National environments shaping the women who serve should be a central part of discussions about the future of peace operations.

Fundamental shifts are taking place in conversations about the future of peacekeeping. Geopolitical tensions, funding cuts and a legitimacy crisis are prompting questions about whether international peace operations remain effective and relevant.

There is also a growing recognition that traditional peacekeeping approaches do not resolve the political dynamics and local complexities of a conflict, with unique and disproportionate consequences for women and children. Policymakers and global security experts are opting for narrower mandates and more agile interventions to ensure operations are more context-specific and demand-driven.

What appears to be missing from these conversations, however, is a focus on the people who serve and the impact of their background, skills and experience on a mission’s effectiveness.

Conflict is gendered – in how it is experienced and perpetuated, and how peace is negotiated. The personnel deployed to address conflicts need to reflect that reality. Research consistently shows that the quality and diversity of peacekeepers, not just their numbers, determine whether operations have the skills and legitimacy to meet their mandates, and above all, protect civilians.

It is precisely this reality that the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda was designed to address. Established by the United Nations (UN) Security Council in 2000 and rolled out on the continent through African Union (AU) frameworks, the WPS agenda promotes women’s participation and protection in conflict settings. That agenda has long faced implementation gaps and is now under increasing threat.

The most recent and visible example is the United States’ (US) termination of its WPS programme. The decision is part of a global anti-gender backlash that has placed significant financial pressure on countries to prioritise security spending over gender equality commitments.

The case for women’s inclusion in peacekeeping therefore needs a stronger foundation than resolutions and rhetoric alone, grounded in evidence of what women bring to operations.

A 2026 study by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and the International Peace Institute on gender-responsive operations in Somalia and South Sudan found that female peacekeepers fostered greater community trust. Women were more willing to share information about local tensions, early warning signs and sexual violence with them than with men. This matters because women comprise 95% of all reported cases of conflict-related sexual violence, perpetrated by both state and non-state actors.

However, women’s contributions extend well beyond community engagement and gender-based violence responses. Research shows that the most essential skills for operational effectiveness are not inherently gendered, and women serve across all peacekeeping responsibilities. Restricting their value to these functions risks reinforcing the stereotypes that limit their advancement. Understanding what shapes women peacekeepers and where they come from needs to be part of the conversation.

Although less than 10% of all uniformed peacekeepers globally are women, more than half come from Africa, including Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. The domestic environments shaping these women vary across the continent, but their experiences, capabilities and knowledge are rooted in African contexts that are directly relevant to their mission environments.

Peacekeepers are not recruited by the mission itself but are drawn from member states’ national police and military. Pre-deployment training provides a foundation that covers protocols, rules of engagement and basic competencies. But the operational experiences peacekeepers accumulate in their own countries shape the capacities they bring to the field.

Building trust with hostile communities, exercising agility under resource constraints and maintaining focus despite chronic exposure to violence are competencies forged in national policing and military environments, long before deployment.

In South Africa, peacekeepers are drawn primarily from the South African Police Service (SAPS), and the country ranks sixth among all UN member states in the number of female peacekeepers deployed globally. Women constitute 35% of SAPS total operational members, already exceeding the UN’s 2028 target of 30% representation for national policewomen.

Women in the SAPS are routinely exposed to violence – political and gender-based violence, ethnic and Afrophobic conflict, and organised crime and gangsterism, according to joint ISS-SAPS research. They develop experiential knowledge of these dynamics, their perpetrators, and their impact on women and children, equipping them to recognise and respond to the harms that peace operations must address.

South Africa’s relatively high proportion of women in frontline policing presents a useful opportunity to understand how national environments prepare women for peacekeeping. But the question it raises applies across the continent: what do women from African contributing countries bring into the field from their own contexts, and how should those contexts factor into mission planning and staffing?

As with any troop- and police-contributing country, the same environments that foster these competencies can also carry drawbacks. Hostile or coercive institutional cultures can cultivate and legitimise aggressive policing practices. At the same time, chronic exposure to violence that is normalised can produce burnout, poor coping mechanisms and disillusionment with the mission’s purpose.

These dynamics have contributed to sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers, repeatedly damaging mission trust and legitimacy. Whether operational experience translates into effective field performance ultimately depends on the skills, professionalism and character of the individuals who serve and the institutional cultures that shape them.

As policymakers and security experts rethink the future of peace operations, the issue of personnel preparation and composition should be a central feature of the conversation. The gendered nature of conflict and violence demands that the composition of personnel reflect that reality, not by representation targets alone, but by an understanding of what the national environments that formed its members, particularly women, have equipped them to do.

That understanding must be integrated into how missions are planned and staffed, not as a moral or ideological obligation, but as an operational imperative.

Written by Kelly E Stone, Senior Consultant, Justice and Violence Prevention, ISS Pretoria