Indian woman peacekeeper in South Sudan wins UN award for gender-inclusive project

Key Highlights

• The UN mission in South Sudan also congratulated Kumar, saying it is “proud of our #UNMISS peacekeeper” for winning the award for the gender-inclusive approach for her project.
• An UNMISS article in December last year highlights Kumar’s efforts to engage with women in South Sudan during her deployment.
• “Women were particularly reluctant.
• We are the first female engagement team that India has deployed so they were not used to seeing women in uniform,” the article quotes Kumar as saying.
• She said that despite challenges in the beginning, “we kept going and distributed important health kits and slowly, women in the local communities started trusting us more”.