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Taking Part in Standardizing UN Sexual and Gender-based Violence Curriculum

The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre participated in two workshops to standardize the training curriculum on investigating and preventing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) for United Nations police officers deployed to peacekeeping operations.

The first workshop

The first workshop was held in the United States and created working groups on the relevant modules for the training curriculum. The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre:

• Participated as one of two non-governmental organizations to form part of a Curriculum Development Group.
• Represented one of three participants who were agencies other than police. The other two agencies were the Institute for International Criminal Investigations and INTERPOL.
• Participated as part of the workgroup on the module, “Prevention and Risk Reduction for SGBV.”
• Provided the United Nations Department for Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), Integrated Training Services (ITS) full access to its Sexual and Gender-based Violence course. This was used as a benchmark and input for the curriculum development.
• Shared lessons learned from the Sexual and Gender-based Violence training it ran in Sudan for the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) earlier in 2010. This created a common understanding for key issues and challenges to be considered as standards were developed.

The second workshop

Once draft modules were submitted and reviewed, a second workshop was held in Uganda from December 8 to 12, 2010. This workshop focussed on validating draft learning content and providing outputs.  At that time, representatives from UNIFEM, and UN Human Rights joined the discussions.

Next steps

The United Nations sexual and gender-based violence curriculum will be released in March 2011, and from there the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre will update its own materials to match the UN standard.

Currently, the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre serves as the international benchmark for training on this issue to police-contributing countries.  The organization’s efforts to train and establish capacity for SGBV in UNAMID, and recently United Nations Mission in the Sudan, are internationally recognized and acknowledged.