This paper examines the capacity of West African police services to enhance the recruitment, training and deployment of female police officers on PSOs. In particular, the study seeks to critically evaluate the current organizational structures of the Ghanaian and Nigerian Police services and their deployment of female police officers in peace support operations.
The study therefore, seeks to address two broad questions. First, how can West African states increase the number of female police officers on peace support operations? Secondly, how can these countries improve their respective training procedures of female police officers to become increasingly effective on peace support operations?
This paper prioritizes Ghana and Nigeria as empirical case studies because they contribute a relatively high number of female police officers both towards UN and AU operations within Africa and abroad. More importantly, both countries have begun increasing the number of female civilian police officers’ numbers after the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325 on gender mainstreaming, which poignantly illustrates the impact of the resolution, and the desire of West African countries to empower women to become greater participants in the areas of peace and international security.
KAIPTC Paper no_23.pdf