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I have worked, boots on the ground, as a civilian in Kosovo, Sierra Leone,
Afghanistan and Iraq, and have seen the same damaging mistakes made repeatedly
by the international community because they ignore the participation and
perspective of women in peace initiatives, post-conflict programmes and
policies.
openDemocracy’s debate on “women making a difference”
is timely. 2005 is the fifth anniversary of two international resolutions
which, if implemented, could revolutionise global methods of peace-building
and post-conflict reconstruction.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, passed unanimously in
October 2000, is the first resolution ever passed by the Security Council
that specifically addresses the impact of war on women, and women's contributions
to conflict resolution and sustainable peace. Calling on all UN member
states to ensure the full participation of women and the integration of
a gender perspective in peace and security, policy-making, conflict management
and peace-building, 1325 urges UN member states to increase
the representation of women at all decision-making levels in national,
regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention,
management and resolution of conflict.
Resolution 1325 also calls on all actors to support local women’s
peace initiatives and to expand the role and contribution of women in
UN-based field operations, especially among military observers, civilian
police and human rights and humanitarian personnel. It spells out actions
needed by all actors, including governments and the UN, to ensure the
participation of women in peace processes and improve the protection of
women in conflict zones. The resolution endorses the inclusion of civil
society groups in peace processes and in the implementation of peace agreements
“Fighting violent conflict – an online conversation.”
See OpenDemocracy’s “women making a difference” blog,
and join in the discussion on issues surrounding resolution 1325
This November will be the fifth anniversary of another, in some ways more
trenchant, resolution piloted through the European Parliament
(EP) by Euro MP Maj Britt Theorin and passed by the EP in November 2000.
An EP Women’s Committee recommendation accompanying this
resolution specifies that women should have at least 40 percent representation
on all levels of international posts in reconciliation, peace-keeping,
peace enforcement and peace-building entities.
But as I write, the British suffragette slogan, ‘deeds not words’,
keeps running through my head. Both resolutions lack sanctions against
non-compliance: their implementation relies on advocacy, persuasion and
goodwill. And resolutions alone are insufficient – it is the implementation
that counts.
The challenge for everyone committed to democracy and human rights is
how to trigger determined commitment from politicians to implement 1325
and its European sister resolution. In the aftermath of dictatorship and
conflict, everyone talks of human rights and democracy – yet women
find themselves having to fight for any voice at all. It seems that the
situation of millions of women around the world still fails to arouse
passions in “mainstream” politics.
From resolve to action?
How does the scorecard look for the implementation of either the spirit
or letter of these two great resolutions, five years later? Even now,
very few women are included in peace negotiations or in politics in general
in countries affected by conflict and war. Despite a plethora of conferences,
advocacy from NGOs and good words from politicians, world leaders, diplomats
and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, not enough has happened.
Women continue to be excluded from negotiations, treaty-making, interim
and transition-appointed governments, post-conflict reconstruction planning
and policy-making. On the whole, men continue to appoint men to power,
and largely it is men who set the post-conflict agenda.
Thus a curious phenomenon emerges in post-conflict situations. Among arguments
against changing one’s culture, I have never heard a mullah or minister
object to international democracy-building organisations giving them mobile
phones, computers, four wheel-drive vehicles or internet connections.
But when the subject of women’s human rights within a democracy
is raised, those at the top of the international community, reinforced
by men from the conflict countries, develop ‘we mustn’t upset
the local culture’ syndrome. Both groups excuse the exclusion of
women from political power with weak arguments about “cultural sensitivities”
and “custom and tradition”.
Maybe the bonhomie generated by 1325 and the EP resolution would have
worked its way into the complex selection processes among parliamentarians,
civil servants and intergovernmental organisations responsible for personnel
in peace-making and peace-building had it not been for an unexpected development
– the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on New York. When the twin
towers fell, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair saw the “War
on Terror” as men’s work. Almost overnight their approach
swept away any inclusion of women as peace-makers, mediators and peace-builders.
And parallel to this, fundamentalist Islamist terrorists have targeted
women with intimidation and violent attacks in the cock-pits where “the
war on terror” has mainly been fought out. Taliban-style violent
oppression of women is now spreading like a virus.
Boots on the ground
Just before these two resolutions were passed, I went to Kosovo, after
the end of the Nato bombing, as deputy director for democratisation with
the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). With
one exception, all senior posts in the OSCE mission as well as the UN
mission in Kosovo (Unmik) were held by men. Ignoring the majority gender,
OSCE men regularly discussed what percentage of Serbs, Bosniaks, Albanians
and other ethnic groups should be represented on judicial, political and
public bodies. No-one mentioned women. No thought of similar percentage
representation of women occurred to these senior male diplomats. When
I pointed this out, I was told that women in leadership posts would be
"alien to local culture and tradition" and, in any case, "no
women in Kosovo are interested in participation in politics or public
life".
Kosovar women's NGOs were especially angry at being entirely ignored.
The leader of Motrat Qiriazi, an umbrella of four rural women's networks,
told me, "the international community has marginalised us women in
a way we never have been before. We have never felt so pushed aside as
we feel now." Dr. Bernard Kouchner, special representative of the
UN Secretary General in Kosovo, had appointed not a single female to the
seventeen-member Kosovar transitional governing council, even though the
UN global platform for action states that at least one-third of decision-making
positions in politics and public life should be filled by women.
