How can women play a more effective role in peace initiatives? This research from the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development in New Delhi argues that it is important to improve understanding of how women’s and men’s perspectives on peace and violence vary, and whether there are policy implications for these differences. A full understanding of the role of women as actors during war and conflict and as victims of war is essential to ensure full participation of women at all levels of decision-making and implementation in peace processes.
Women are at the forefront of peace efforts around the world. Their participation should not be seen only in the context of women as victims of war and conflict, but as women playing a proactive role in the process of peace negotiations, peacebuilding and post conflict activities following the peace agreement. Women, individually and collectively, have made very important contributions in resolving conflict. Women’s peace activism encompasses concerns for food security, access to the land, forest, water and other resources. Issues of livelihood, health care and education are prioritised.
However, women’s contributions are often overlooked because they are non-traditional or outside the formal issues of the conflict. Challenges encountered in incorporating gender perspectives in peace operations include the following:
- There is a lack of gender sensitive diagnosis to explain the differential impacts of violence and conflict on women and men.
- Women lack the organisational force to have strategic plans and also to present their plans in peace process. They continue to be largely absent from formal processes.
- Support for women’s efforts, and for capacity building towards their effective engagement in formal peacemaking is lacking.
- The absence of women from the peace tables causes insufficient attention to and reflection of the concerns of women in peace agreements.
- Even when women participate in peace negotiations, their role can be limited to a formal presence without the capacity, or mandate to contribute to setting or shaping the agenda of such negotiations.
Women hold communities together in times of conflict as providers, counselors and negotiators. Therefore, the inclusion of women’s perspectives is critical to ensuring that the needs of local populations are understood in the planning of peace operations and are subsequently met in implementation. Women can play a significant part in peacemaking if they are properly supported and genuinely included:
- Senior personnel in key decision-making positions in peace support operations should be gender aware. Leadership is key to the implementation of a gender aware approach.
- Gender-awareness training for all involved in peace-keeping operations is critical to the mainstreaming of a gender aware approach.
- Gender mainstreaming requires gender aware norms, mechanisms for implementation, appropriate decision-making structures, gender-balanced peacekeeping teams and regular monitoring of gender mainstreaming.
- The military, police force and the judiciary need to be made fully aware of the human rights of women and girls.
- Women’s participation is crucial from the outset of negotiations if there is to be a gender perspective at the negotiating table.
- Where military forces maintain peace by force, the presence of women and the incorporation of a gender perspective have a favourable effect on the peace process. They help to build confidence and foster stable relations with local populations.
