Privileging Southern Voices on Gender and Police Reform

The North-South Institute (NSI), working with partners in South Sudan and Liberia, researched how some countries are integrating a gender perspective into their police reform programs. The research also looked at how women in those countries experience police reform differently from men, and what could be done to make police reform more responsive to women’s different needs. In its conferences and reports, NSI explored the experiences of women in the community as well as women police officers, to better understand these processes on both sides of the “thin blue line.”

Read the complete results of this work in:

African Women on the Thin Blue Line: Gender-Sensitive Police Reform in Liberia and Southern Sudan

Edited by Jennifer Erin Salahub, published in 2011.

In September 2010, a working level policy roundtable was held in Ottawa, titled: At the Margins of Security Sector Reform: Gender and Informal Justice. NSI co-hosted the event with the Centre for International Governance Innovation. The gathering provided the opportunity to draw lessons from female police officers and civilians from conflict-affected South Sudan and Liberia on their experiences with police reform – reform that is widely considered integral to building lasting peace and security. CIGI produced a report of the roundtable.

Presentations from the event include:

Gender and Police Reform in Southern Sudan – Bringing a Gender Perspective to SSPS, by Victoria Elia Guli, September 2010.
Police Reform in Liberia – Bringing a Gender Face to the LNP, by Caroline Bowah, September 2010.
Police Reform and Gender in West Africa: An institutional perspective, by Kristin Valasek (DCAF), September 2010.

The North-South Institute

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