Leonsious Ranjitraj is a UN Volunteer Women Protection Officer with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). He reflects on his volunteering experience.
This is my first experience serving with UN peacekeeping operations.
My day-to-day tasks include documenting, reviewing and analyzing cases of conflict-related sexual violence. This exercise helps identify trends and patterns to inform prevention and response interventions.
Working closely with colleagues at UNMISS and partner civil society organizations, I also support training and awareness sessions for relevant parties, helping achieve an arduous but important outcome of attitude change. My service directly relates to the UNMISS mandate of protecting civilians — deter, prevent, and respond to sexual and gender-based violence, including by actively intervening to protect civilians threatened by, and survivors of, sexual violence.
I am with the Women’s Protection Advisory Unit at UNMISS. This allows me to have a bird's eye view of the challenges women face in conflict settings.
My desire to volunteer sparked while living in a camp for internally displaced people during conflict in my home country — Sri Lanka.
We measure the result of our work by producing comprehensive conflict-related sexual violence trends, analyses and visualizations on a monthly, quarterly and an annual basis. These efforts have translated into an increase in understanding and appreciation of the negative implications of conflict-related sexual violence, with significant support from armed forces, civil society organizations and local communities.
The experience of UN peacekeeping comes with challenges on a personal and professional level.
One of my key responsibilities is to review the daily incidents of conflict-related sexual violence recorded by UNMISS field offices. The records show brutality perpetrated against women and girls and the suffering thereafter.
Reviewing and taking stock of these incident records is difficult. Yet at the same time, it brings a motivation to work harder in the hopes of reducing conflict-related sexual violence.
Before joining UNMISS, I supported the local Red Cross. To me, volunteering is about sharing knowledge and experiences, learning new things and growing. All this while making an impact in the lives of others around me.
My message for UN Peacekeepers Day is — listen to women! Provide them with space for their meaningful participation. Empower women as agents of change and increase efforts to address the root causes of gender inequality and discrimination.
To protect women in South Sudan, UNMISS has a specific mandate from the UN Security Council Resolutions framing sexual violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations as a threat to international peace and security.
UNMISS works alongside the Government of South Sudan, which specifically leads on the implementation of the Armed Forces and National Police Action plans on addressing conflict-related sexual violence, including holding perpetrators of sexual violence accountable.