As the international community adjust to implement UN Security Council resolution 1325 (2000), adopted by the United Nations on 31 October 2000, innovative women peace-builders make inroads across the globe. Negotiating peace and rebuilding societies is nothing new for women—it is a reaffirmation of it, not its conception, as embodied in the resolution. We have yet to meet a human being not born of a woman, or a mother who did not undergo the most personal of physical trauma in negotiating peace while delivering a new life.
Resolution 1325 reaffirms and assures that women assume their decision-making role in conflict prevention and resolution, as well as peace-building. One of the main themes of the 48th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSD), held in New York in March 2004, was women’s equal participation in global conflict prevention, management and resolution, and post-conflict peace-building. While the shift in human consciousness to fully adopt and incorporate the gender mainstreaming contemplated by resolution 1325 is more easily achieved by some, women-driven peace initiatives are occurring. Governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are also making conscious efforts to implement the resolution.
The Mano River Women’s Peace Network arose at the height of the Liberian crisis in 2001as women of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone came together to manage, resolve and prevent conflict. The Network—2003 awardee of the UN Prize for Human Rights—single-handedly opened the pathway of communication between warring factions, which led to tri-national leaders eventually settling their differences, the reopening of borders and restoring diplomatic relations. This regional regime complained, however, that male leadership traditions still bar women from full participation at decision-making levels of peace negotiation, confidence-building measures and conflict resolution. Yet, undaunted, the Network sensitized Liberian peace negotiators to use human rights instruments in negotiating and building peace; its members also teach conflict resolution to NGOs, the media and rebels while advocating for the special needs of refugees.
On the other hand, the indigenous women in Nepal are preventing, managing and resolving conflict at the community level while pushing for women’s elevation to mediators and negotiators at the official decision-making level. Stella Tamang of the Tamang, one of the largest indigenous peoples of Nepal, insisted during the 48th CSD session that “if we put women at the negotiating table, they will change the equation of the negotiation. They will introduce practical workable solutions to the conflict. I am not claiming to undermine the efforts of men; I am reminding you that what is important is that men alone and only men’s interpretation and solutions will not resolve conflicts and bring peace.”
Aninigina Tshefu Bibiane, who studied in Brussels, returned home to Kinshasha, Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a Masters degree in social work and community development to become advisor to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. A strong advocate of women-inclusive conflict resolution in the Congolese peace process, she was also a liaison for Women as Partners for Peace in Africa, a pan-African peace negotiation preparation organization. While conducting surveys of regional NGOs, she helped strengthen conflict-resolution efforts of Congolese women.
Similarly, Awut Deng of the Nairobi-based New Sudan Council of Churches spearheads conflict prevention, management and resolution in that country. For the twenty-year veteran, peace negotiations have been not just between northern and southern Sudan, for which she accomplished the unprecedented feat of the two genders sitting together for peace talks, but also specifically between women of both areas. She is a founder of the Sudanese Women’s Association in Nairobi, a predecessor of the Sudanese Women’s Voice for Peace. The New Sudan Council expanded that women’s initiative to the Wunlit Conference, which eventually led to the Wunlit Peace Agreement. Ms. Deng said that southern Sudanese women have been both soldiers and peace negotiators, besides being widows and sole heads of households. Through her efforts, women of southern and northern Sudan met and looked beyond hotly contested disputes, agreeing that all people have inherent rights to self-determination and that policy must accommodate their decision-making role in the public arena.
In Azerbaijan, women from the Parliament, State agencies, NGOs and political parties gathered in September 2002 at the United Nations House in Baku to formulate the Azerbaijan Women’s Coalition. Concerned about the disproportionate and adverse impact of military conflict on the civilian population and refugees it creates, and the fact that women had served side by side with men as soldiers in the Garabagh conflict, the Coalition aims to strengthen the independence of its republic by including women in decision-making roles for conflict resolution. While the status of women in these roles is being trailblazed, organizations are quick to account for responsibility in implementing resolution 1325. Jan O. Karlsson, then acting Foreign Affairs Minister and Minister for Development Cooperation, Migration and Asylum Policy of Sweden, at the 2003 General Assembly debate announced: “Women’s equal rights to education, to a professional career, to participate in politics, are not a threat to men. The absence of these rights is a threat to the progress of humankind. … Women are crucial to peace and reconciliation. I welcome gender perspectives being incorporated into mandates and activities of all peacekeeping missions. The number of women in peace operations at all levels must increase. The implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 is vital.”
The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom elicited and received replies in 2003 from the Prime Minister, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministers of Defence and for Education, Science and Training on how resolution 1325 was being enacted. ACT was awarded a grant in 2002 that empowered it to develop and disseminate educational and informational packages on the resolution. Also, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Defence of the Netherlands established a joint civil service working group in 2002 to evaluate existing policy, which affirmed the concrete steps of policy advancement in the empowerment of women and mainstreaming of gender. Both agreed to devise a global strategy delineating practices to be undertaken by those directly charged with the resolution’s implementation.
Athens, Greece hosted the European Union Forum in May 2003, where participants demanded, among other things, that the European Convention and Intergovernmental Conference of 2004 enshrine gender equality into the principles and values of the European Commission, and that gender balance be achieved in all advisory and decision-making bodies in the critical area of external relations in the next European Union Treaty of Constitution. Two months later, the UN Inter-agency Network on Women and Gender Equality, along with the Organization for Economic Development Network on Gender Equality, convened a joint workshop in Paris to illuminate lessons learned from Afghanistan about gender and post-conflict reconstruction, which included the engagement of commitment to social transformation and the development of gender-responsive approaches to policy formulation, budgetary allocations and monitoring devices.
Founded in March 2003, the Women’s Security Council in Germany is concerned about policy formulation, fiscal allocation and monitoring mechanisms. Comprised of peace activists, research analysts and NGO representatives, it lobbies for national implementation of resolution 1325 and monitors activities of the German Government. It submitted an action plan calling for quotas (30 per cent women in decision-making capacities) as a measurement of successful resolution practices. Non-binding regulation, it is claimed, strengthens the tendency to bar women from top decision-making positions and relegates them to the periphery. The Women’s Security Council recommends the establishment of a UN monitoring group to report to the Secretary-General. A Member State’s failure to meet quotas would result in a decreased budgetary allocations. Besides conflict prevention, management and resolution, the 30-per-cent quota would also apply to the post-conflict reconstruction phase and building country-specific constitutions and legal systems.
Women making peace is at a point of no return. The movement of women into decision-making roles in conflict prevention, management and resolution, as well as post-conflict reconstruction, may be protracted but, more importantly, it is destined.
—Fayth A. Ruffin |
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