The impact of preventative training to action: Zainab Gbla

In a dusty classroom in Abyei, children once surrounded by conflict now gather each week—some no older than three, others in their teens—to learn, ask questions, and simply feel safe. The woman at the front of the room, Sierra Leonean Chief Superintendent Zainab Gbla, began her career in peacekeeping over a decade ago. But it was a five-day training with the Dallaire Institute in 2014 that offered her a new lens: one that changed not just how she saw children in armed conflict—but what she believed was possible for them. 

Since then, she has taken that lens into patrols, classrooms, and training sessions, reaching not only young people in Abyei, but fellow officers across the African continent. 

Chief Superintendent Zainab Gbla, a Chief Police Training Officer with the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) who leads mentorship and education programs for women and children in Abyei, is no stranger to conflict situations. Growing up during Sierra Leone’s civil conflict, she sees herself as not just a victim of war, but a survivor.  

After becoming a refugee in Guinea, Chief Superintendent Gbla was so inspired by the transformation of the Sierra Leone Police after the war, that she joined the force herself in 2002. Eager to learn and help, she rose through the ranks, taking on leadership roles in operations, training, and disarmament. Since then, she has had three peacekeeping deployments, including two with the UN-AU Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) from 2010 to 2013 and 2020 to 2021.  

She was recently awarded a globally acclaimed honour, the United Nations (UN) Woman Police Officer of the Year Award for 2024. This award recognizes outstanding leadership and innovation by female police officers serving in United Nations peace operations.  

The award was established in 2011 to recognize the exceptional contributions of women police officers to UN peace operations and to promote women’s empowerment. This award also reflects Vancouver Principle #11, which recognizes the essential contribution of women to peacekeeping operational effectiveness, and the distinct and critical roles of both men and women in the protection of children and the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers. 

After her tour of duty in Darfur in 2014, Chief Superintendent Gbla began a long-term relationship with the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security when she was selected to participate in a five-day pre-deployment training course. This course has provided training to over 21,000 men and women and has changed the perspectives and interactions when encountering children in recruitment and armed violence situations. 

“Before this training, before meeting with Dallaire, I was blank on the issue of child soldiering,” said Gbla. “We did not know what a child soldier was or how to deal with children as situated with arms or armed groups. Even my sister. In my same house, where we are staying together, was a child soldier, but we saw her as someone different”. 

After this first training course, Chief Superintendent Gbla acknowledged that the training opened her eyes on what a child soldier was and taught her how to communicate and relate to her sister differently. 

Based on her performance in the initial training, Chief Superintendent Gbla was selected to participate in the Dallaire Institute’s Training of Trainers (ToT) course, where she was then able to mentor others in pre-deployment training programs. Now she is a lead trainer with the Dallaire Institute and feels that it is a major part of who she is as an individual. 

"Zainab is one of the few female pioneers of the Dallaire Institute trainers from Sierra Leone,” said Francisca Mujawase, Deputy Director for Research and MEAL at the Dallaire Institute’s African Centre of Excellence. “She presents distinct work experience on concerns of children and women in conflict, in conflict situations. The Dallaire Institute has had the privilege to learn about how she put to use the knowledge acquired from the Dallaire Institute to address meaningfully those issues both in the field, and while delivering the Dallaire Institute training on the prevention of the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict to her fellow officers. 

In her ongoing work in Abyei, she feels that all of the training she has received in her career has been instrumental, but the aspect of engaging with children has had the biggest impact. 

In Tagalei, a disputed area of Abyei, children are born in conflict, so they don’t have to be recruited, they are already inside this system. 

“So what I needed to do was, as the saying goes, catch them whilst they are young, because we cannot continue this generation of violence,” said Gbla. “We have to somehow break it or mitigate them, so I started a class session.” 

Chief Superintendent Gbla started a class once a week for children between the ages of three to 18. It began with eight children but then as word spread she quickly had more than 28 children.    

“Even kids, the boys and girls older than 18 years, were coming, just to be part of the training and I felt somehow fulfilled. And then the children started saying that once a week was not OK. They wanted more. And then the parents became involved. It changed their mindsets from taking the children out of the streets or exposing them to arms and then bringing them to school.” 

Chief Superintendent Gbla then started an agricultural program where the children could learn farming and how to work with livestock. With the money they earned from a good harvest, parents were able to send their children to school in Abyei. 

“Most of the children have gone to Abyei for education, so you see how that impacted their lives, by changing their thinking about how Dinkas and Nuers are enemies for life, and that anywhere they meet, they should shed blood, they should kill. But I started that paradigm shift, you know, from something bad to something fruitful.” 

“Zainab has been one of the most exemplary trained trainers of the Dallaire Institute. Her enthusiasm and dedication to our vision of a world where children are at the heart of peace and security has been honoured through this award by the UN.  It is a privilege to work with Zainab and to continue to see the impacts that one individual trained can make,” Dr. Shelly Whitman, Executive Director of the Dallaire Institute.  

“I just want to take this opportunity to thank the General for bringing such initiative into this world, you know the Dallaire Institute is like a family to me now, it has brought us closer”, continued Gbla. “And the way I perceive children, even in a situation where there is no war, the way I perceive children is completely different from how I handled them before. And from here, when I go for patrols, the way I communicate with children is different from how it used to be. Now I know how to communicate with children. I see children as they are. Even if they are holding guns, I just see them as children. And that has changed a lot. So I thank the Dallaire Institute for opening my eyes, and the trainings I have been getting, and I hope to get more training because winning this award as police officer of the year, it's because of my interaction with children. I hope everyone, every trainer, every member of the Dallaire Institute, will continue to make a great impact”.