Women central to peace-building

Historic Security Council debate highlights constraints and potential

By Jennifer Davis

For the first time in its history, the Security Council met on 23-24 October in a session devoted entirely to the role and experience of women in conflict, peacekeeping and peace-building. The meeting highlighted two closely linked themes: the urgent need for stronger action to protect women caught in conflict, and recognition that enduring peace cannot be achieved without the full and equal participation of women at all levels and stages.

In an almost unprecedented departure from tradition, Security Council members began their work in a closed meeting with women directly involved in the struggle to end violence and build peace and security through local, regional and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Key themes laid out in this "off the record" exchange were frequently recalled by delegates during the subsequent public debate. Strategies proposed by NGO representatives were reflected in a final resolution, adopted on 31 October, which called for increased protection of women and girls during war, prosecution of violent crimes against women, the appointment of more women to UN peacekeeping operations and field missions, and action by governments and all UN agencies to ensure that more women participate in decision-making to end conflict and build peace at the national, regional and international levels.

"In war and conflict situations, the under-representation of women in decision-making at all levels is one of the major problems," Mr. Leutlwetse Mmualefe, Botswana’s acting ambassador, pointed out. "In most cases, the very men who take part in war make decisions related to [ending] conflicts, and yet it is women who have to take care of the war victims, both emotionally and physically."

"Why is it that we bring warlords to the negotiating table and not women?" asked Ms. Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

In a few instances, women have been able to play a greater role. A coalition of Somali grassroots women’s organizations, for example, contributed to the success of the peace conference in Djibouti that laid the foundation for the new transitional government of Somalia in November 2000, noted Ms. Faiza Jama Mohamed, director of the Africa Office of Equality Now, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

"These isolated examples need to become standard practice so that peace negotiations that leave out women become null and void," Dr. Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika, President of the Federation of the African Women’s Peace Network, told Security Council members. "Isolated women for window dressing have little impact. The greater the number of women, the better the chances for success."

Women underrepresented

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan concurred, affirming that women, knowing the price of conflict, often are better equipped than men to prevent or resolve it. They also have been "peace educators" over many generations, preserving social order when communities collapse under the pressure of conflict. He therefore regretted that women still are grossly underrepresented in decision-making, from conflict prevention to conflict resolution to post-conflict reconciliation.

Only 10 of the 189 UN ambassadors are women, it was pointed out in the discussions, and there currently is not a single woman among the Secretary-General’s 61 special and personal representatives and envoys. Of the 15 Security Council representatives at the session, only one, from Jamaica, was a woman. "Looking around this table," commented India’s representative Krishna Bose, "I should … like to say that a Security Council dominated by men illustrates the problem, not the solution." Several speakers criticized a major new report on strengthening UN peacekeeping operations (see Africa Recovery, October 2000) for lacking a chapter on gender.

Recommendations that emerged from the debate on how to integrate women into UN peace operations included:

• Each mission should have a plan for incorporating gender issues into all aspects of its work.
• All sectors of peacemaking and peace-building should take gender issues into account.
• More women must be appointed as special representatives.

Many agreed that women’s concerns will only be addressed when women actually are on the ground, in significant numbers, to represent those interests. But speakers also emphasized that having a woman force commander or judge will not be enough. Women must be involved in the planning of peace missions from the outset, and peacekeeping personnel should be trained in their responsibilities to women and children.

Citing a recent UN study of peace operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, El Salvador, Namibia and South Africa, Assistant Secretary-General Angela King, special adviser on gender issues, said that a critical mass of women in such missions — 30 per cent or more — could empower local women and foster confidence and trust among the local population.*

Although women generally are non-combatants, about 80 per cent of the world’s refugees and internally displaced persons are women and children, NGO speakers noted. Some confronted the Security Council with grim examples of how violence follows women into refugee camps when women are not in key decision-making positions and militias are not disarmed. They cited numerous war crimes committed against women and young girls, including rape used to break communities’ spirits and young girls abducted by troops and forced into sexual slavery.

Some pointed out that peacekeeping troops sometimes also have been guilty of rape or of exploiting women through prostitution. The NGO Working Group on Women and International Peace and Security urged the Security Council to demand accountability from peacekeepers and action by the Secretary-General to ensure that all personnel involved in UN peacekeeping and peace-building activities have appropriate training in the protection, rights and particular needs of women and girls.

Noted Rwandan Ambassador Joseph Mutaboba, "Those who made women widows in Rwanda, in Burundi and in the Balkans and those who raped them and left them with … unwanted pregnancies and HIV/AIDS, are still at large and active." He was one of many speakers who stressed the need to ensure that war criminals do not go unpunished.

* Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Operations, a joint study conducted by the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping operations and the Division for the Advancement of Women of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.