UN Peace Resolution Fails Women
On the 31st of October 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted a landmark resolution, UNSCR 1325, that reaffirmed the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and peace-building.
On the 31st of October 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted a landmark resolution, UNSCR 1325, that reaffirmed the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and peace-building.
It furthermore called on all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, to adopt a gender perspective, including, inter alia: the special needs of women and girls during repatriation and resettlement and for rehabilitation, reintegration and post-conflict reconstruction; measures that support local women’s peace initiatives and indigenous processes for conflict resolution, and that involve women in all of the implementation mechanisms of the peace agreements…”
In June 2008, the UN adopted another resolution, 1820, which specifically focuses on violence against women in conflict areas.
Nearly a decade later, and despite these watershed resolutions, added to the many previous declarations and years of activism by women, the scoreboard for women’s participation in peace processes in Africa, where many of the conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction efforts are, remains dismal. In addition, violence against women is inexcusably at unacceptably high rates. Why is this the case and what can we done to reasonably effect change?
A snapshot by UNIFEM of women’s participation in peace processes in 21 countries worldwide, during the period 1992 to 2008, revealed that only 2.43% of women participated as signatories, 3.65% as mediators, 5.57% as witnesses and 5.9% as negotiators in national peace agreements. Recent peace processes, either by way of tallying the number of women in peace-missions or by their presence at negotiation tables, shows that much more effort needs to be exerted to change the status quo.
The problem with implementing UNSCR 1325 appears to be at several levels, namely, a lack of acknowledgement of the contribution that women do make to peace processes because they are often informal initiatives; the design of peace negotiations which still tends towards favouring representation based on the power of the gun; familiarity with the contents of the resolutions by all – which speaks to a need for more popularization thereof; lack of action plans and lack of participation in the development of action plans; lack of accountability to report on progress by our respective governments; little pressure on countries to include more women in their peace-keeping mission deployment – which would in effect mean that more women would have to be included in their defence forces; little training of women to participate more effectively in negotiating post-conflict reconstruction efforts , which will provide them with a fluency in security issues and concomitant confidence to participate; little funding directed towards advancing UNSCR 1325, and many other structural problems. All these problems and practices point to our countries paying lip service to UNSCR 1325 and 1820. Unless there is a paradigm shift and consequences for non-compliance, we will have little tangible results in the next decade, too.
The paradigm shift needs to occur at the level of conceptualizing what peace negotiations are about and how peace is created. We are no longer in the domain of merely negotiating an end to war or of power sharing between protagonists to the conflict. Peace negotiations in the context of civil wars on the continent are fundamentally about renegotiating the future of our societies. If they are to be sustainable they must be infused with a human security approach. The major stakeholders within those societies therefore have to be part of that re-envisioning exercise – this is too an important a process to leave in the hands of the few who were often responsible for the breakdown of those societies in the first place. We have thus moved beyond the need to provide the rationale for women to participate and we should move beyond rewarding those who are responsible for armed conflicts. This point, however, must still be brought home to the negotiators and mediators of conflicts. The UN, AU and other regional organisations, under whose auspices negotiations are often conducted, have to insist on this broader representation and we need to hold them accountable to implement agreed upon frameworks.
We also need to continue to record and highlight the roles that women have played in peace-building and draw on those skills in the post-conflict period. We need to assess the skills gaps that women have in order to enhance their participation at peace tables (in whatever form and level this takes), in peacekeeping missions and in the rebuilding of their societies and ensure that they acquire these (even if they are not necessarily put up as a requirement for men’s participation, it will be to our benefit to be equipped).
One of the glaring gaps evidenced, is the lack of an understanding of the security sector, by women in particular, but civil society at large. A large part of peace processes deals with DDR and SSR. If we are to create a more secure environment and keep the security sector accountable we should also be conversant with these issues and make sure that our interests are reflected there. Part of the skills training for women and peace-building should therefore be focused on security sector issues. We have been absent from these debates for far to long.
Cheryl Hendricks, Senior Researcher, Security Sector Governance Programme, ISS Pretoria Office.
