I'll send you the memo that goes through a range of options about how to encourage troop-contributing countries to increase their contribution of female peacekeepers. Like yours, their preference is to choose positive incentives and positive reinforcement. This memo calculates that the cost of a gender premium wouldn't be enormous, even if you raised considerably the financial contribution to countries providing troops. It would actually be manageable.
Of course there could be a penalty. Of course many troop-contributing countries are very eager to contribute troops, so they would not want in any way to lose opportunities. In relation to sexual exploitation and abuse, there has finally been a discussion of a penalty. Finally, the Secretary-General has said no further deployments shall be permitted from countries whose troops are abusing or committing crimes against the local population. There will be no further deployments until they have an action plan to deal with this and show a commitment to prosecuting.
I just want to say that the UN has for many years been terrified of imposing an obvious penalty like that because of the fear of not getting troop contributions, which are so desperately needed. The fear was that as soon as you did that there would be no more contributions. The surprise was that as soon as the Secretary-General announced this at the end of last year, some of the countries that were in trouble immediately went to the department of peacekeeping operations and asked how they could get out of this mess and what they would have to do step by step. They were eager immediately to sort out the problem.
I think more creative thinking is quite possible on the idea of penalties or shame or disapproval, and that we will find that we're not discouraging troop-contributing countries. We might find much more alacrity in response.