---
title: "India's Female Formed Police Unit, Liberia | Model Diplomat"
description: "India's Female Formed Police Unit in Liberia was the UN's first all-women FPU, serving UNMIL from 2007 to 2016. See its mandate, deployment record and legacy."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/glossary/india-female-formed-police-unit-liberia"
---

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Model Diplomat Research Team · Last reviewed June 22, 2026

TL;DR

- India's Female Formed Police Unit in Liberia was the first all-women contingent of UN police, deployed by India to the UNMIL peacekeeping mission from 2007 to 2016.
- Was the Indian unit in Liberia a military or a police deployment?
- Why is the unit considered historically significant?
- How long did the unit serve and when did it leave?
- How does a Formed Police Unit differ from an Individual Police Officer?

[Civil Service & Diplomatic Exams](https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/civil-services/glossary)Updated June 22, 2026

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## Timeline

1. 19 September 2003

   UNMIL itself was established by Security Council Resolution 1509 of , following the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Liberia's second civil war…

2. 31 October 2000

   The deployment overlapped with the UN's growing emphasis on the Women, Peace and Security agenda launched by Security Council Resolution 1325 of .

3. 30 March 2018

   Indian Ministry of External Affairs and CRPF records credit the contingent with both operational security delivery and a demonstrable "role-model effect." UN…

## Positions at a glance

### Supporters

The procedural pathway began with a UN Police Division request to the Indian Permanent Mission for a formed police contingent meeting UN Selection Assistance and Assessment Team (SAAT) standards. India nominated an all-female unit composed of CRPF women officers, who underwent pre-deployment training covering crowd control, the UN code of conduct, sexual-exploitation-and-abuse prohibitions, and English-language proficiency. The first contingent of approximately 105 personnel, with a small male support component for logistics, arrived in Monrovia in January 2007. The unit rotated annually, each fresh contingent replacing the outgoing one after a handover period, and operated under the operational control of the UNMIL Police Commissioner while remaining under Indian national administrative command—the dual-key arrangement characteristic of all troop- and police-contributing-country deployments.

### Opponents

Controversy and analytical debate surround the gendered framing of the deployment. Scholars of peacekeeping have questioned whether all-women units risk essentialising women as inherently more peaceable or relegating them to "soft" community tasks, and whether the symbolism outpaced measurable shifts in mission gender ratios. Critics also note that, despite the unit's prominence, the overall share of women in UN police remained low, and India did not immediately replicate the all-female model at the same scale elsewhere. Supporters counter that the Liberia unit produced concrete outcomes—higher Liberian female police enrolment and increased reporting of sexual and gender-based violence to a force visibly staffed by women—and that it set a precedent the UN now actively promotes through gender-parity targets for uniformed personnel.

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Example

In January 2007 India deployed an all-women CRPF Formed Police Unit of about 105 officers to Monrovia under UNMIL, the UN's first such contingent, serving until its repatriation in February 2016.

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