As senior gender advisor to the United Nations in Lebanon, School of Public Policy alumna Kristen Cordell creates peaceful policy for women among the ashes of conflict.
In a Palestinian refugee camp, 28-year-old Nevine turns down a scholarship to earn her PhD in London, U.K., because she cannot leave the compound without a husband. Her friends are refused permits to work outside the camp because that would require interacting, unaccompanied, with male soldiers at the border. Meanwhile, in postwar Liberia, a female soldier discovers she is HIV positive, like many other women who were abused during the country's recent civil war.
Kristen Cordell (MPP ‘05) knows these women, and many more like them, in war-torn or post-conflict developing nations, who live with restrictions on mobility, speech, education, and employment. Some live with outright physical and sexual violence. "Life is very difficult for these women in refugee camps and postwar countries—they are economically insecure, logistically insecure, and socially insecure," she affirms.
Cordell has spent the last three years researching and advising on issues affecting women in Lebanon, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with the United Nations and the nonprofit global policy think tank RAND. She uses her findings to recommend new or amended policies to protect and secure women in vulnerable positions. Since September 2009 she has served as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency senior gender advisor in Tripoli, Lebanon, at one of the 12 Lebanese facilities for Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The human rights laws for these female citizens of nowhere can be unclear at best or, at worst, overridden by competing cultural influences. "The refugee camp is very conservative and closed. People cannot enter or leave at will," Cordell explains. "With no exposure to freedom of ideas, arts, or culture we're seeing a real back-stride of tradition taking over."
Tradition in this sense means oppressive patriarchy, as in the case of Nevine. "We're seeing the party line of ‘in our culture it's okay to beat women, or marry at 12 years old,'" says Cordell. "In these contexts—in the camps and in postwar Liberia—culture is an explanation for violence. It's an excuse."
Today Cordell is lobbying on behalf of women in the Palestinian refugee camp as it gets rebuilt following a 2007 attack that leveled the compound. In addition to evaluating what issues affect women in the rebuilding—structural, political, and social—she is promoting elevated visibility and seniority of women in security roles.
Cordell explored the positive effect of having women in leadership security roles in a 2008 study she coauthored for RAND titled "Women and Nation-Building." The study focused specifically on redevelopment in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion post-9/11, but the research findings can be applied to Palestinian refugee camps and other postwar societies.
"We found that when women are included in the early stages of building or rebuilding a nation, it rocks the boat for a while, culturally, but also creates momentum for a safer society," Cordell says. "It was a really exciting find." In particular, she learned that when women are included in visible, public roles, fellow female citizens are better protected from harm or at least better able to report crimes against them. "Security is paramount in allowing a society to develop," Cordell emphasizes.
In the five years since she graduated from the School of Public Policy and joined the field of research and policy writing, Cordell has seen some vast improvements in countries afflicted by conflict. Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria have been taking strides to help women safely report abuse by building secure phone lines in the camps. Christian and Muslim women in Liberia banded together to create the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which brought an end to the second civil war in 2003 and helped pave the way for the election of Africa's first female president.
Then in 2008 Cordell personally worked on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820, which she calls a "landmark resolution against rape as a tool of war." The resolution commits the Security Council to seek out suitable ways to end sexual violence in armed conflicts, and punish the perpetrators. "We've really come a long way in our understanding of rape as a tool of war," she says.
Raised by her midwife mother who was once in the military, Cordell learned from a young age that a woman's rights begin with self-ownership of her body and childbirth. Her career choice has brought a few inevitable brushes with danger—including a battle with malaria and airplane hijacking—but Cordell's passion for women's rights has only grown thanks to the "countless impressive women" she has met who have survived conflict with courage, endurance, and compassion.
She recalls when Nevine had to turn down the chance of a lifetime in London; she now works with the United Nations to help her fellow Palestinians. "In America there would be a sense of disappointment about sacrificing a PhD opportunity to stay with family. But she is happy to work with us, putting in time and effort to do a great job. Her attitude is amazing."
