Women In Peace Processes Research Articles

Women and culture of peace in the perspective of gender education and gender equality

The contribution addresses the relationship between women and peace, representing it as one of the forms of contrast to violence and inequality of power between men and women. Gender equality as a right, which is one of the most urgent challenges of our time, can have a better chance of being achieved if we aim to strengthen the contribution that women can make to society and to promote a gender culture that is based on building a culture of peace in terms of skills and attitudes capable of acting on the causes that produce the different forms of violence, removing the thought patterns that created them. A systematic review of the literature on how women contribute to building a culture of peace started with the need to deepen the relationship between women and peace. It used a rigorous methodological approach to collect, evaluate, and synthesize a body of available evidence that testifies that the role assumed by women in peace processes is closely linked to a gender culture where education seems to appear to be the main factor affecting the promotion of behaviors and attitudes capable of nurturing gender equality as a founding datum of the activation of peace processes.

Seeking Inclusion, Breeding Exclusion? The UN’s wps Agenda and the Syrian Peace Talks

Abstract This article analyzes the Women’s Advisory Board (wab) to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, a unique mechanism designed to include women in peace processes. Has the wab fulfilled its objective? Based on ethnographic material, and primary and secondary sources, we argue that the wab fostered a sentiment of exclusion among some of its members and of the broader spectrum of Syrian women’s organizations. The article further suggests that the wab failed to meaningfully include women in the Syria peace process. The sources of these failures can be located in the process by which wab participants were selected and the ‘peacemaker’ identity that they were assigned. The limits associated with the process of selection and the substance of the women’s engagement are inherent to the way the UN frames and justifies women’s inclusion. The wab, it concludes, should not be hastily replicated as a mechanism of women’s inclusion.

International Norms: The Impact of Women in Peace Building Processes

This study points out that the rules of positive international law need to be more effectively enforced in practice. It explains the absence of women from peace processes as a result of a lack of effort to include them in official peace processes rather than women’s lack of experience in negotiation or conflict resolution. It emphasizes women as crucial agents in the transition from war to peace in order to promote social cohesion and political legitimacy. An excellent first step would be to use gender-sensitive language in a peace agreement and to create a platform for women to discuss the importance of including women in peace processes.

Local Women and Building the Peace: Narratives from Africa

Inadequate attention is given to the influence of local women in fostering peace. Scholars and policymakers in striving to plug this deficit now pay more attention to the contributions women make to peace. This article supports this reorientation and makes a case for encouraging local women in peace processes by pointing out the difficulties in ending conflict when they channel their efforts to conflict exacerbation out of being denied formal spaces to contribute to peace. Using events from the conflict in Liberia (1989–2003), Burundi (1993–2005) and Sudan’s Darfur (2007 to date), this study points to the significance of harnessing the energies of local women in forging peace during conflict and sustaining it post conflict. Using descriptive analysis, this article argues in support of conventional feminist thought that the absence of women from peace initiatives conjures a vital missing link in achieving stability.

‘Peace with a Woman’s Face’: Women, Social Media and the Colombian Peace Process

Abstract The idea that men and women approach conflict resolution differently forms the backbone of the international agenda on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and is supported by a growing body of scholarship in international relations. However, the role of women who represent insurgent groups in peace talks remains understudied, given the relatively rare appearance of such women in peace processes. The present study examines how men and women from the negotiating team of the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) engaged in public-facing discourse on Twitter leading up to a referendum on the peace accords in 2016. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes computational analysis and a close reading of social media posts, I demonstrate that women in the FARC’s negotiating team were more successful social media users than their male counterparts and that they offered a distinct contribution to the discourse on peace, centring the relevance of gender and promoting issue linkages like the need to address LGBTI rights.

Quality of Cooperation between Men and Women in the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic: Gender-Integrated Organization

This article focuses on the innovative trend of the cooperation between men and women in peace processes, and analyzes the need to create a postmodern type of military organization – a so-called gender-integrated organization, which will ensure adequate consideration of the rights, needs, and interests of women and women’s involvement in the actions and objectives of peacekeeping missions. The research findings presented in the article reflect the state of the application of gender equality principle in the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic, as well as the state of the application of the recommendations for developing a plan of gender equality which obliges EU member states to ensure compliance with the Resolution 1325. The resolution requires a gender-balanced occupation rate and access to training for all missions, as well as gender mainstreaming in all activities carried out.

How women are imagined through conceptual metaphors in United Nations Security Council Resolutions on women, peace and security

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 is a landmark pronouncement on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Not only does this resolution highlight the important role of the involvement of women in peace processes, but it also stresses the importance of their equal participation in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace. Furthermore, it also triggers the approval of some other resolutions, which are all further elaborations on that first document. The aim of this paper is to analyse, from a cognitive linguistic perspective, the way in which women are actually narrated in these pronouncements by means of the two conceptual metaphors that are most often repeated: WOMEN ARE VICTIMS, typically found in earlier resolutions, and WOMEN ARE AGENTS OF CHANGE, as the metaphor that has gained more strength and visibility as new resolutions have continued to appear. As metaphors are the cognitive lenses we use to make sense of abstract concepts, it is important that we look closely at each of those metaphors to see how they shape the characterization of women in times of armed conflict and post-conflict and, in doing so, how they guide our understanding and behaviour towards them.

‘Add women and stir’: the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and Australia's implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325

With the changing nature of warfare and the increasing awareness of the specific gender dimensions of war and peace, the international legal framework has been expanded to address the particular challenges faced by women in conflict and post-conflict contexts. This process culminated in 2000 with the first United Nations document to explicitly address the role and needs of women in peace processes: United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security. Thirteen years on, this article assesses the extent to which Australia's stated commitment to women, peace and security principles at the level of the international norm has translated into meaningful action on the ground in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). The analysis shows that despite it being an ideal context for a mission informed by UNSCR 1325, and Australia being strongly committed to the resolution's principles and implementation, the mission did not unfold in a manner that fulfilled Australia's obligations under UNSCR 1325. The RAMSI case highlights the difficulty in getting new security issues afforded adequate attention in the traditional security sphere, suggesting that while an overarching policy framework would be beneficial, it may not address all the challenges inherent in implementing resolutions such as UNSCR 1325.

The Participation of Women in Peace Processes: The Other Tables

This paper argues that women’s absence in peace processes cannot be explained by their alleged lack of experience in dialogue and negotiation, but by a serious lack of will to include them in such important initiatives of change. Women have wide ranging experience in dialogue processes including many war and post-war contexts, but there has been a deliberate lack of effort to integrate them in formal peace processes. After introducing the research framework, the paper addresses women’s involvement in peace, and analyzes the role played by women in peace processes, through the cases of Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. The paper concludes that peace processes are as gendered as wars, and for that reason gender has to be a guiding line for including women in peace processes.