PhD student researching United Nations' peacekeepers' abuse of women and children wins University of New England's Three Minute Thesis award

This is the research area of her PhD thesis which beat seven other postgraduate finalists in the annual University of New England's Three Minute Thesis (UNE 3MT) competition, nabbing her the title win on September 6.

The UNE PhD student now goes on to compete in the University of Queensland's Asia-Pacific Three Minute Thesis (3MT) in October, pitting her against students from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, North-East Asia and South-East Asia.

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The 3MT competitions are designed to help PhD students hone their public speaking skills by encouraging them to tell audiences what their 80,000-word thesis is all about in three minutes.

"Trust," began Ms Strungaru's presentation titled A Price to Pay for Peace.

"I want you to think of a person you trust.

"What if that person not only broke your trust but lured you into a situation where you felt helpless and trapped.

"And what if that person you trusted, exploited or abused you."

Ms Strungaru's PhD research topic was titled "sexual exploitation and abuse conducted by United Nations' peacekeepers", and was split into two parts.

In the first part, her research delved into the UN as an institution to find out why allegations of sexual misconduct towards peacekeepers continue despite efforts to address the issue.

She was looking deeper into the bureaucracy itself to see if the problem resided with internal discourse and company culture.

Taking this 'top down approach', she said, would highlight discrepancies between what the UN releases to the public and their actions, hopefully leading to structural changes later on.

Changes that would enable women and children who are unable to report abuse in their own countries, have their issues properly dealt with by the UN.

But they're dealing with a stonewall. After all, two of the permanent members on the UN Security Council, Russia and China, have a history of horrific human rights abuses by western-world standards, she said.

In the second part of her thesis, Ms Strungaru is interviewing those who have been directly abused by peacekeepers employed by the global post-war established organisation.

The people she has interviewed for her thesis have spoken about retaliatory attacks after they have tried to speak out against the UN, she said.

"Even the children themselves are not receiving the redress that they deserve, and are scared to approach the UN," Ms Strungaru said.

Ms Strungaru expects to complete her PhD within a three-year timeframe to 2023, with hopes her research will better inform policy and decision makers across the world.

Other topics for the UNE 3MT online event included: how Australian dinosaurs ate, improving Canola breeding, remote-sensing mango crops, rural access to legal services, finding better detector dogs, and accessing that eureka moment in the human psyche.

(The author of this article was one of three judging the eight PhD students' 3MT presentations on the day)

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