Why Women’s Contribution to Peacebuilding Matters

Abstract

Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why it Matters. By Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007. 257 pp., cloth (ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-536-4), paper (ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-512-8). While typically women remain absent or marginalized from formal peace processes, they are conspicuously active in informal, grassroots peacebuilding activities. Invisibility and activity, victimhood and agency run parallel. The 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing mobilized global networks of women working to further peace and security. The momentum led to the 2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peace, and Security.” The resolution is historic in recognizing women's rights to protection from violence and participation in all forms of decision-making to prevent, manage, and resolve conflict. There are many ways to write about women's peace initiatives. One way is to combine scholarship on emerging debates on human security with feminist international relations (IR) theory. This book does not follow this pattern. Its bibliography includes mainly NGO reports, UN reports, and Internet sources, combined with some familiar academic books. However, what might be lacking in overall conceptual framework is amply compensated by the richness of experiences the author draws on. Sanam Naraghi Anderlini is uniquely qualified to write about women, peace, and security. She has wide fieldwork experience in conflict zones and has been active in high-level international policy-making institutions in London, Washington, New York, Brussels, and elsewhere. This is an excellent book. I was curious, wondering how it compares with Peacebuilding, Women in International Perspective (Porter 2007) . There are overlaps in content, theme, and emphases, but Anderlini's book is rich with first-hand stories of women striving to engage in formal processes whilst Peacebuilding highlights examples of women in informal peacebuilding in the context of orthodox IR literature and …