Women in Conflict Affected Countries and Peace Building
This NTS Insight explores the changing nature of conflict since the late 1990s where women and children were increasingly used as weapons of war. Since its passage in October 2000, the UNSCR 1325 has significantly advanced women’s rights in conflict situations and brought to light the absence of women in negotiations and peace-building efforts. The number of peace agreements incorporating women’s rights have increased over the years. Despite this progress, a lot remains to be done. More female negotiators and mediators are needed, and demobilisation and reintegration processes have to take into account the role of female fighters fighters in conflicts, moving beyond recognising women as victims. In order to ensure that gender inclusivity remains at the top of the agenda, courageous women’s leadership in public spaces is essential.
Why UNSCR 1325?
United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 marked the beginning of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Security Council. Adopted in October 2000, the Resolution addresses the changing nature of conflicts, highlights serious problems of justice and exclusion, and offers a practical solution to deal with fragile peace and fragile recovery. In the 1990s, many conflicts instead of targeting soldiers, targeted civilians. They targeted women and children. Sexual violence was used as a weapon of war to destroy communities communities and traumatize them beyond recovery. We witnessed this in Bosnia, in Rwanda, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in Timor-Leste. Yet the types of violence women experience were not treated as war crimes.
When it came to peace making and recovery, warlords were invited to the peace talks. Mediators frequently perceive the peace process as ceasefires and the silencing of guns, often at the expense of long-term peace building. Women were therefore completely excluded from the peace table, and from post-conflict decision–making. Today it is recognized that peace is more than the absence of violence. Peace has increasingly meant an inclusive political process, a commitment to human rights in the post war period, and attempts to deal with issues of justice and reconciliation.
The exclusion of a gender perspective from peace building and recovery processes weakened the foundations for sustainable peace and security. Having no female representation during peace negotiations rendered women’s grievances unheard and unaddressed. This made it particularly difficult for women to re-establish their lives and to weave back the social fabric of the community after conflicts ended, leading to the recurrence of conflict and fragility. Also disarmament, demobilization and reintegration focused on male combatants, forgetting that there were women and girls in the fighting forces and faced a different set of challenges from their male counterparts.
Approximately Approximately half of the conflict-specific items currently on the Security Council’s agenda can be considered cases of conflict relapse. If the goal is to build sustainable peace, it requires more diverse inputs from the rest of society, and women have a critical role to play in shaping a fairer and more inclusive future. There is a need to move from a male and elite-dominated approach to more inclusive governance and decision making by engaging women in all aspects of conflict resolution, peace building and recovery. UNSCR 1325 provides four pillars for advancing this: prevention, protection, participation, peace building and recovery. It promotes the human rights of women in conflict - affected countries, emphasizing that women’s rights to inheritance, property and land; health, education and employment, are critical for the recovery and rebuilding process. It asks how are you going to have recovery in agrarian societies if you don’t address women’s economic rights post-conflict, and specifically their rights to productive property, namely land? In fact, post - conflict recovery is the period to transform societies and work towards gender equality