The InterDependent

A police officer from Pakistan who has been aiding victims of domestic violence and trafficking in Timor-Leste is the winner of the 2011 International Female Police Peacekeeper Award. Shahzadi Gulfam, a deputy superintendent of police from Pakistan’s Punjab province with more than two decades of service there and with the UN, was the first Pakistani woman to be deployed in peacekeeping abroad, in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997.

She later served with the UN in Kosovo and is on her second tour of duty in Timor-Leste.

The award is given jointly by the UN Police Division in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the International Association of Women Police.

Gulfam is a police team leader in Timor-Leste, a young nation that broke away from Indonesia in 1999 and a country where domestic violence and violence against women generally are among the most common crimes. She has been working to provide medical assistance and shelter to abused women and bring suspects in these crimes to court. In the past, abusers were rarely punished because domestic violence was often considered a family matter. Last year it was made a criminal offense.

Shahzadi Gulfam, who won the UN's 2011 International Female Police Peacekeeper Award.

Working with the Timorese national police’s “vulnerable persons unit,” Gulfam travels the still-undeveloped country taking information about the rights of women to remote towns and villages. She has been commended as a role model for local women.

The award was presented to Gulfam on Aug. 21 at the opening ceremony of the International Association of Women Police’s annual training conference in Lexington, Ky.