possibilities of people in poor societies.
Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former ambassador from Bangladesh to the UN and later an under secretary-general and head of the office looking after the interests of the smallest and most vulnerable countries, said he was delighted when Haq was named to lead a peace-building and recovery mission in Timor-Leste, which is still a country that is troubled by crime and political tension more than a decade after a harsh Indonesian occupation ended in a referendum administered by the UN.
"She deserved it, particularly in view of her rich development and nation-building experience," Chowdhury said of Haq. "I am also happy that she has joined the ranks of very few women SRSGs, but even fewer from developing countries." He described her as "one of the finest and remarkably efficient senior officers of the UN."
It will be a decade this fall since the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325, initiated by Chowdhury and other members at the time, which demanded, among other groundbreaking council provisions, that women not only be better protected in areas of conflict but that they also be given roles in peacekeeping and postwar development. The secretary-general was urged to name more women as mission chiefs.
Over the years, the list of women who have worked in this domain is short, and none of their assignments, all made since the early 1990s, were easy. Angela King of Jamaica served in South Africa; Elizabeth Rehn of Finland in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Carolyn McAskie of Canada in Burundi; Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway in Cyprus; Heidi Tagliavini of Switzerland in Georgia; and Margaret Joan Anstee of Britain in Angola.
Haq Called 'Sister' in Sudan
In an interview on a recent visit to New York to meet the Security Council, Haq, who has degrees in community organization and business administration from Columbia University and New York University, respectively, spoke about what she learned from dealing with regimes such as Omar al-Bashir's in Sudan and with a very unsettled and violent environment in Afghanistan.
Haq is a believer in building personal relationships, for which she was roundly criticized in Sudan because of the Sudanese leadership's involvement in the catastrophe in Darfur, which led to war crimes charges against President Bashir in the International Criminal Court.
"In Sudan," she said, "I would say the most difficult time was [when] a group of activist NGOs would say, You can't go anywhere near the government. And I would say, You have to talk with the government. You can't just take a collision path and confrontation. You stick to your principles, but you've got to be able to talk and listen. It is their country." When she left, she said, officials called her "sister" -- a sign of approval.
Haq said she also learned to go slowly in trying to change politics, improve human rights and steer people toward sustainable development. "There is a way, I think, to try and see how one can blend these things in post-conflict countries without throwing out traditional means and mechanisms," she said.
Haq is a modern Muslim who dresses in stylish "international" clothes, which she wears without concern in Islamic countries, where she is sometimes amused to see non-Muslims outdo her in sartorial modesty. Muslim leaders "know I'm a Muslim woman, and see me as a Muslim woman" she said. But her fashion sense is not normally challenged by officials.
"I say that in my country I don't cover my head," she said of Bangladesh, a nation with a Muslim majority but a lively Bengali culture. "I'm always like this," she said, pointing to her pinstriped pants suit. "I remember when I went to Afghanistan and in the first meeting I saw a colleague from Denmark, and some others, sitting there with their heads covered." Hers wasn't.
Barbara Crossette is the United Nations correspondent for The Nation and a former New York Times UN bureau chief.
Margaret Anstee of Britain
| Wanted: More Women to Keep the Peace |
Anstee, who is now Dame Margaret after receiving a British honor for her international service, wrote a book, "Never Learn to Type: A Woman at the United Nations," which was published in 2003 and is alternately funny, sad and angry about her pioneering role in Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa. A bold woman given to madcap adventures (she moved to a ranch in Bolivia after her retirement), she always enjoyed being female, she said, and was occasionally, even conspicuously, a party girl, sought after by numerous men.
"My philosophy was that, in my generation, one had so many disadvantages in being a woman," she told an interviewer in Vienna in 2005, "that one might as well make the best of the advantages that one did have." When she was assigned to a nasty post in Angola, she went to London to have military-looking clothes tailored so that she could look intimidating.
Anstee has remained a respected voice in international security. In June she will be a centerpiece speaker at a conference in Vienna held by the Academic Council of the United Nations System. Similarly, Carolyn McAskie returned from a stint of negotiating the peace among warring factions in Burundi to become the first head of the new UN Peace-Building Commission in New York.
Before her appointment in Timor-Leste, Ameerah Haq was the deputy special representative and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan from 2007 to 2009. She held the same positions in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2007. She also served as UN Development Program representative in Malaysia and Laos. Her career began in Jakarta, and she is now back in the orbit of Indonesia, which still looms large over the Timorese but in much more positive ways, she said.
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