Women in Security Sector

BRIDGES 4 PEACE | Policing | Stories | Videos | Publications | Community engagement

Through our Regional Framework Towards Peaceful, Inclusive Societies, UN Women is promoting a shift from a securitized and militarized approach to security. The principles of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda advance an inclusive and people-centred approach whereby women, including at the community level, play a central role with state authorities in shaping the understanding of security needs through dialogue, preventing conflict and providing solutions.

UN Women is partnering with Canada's Department of National Defence under its Military Training and Cooperation Program to strengthen integration of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the defence sector in the Indo-Pacific region.

In conjunction with defence and security institutions, the project BRIDGES 4 PEACE: Securing Peace, Advancing Equality centres on regional cooperation as well as enhancing operational effectiveness, inclusive leadership, strengthened civilian-military engagement and responses to emerging security challenges. It focuses on five countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Viet Nam and Timor-Leste.

The regional context presents both opportunities and complexities, including increasing climate-related disasters, evolving security dynamics and the growing importance of gender-transformative civil-military coordination. In this regard, the project aims to ensure that WPS becomes an integral and practical component of the defence sector, aligned with national priorities and institutional mandates.

Objectives:

1. Understanding the future of security
   Strengthening defence institutions’ operational effectiveness of WPS and emerging security challenges.
2. Leading for peace and resilience
   Advancing women’s leadership and participation in defence and security institutions.
3. Building trust, strengthening cooperation
   Advancing inclusive civilian–military collaboration for resilient and secure societies in the Indo-Pacific region

Activities are being carried out in parallel across all five participating countries while also fostering regional learning, cooperation and peer exchange. Women and men will benefit, recognizing that inclusive and representative defence and security institutions contribute to more effective outcomes.

Planned activities include:

• Regional Dialogue on Women, Peace and Security for the Future – Aimed at strengthening regional cooperation and identifying forward-looking approaches to advance WPS in the defence sector.
• Tailored leadership course for selected women personnel from defence institutions in the focus countries – To improve leadership capacity and advancing pathways for women’s participation.
• Building a regional community of practice on WPS within defence institutions.
• Gamified education tool – For military personnel to improve how they apply WPS principles.
• Regional convening on civil-military collaboration – To support practical cooperation and dialogue between defence actors and civilian stakeholders.

The project runs until February 2028.

When women participate in policing – at all levels and in all roles – everyone benefits. Law enforcement and other security responses are more responsive to, and reflective of, communities. The meaningful participation of women in policing increases operational effectiveness, enhances community trust and decreases corruption. Despite this, women remain chronically underrepresented in policing across Asia and the Pacific.

Community-oriented policing is proactive policing designed to allow the community to become partners in providing policing services to benefit communities. Integrating a WPS lens to community-oriented policing is fundamental to making policing more relevant and effective in understanding the needs of women and their communities, and tailoring policing strategies to people’s priorities and concerns.

In partnership with the Standing Police Capacity (SPC), UN Department of Peace Operations, and with the generous support of the Government of the Republic of Korea through its Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, UN Women is promoting women's meaningful participation and leadership in community-oriented policing to help build more resilient and peaceful societies.

Through the initiative, ‘Sustaining Peace in Partnership: Women’s Leadership in Community-Oriented Policing’ UN Women and SPC conducted assessments in 2023 in four countries – Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand – to identify barriers, good practices and partners in gender-responsive community-oriented policing in each country. Training on gender-responsive community-oriented policing and leadership for women and men police officers is being conducted in 2024.

Exchange of promising practices to close gender gap in policing in South and South-East Asia

In the words of Brigadier General Nov Ratana: “Women can serve communities and the nation”

Launch announcement: BRIDGES 4 PEACE to strengthen defence sector’s approach to women, peace and security in Indo-Pacific region

See also

• Facilitation Handbooks – Applying a gender-responsive and victim-centered approach to carry out investigations related to trafficking in persons and other criminal activities, available in English, Bahasa Indonesia, Malay, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese.
• Brief on Four years of collaboration between UN Women and UNODC to achieve long standing results

UN Women and UNODC partnered with INTERPOL to undertake groundbreaking research on Women in Law Enforcement in the ASEAN Region in 2020, with the generous support of the Government of Canada. This built on earlier cooperation between UN Women and UNODC to support women in law enforcement, with a focus on women in law enforcement at transit points to combat trafficking in women and girls.

The research highlighted how women make an essential contribution to law enforcement in the ASEAN region, including increasing overall operational effectiveness, improving law enforcement responses to sexual and gender-based crimes, and enhancing perceptions of the legitimacy of law enforcement institutions, despite being underrepresented in law enforcement.  

The full report, as well as a summary, animated video highlighting key findings, and recorded webinar of the launch are available below:

• Women in Law Enforcement in the ASEAN Region – Full report is available in English, Bahasa Indonesia, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese.
• Women in Law Enforcement in the ASEAN Region – Summary
• Animated video on Women in Law enforcement available in English and subtitled  in Burmese, Bahasa, Lao, Khmer, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese.
• Recorded video of the launch of the Report on 26 August 2020
• Recorded webinar of the side event on "Promoting Women in Law Enforcement across ASEAN", on the margins of the 10th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organize Crime (COP 10) that took place on Wednesday 14 October 2020. 

UN Women, UNODC and INTERPOL, worked with visual artists to highlight the positive impact of women in law enforcement. 

Visit our joint Virtual Photo Exhibition: Promoting Women in Law Enforcement in the ASEAN region. Selected photographs were also exhibited at the Alliance Francaise, Bangkok, in 2020.

Posters on the role of law enforcement to protect women and children during a public health crisis including COVID-19 developed jointly with UNODC and UNICEF: