As the world celebrates International Women’s Day on Monday (March 8), United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that more women should be given a bigger role in peacekeeping efforts, stressing that Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would be more easily attained if more emphasis would be given to women empowerment.

According to Ban, there are currently more women in senior posts in UN agencies than before, with an increase of about 40 percent in the last three years.

“But this is not enough,” Ban said, saying that women continue to be under-represented in areas such as peacekeeping.

“With initiatives such as these, we can improve the lives of hundreds of millions of women and girls,” Ban said, adding that the eight targets under the UN - MDG would be easily achieved by 2015 with the significant role that women play in peace and development.

The eight UN - MDGs, namely: End poverty and hunger; universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combat human immunodeficiency virus/ acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), environment sustainability, and global partnership, are aimed to be achieved by 2015.

“Until women and girls are liberated from poverty and injustice, all our goals – peace, security, sustainable development – stand in jeopardy,” Ban said.

The UN Secretary General meanwhile underscored the progress on women empowerment, saying that most girls now receive education, especially at the primary level, while a growing number of countries have policies and legislation supporting gender equality and reproductive health in place.

“We have much reason to be proud. Proud but not complacent,” he said, stressing that there are still injustice and discrimination against women. The UN revealed that over two-thirds of women experience violence.

It will be recalled that the UN is seeking more involvement from female police officers in its peacekeeping missions to address more easily cases of sexual and gender-based crimes in war-torn countries, where more women become victims of sexual and other forms of violence.

In 2009, there had been about eight percent of the 11,000 total number of police officers working in 17 missions around the world.