Gender and Conflict Management: The Role of Women’s in Indigenous Conflict Resolutions for Peace Building in Ethiopia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Eva Sartini Bayu

doi:10.7176/iags/80-01

Abstract

Evidence from around the world and across cultures showed that integrating women and gender considerations into peace-building processes helps to promote democracy, good governance, long-term stability and development . The inclusion of gender perspectives into conflict analyses can be beneficial not only to ensure better understanding of conflict dynamics, but also to highlight the linkages with development and poverty issues. Hence, the current review is aims to assess the role of women’s in indigenous conflict resolution in different regions of Ethiopia. All available materials were reviewed. The results of the review disclosed that even if women’s formal participation in the highest leadership positions were formally closed, it is documented that throughout the world, women had played critical roles in times of wars and peace as community organizers and activists. The findings further showed that the role and participation of women in the indigenous conflict management mechanisms is low and insignificant in Tigray. In indigenous system, women play an indirect role in Amhara and Tigray. In Oromia region, women have a great role in solving conflicts among Oromo clans by intervene and request for reconciliation by using the institution called Siqqe . They also have the right and power to reconcile Oromo people to their God called Waqqa by praying to God for them. In Somalia, Women’s also play multiple roles before, during and after conflicts. Women of South nations and nationality play different roles in addressing conflicts either along with men or alone and the male based institutions address conflicts in equal basis irrespective of sex. Based on the above findings, it can be concluded that, Ethiopian women’s play a pivotal role and still working to maintain peace and security across all provinces of the country. Therefore, women should be respected as they have a lion share role in indigenous conflict resolutions as well as they should be empowered to involve in peace promotion and peacemaking at regional and country level . Keywords: Gender, Indigenous, Conflict resolutions, Peace building, Ethiopia DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/80-01 Publication date: February 29 th 2020

Highlights

Introduction and BackgroundConflict has been studied by different scholars over the past centuries
In this review, all relevant and available documents reviewed in related with the roles of women in indigenous conflict resolution in different regions of Ethiopia were identified and document review was undertaken from different studies
The main sources considered in the document review were books, journals, policy and strategies documents, studies conducted in line with indigenous conflict resolutions and gender issues

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and BackgroundConflict has been studied by different scholars over the past centuries. Still there is no agreement upon the definition of the term This is because conflicts vary considerably depending on the culture of a given society. As to Fisher (2000) conflict is defined as an incompatibility of goals or values between two or more parties in a relationship combined with attempts to control each other and antagonistic feelings towards each other. Mesfin (1999) stated that conflict is a practice of disagreement on public issues that affect the lives of groups essentially about means and ends regarding their mutual relationships their diverse interests their different values their institutions and organizations. Parallel to the above point, Chandan (1995) defined conflict as a disagreement between or among two or more nations, individuals, groups and organizations trying to gain acceptance of one’s views or objectives over the others. Based on the above arguments conflict could be conceptualized as contradiction or disagreement between two or more parties arising from misunderstandings, competition for resource, power and prestige

Methods

Results

Conclusion