Project profile — Experts - UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations - Correctional Services Canada

This project is part of the Civilian Deployments Platform, which provides Canadian experts to organizations to support increased peace, security and stability. This project focuses on women and girls, in fragile and conflict-affected states. The project deploys experts from Correctional Services Canada, coordinating two to three week missions in multiple countries such as Benin, Central African Republic and Haiti. These missions respond to training requests from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The training includes UN pre-deployment training, effective practices for gender-responsive treatment of women prisoners training and basic instructional techniques training.

The expected outcomes for this project include: 1) enhanced application of the local correctional systems, to comply with international corrections and human rights standards; and 2) increased knowledge and capacity among the National Prison Staff, Government Provided Corrections Personnel, and UN Personnel, with regards to operating women correctional institutions/units in a gender responsive, trauma informed and secure manner.

Results Achieved as of the end of project (March 2020) include: 1) enhanced capacity of government-provided personnel to quickly integrate into UN missions and mentor international correctional staff, including mentoring related to the treatment of women prisoners; 2) increased awareness of women prisoners’ unique needs; and 3) enabled course participants to identify concrete and practical ways to apply UN standard rules to offender management daily. The deployment of Canadian Correctional Service experts to conduct two to three-week training missions in collaboration with UN DPO achieved the expected results of this project.