Introduction of gender perspective to security sector reform in the Republic of Serbia

The reasons for the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 Women, Peace and Security in the Republic of Serbia can be found in the fact that it emphasizes the consequences of armed conflicts on women and girls and the importance of women's role in peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction of the country. Having in mind that Serbia and the countries of the Western Balkans have recently overcome conflicts, there are social necessities to avoid similar scenarios in future by women's more active participation in the creation of peace policy, understanding and cooperation in the region and in the Republic of Serbia. Therefore, this paper examines a relatively new methodology of gender analysis, setting out indicators, techniques, tools for mapping the process and measuring the progress of the National Action plan for the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in the Republic of Serbia. Actual data, presented in this document, clearly show that gender perspective has been introduced in the reform of the Security Sector in the Republic of Serbia. This model is based on method Jam Studa, that authentically comprised Jam KART, Jam KAS Bas, Method 4R, Jam KAS Plus, Jam UR and Mapping process. As the Team of Ministry of Defense was a coordinator of the process of making the NAP, the method used in this research was used for the first time in the whole security sector of Serbia. The topic of the research was - Condition of women in the security sector. There are a few Serbian normative and strategic documents which deal with the protection of women, discrimination and gender equality. These are, among others, the Strategy and Action plan for and improvement of the position of women and gender equality in Serbia. Availability of these documents allowed the National Action Plan to deal only with the improvement of the women's position in the security sector and protection of human rights of women in peace missions, conflicts and post-conflict situations. As a source of data, the research used 206 documents - 123 of primary sources and of secondary data. The analyzed documents were almost all relevant UN, Council of Europe, EU, NATO-Partnership for peace and OSCE documents concerning the 1325 Resolution. The research also analysed in details instruction for the document, prepared by non-governmental sector, first of all Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence (BFPE), in cooperation with the Canadian Fund, UN Development Fund for Women and OSCE. The objectives of this research were twofold: 1. to find out the number and position of women in the security sector in Serbia; and 2. to find the solutions for improvement of the actual situation of the position of women in security sector through implementation of Resolution 1325 in the policy, plans and life in the Republic of Serbia. Implementation of gender analyses as the main research method implies studying of differences in conditions, needs, level of participation, control of funds, power and decision making process by women and men in the security sector. Prior to gender analysis, indictors of gender equality in the security sector were identified, selected and the list was adopted. The starting point for selection of indicators was the 2010 Report of the Secretary-General. Besides that, indicators of the European Council concerning implementation of the UN SC Resolution 1325 proposals of BFPE were analyzed. The unique list of indicators for the whole security sector of the Republic of Serbia was prepared by selecting the given indicators and their adjustment to the security sector of Serbia. These indicators were distributed in the whole security sector and data were gathered in the Department of Strategic Planning of MOD. By applying gender equality analysis and introducing gender equality statistics for the purpose of this research, for the first time we obtained the accurate data on presence of women in the security sector (27.40%). Not only the number of women, but their position as well has become more distinctive by this analysis. After processing the data the results were obtained not only on overall gender equality but on involvement of women in certain ministries, directorates and agencies within the security sector. For example, the percentage of women in the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Serbian Armed Forces (SAF) in 2011 is 19.1%, out of which the percentage of women civilian persons is 16.0% the percentage of women professional officers 0.2%, non-commissioned officers 0.1%, professional female soldiers 2.8% out of the total number of employees in the quoted categories (Diagram no.1). There are only 10% of women at managerial positions of the total number of managerial positions in the defense system.

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