The UN should establish senior post on women and war to ensure more women are involved in peacekeeping, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

Although the UN Security Council recognized that involving women in peace processes and peacekeeping is essential to improving the response to such abuses, women continue to be substantially underrepresented in peacekeeping and peace negotiations.

Only four of the 23 UN Peacekeeping Operations leaders are women, their website says. A recent study by the UNIFEM, the UN fund for women, shows little if any movement on the participation of women in peace processes and negotiations over the past decade.

In 1996, the secretary-general appointed a special representative on children and armed conflict, and the Security Council created a working group and a monitoring and reporting mechanism on this issue in 2005.

The Security Council this week expanded its mission to include reducing sexual violence committed against children in conflict. The working group initially dealt primarily with the issue of child soldiers.

"It has been 10 years since the Security Council acknowledged that women experience war differently than men and that this is a relevant security concern," said Marianne Mollmann, women's rights advocate at Human Rights Watch at their website. "But at all levels - national, intergovernmental, the United Nations - it's been almost all talk and hardly any action."

"The leadership vacuum on women and armed conflict has enormous consequences," Mollmann said. "Where women have been more directly involved in peace processes, the negotiated solutions have been more likely to include the concerns of the society as a whole."

The Security Council will consider a resolution in September to return to the subject.

Photo: Flickr (HORIZON)