More Fijian Women to become "peacekeepers"

More NGOs are feeding the illegal and treasonous military regime and providing them with fodder to try and piece together its tattered international reputation.

In this instance the NGO, FemLink (backed by international aid agences) have unabashedly, in the name of peace, shoved the already marginalised to go keep the peace in the frontlines of a global war, and by implication therefore, under a bus.

Any semantic rhetoric now aimed to clear up the difference between mercenaries and peacekeepers is moot. The two are synonymous and not mutually exclusive.

NGOs in Fiji are well advised to remember that when the basic rules for a democratic society such as the respect for the rule of law and human rights are trampled upon, every building block that is attempted to build upon it will fail because it is We The People who run this town and not some two-bit suitcase radio con job that the majority of rural women hardly know about.

Furthermore if the overwhelming majority of our rural women were independently polled today and quizzed as to whether they would prefer to take up arms and keep the peace in someone else's war, or remain at home and keep the family together there would be no prizes for guessing what the majority point of view would be.

This is a classic example of what happens when opportunistic attempts at profile raising go awry and further accentuates the hefty price NGOs pay when backing the regime.

Fiji to achieve 20% increase in female peacekeepers by 2014 

Publish date/time: 02/11/2011 [19:09] 

Fiji is committed to achieving the desired goals of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. 

This is what Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Peter Thomson told the UN Security Council’s open debate on Women, Peace and Security in New York this week and reaffirmed Fiji’s commitment to achieving the security resolutions.  

Thomson said that Fiji’s commitment to the resolution is exemplified in its policies as it strongly encourages the recruitment of women in the security forces and their deployment with equal opportunities to peacekeeping missions. 

He said Fiji supports the global effort to increase the participation of women in UN police peacekeeping roles to 20% by 2014 and encourage the provision of pre and post deployment training of our peacekeepers and welcome further assistance and expertise in this regard. 

Thomson added that Fiji supports the participation and representation of women at all levels of decision-making and the Government continuously has consultations and interactions with civil society and the public. 

He told the Council that the Fijian Government promotes the enhancement of efforts to collaborate with the expertise and experience of women’s groups with a view to enhancing the implementation of 1325 at the national level. 

Story by: Sneh Chaudhry