UN’s gender advocate of the year award for Major Radhika Sen | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: An Indian soldier, Naik Dhananjay Kumar Singh, will be posthumously honoured by the UN on Thursday, while another Indian Army peacekeeper, Major Radhika Sen, will be conferred with the 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year award.
Naik Singh, who laid down his life while serving with the UN Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), will be among the 64 peacekeepers to be honoured posthumously with the Dag Hammarskjold medal by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres at a ceremony in New York.
Guterres described Major Sen, who also served with MONUSCO from March 2023 to April 2024, as a “true leader and role model” whose service was a credit to the UN as a whole.
Major Sen, who served as the commander of MONUSCO’s engagement platoon for the Indian Rapid Deployment Battalion, and her troops engaged with conflict-affected communities, including women and girls, in an escalating conflict environment in North Kivu. “She earned their trust, doing so with humility, compassion, and dedication,” UN statement said.
She is the second Indian peacekeeper to receive the prestigious award after Major Suman Gawani, who had served with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), in 2019.