EQUAL PARTNERS, LASTING PEACE

Major Swathi has received the UN Secretary-General’s Award 2025 in the Gender category for “Equal Partners, Lasting Peace,” a project that reframed women not as “beneficiaries” of peace, but as partners in making it work.

- TDG NETWORK

Major Swathi Shantha Kumar, an Indian Army officer serving with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)

In UN peacekeeping jargon, “gender-responsive” can sound like a slogan—until you watch how often conflict is negotiated, monitored, and enforced in spaces where women are excluded by custom and fear. That is the gap Major Swathi Shantha Kumar, an Indian Army officer serving with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), has tried to close with a field-driven initiative that has now drawn recognition.