In Sierra Leone, soon after the rebels were driven out of Freetown, the
city’s gender-aware British Council Director, Rajiv Bendre, asked
me to make a “needs-assessment” visit on women’s role
in governance and politics. He had decided to make ‘Gender and Governance’
a priority. His efforts helped found the Sierra Leone 50/50 group and
enabled a cascade of training and events which doubled the number of women
elected to the Sierra Leone Parliament. But parallel to this effort, I
found another British Government department installing and funding 150
Paramount Chiefs, of whom only three were women. I can hear still the
voice of one Sierra Leonean woman remarking: “We have heard Britain
is reforming the House of Lords, so why are you installing a 98% male
House of Lords here?”
Gender spectacles needed
When appointing interim and transitional governments immediately after
conflict, a fig-leaf of two or three appointed women has become the norm.
In Iraq, for example, Paul Bremer, as US administrator, was midwife to
an interim government consisting of twenty two men and three women. Paul
Bremer said the Iraqi Governing Council represented a complete cross-section
of the community. Yet an estimated 55% of Iraq’s 24 million people
are female. A council truly representative of Iraqi diversity would have
included fourteen women and eleven men.
Military personnel also need proper training on mainstreaming gender into
peace operations. It was not just night sights that the military needed
in Iraq, but gender spectacles. Watching TV shortly after the bombing
of Iraq in 2003, I saw a British military officer appoint a cleric to
help quell riots in Basra. I wondered then what a difference it might
have made if he had deliberately and professionally sought female as well
as male leaders, such as well-respected teachers and doctors, to run the
city and calm the situation. Short-term stabilisation measures can lead
to long-term de-stabilisation. We have seen the damaging downstream consequences
of handing power to male religious leaders.
From September 2003 to February 2004, I worked with women’s associations
and human rights groups in Hilla, Kerbala, Diwanyia and Al Kut, as civil
society consultant with the RTI Iraq Local Governance Programme. Two senior
males in south central Iraq saw inclusion of Iraqi women as the key to
democracy and stability and were heavily committed to women’s participation
in governance and elections. My brief from them involved mainstreaming
gender into civic education dialogues and assisting Iraqi women to mobilize
to take part in democracy and elections.
In workshops in Hilla, Diwanyia, Kerbala and Al Kut, and in conferences
in Babylon, Baghdad and Basra, I listened to around 2000 women from across
Iraq. They said loud and clear that they wanted equal representation of
women and men at all levels of governance and on any council drawing up
the constitution. They also wanted women’s human rights and equal
opportunities enshrined in the constitution. These Iraqi women ran a campaign
for a 40%/40% gender balance, with a petition and peaceful demonstrations.
The Coalition Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council accepted a minimum
25% quota. 31% women were elected to the Iraq Assembly.
Such experiences show that gender-aware individuals can make a difference,
but that overall reformation will only happen when gender mainstreaming
processes are embedded into all procedures and institutions. This could
be enforced by including gender mainstreaming as an item in organisations’
programme evaluations and individual job appraisals – good marks
for good behaviour in mainstreaming gender, bad marks on your programme
evaluation and career appraisal if you neglect it.
Parallel universe syndrome
Women’s absence in setting the formal agenda is often due to “Parallel
Universe Syndrome”, as I call it. Women representatives promoting
peace initiatives are mostly in the informal sector – in NGOs, civil
society and advocacy groups. They are clamouring to be included on equal
terms and in nearer equal numbers in peace discussions and setting a peace-building
agenda. Meanwhile, those with access to formal political and economic
power are mostly men. The men-at-the-tables representing conflict areas
are mainly warlords, mafia, men who want to grab money and power, and
religious leaders with their own power agenda. They cynically negotiate
the post-conflict agenda, using reassuring “international speak”
to representatives of the international community who are also primarily
male – diplomats, senior personnel in international organisations,
high-ranking military officers, government ministers.
Time after time, women watch the lightning-quick bonding by the international
male and the indigenous male, to the exclusion of women on both sides.
In formal peace talks, men rise to the surface to set the agenda once
again. Representatives from women’s organisations in Sierra Leone,
Liberia and Guinea built a network to search for ways out of the armed
conflicts in the conflict-plagued bulge of Africa. This network played
a decisive role in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table.
In Sri Lanka, women’s NGOs have worked on community peace initiatives:
ditto the middle east and throughout Africa, the Asia-Pacific region and
Latin America.
But they are not included at the top tables. The UK alone has half a dozen
or more superstars whose ideas could utterly transform the global approach
to conflict – and they know what they are talking about: Britain
has fought five wars since Tony Blair entered Downing Street. Even in
international organisations, gender perspectives and gender balance have
not progressed much either. Disgracefully, five years since resolution
1325 was adopted, out of fifty special representatives of the secretary-general
or special envoys on peace support operations, only three are women. At
the UN staffing D-1 level and above, out of ninety staff, nine are women.
Last year, I attended three conferences on women’s participation
in peace processes. The participant lists were a roll call for the world’s
conflict hot spots – Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Croatia, Israel/ Palestine, Sri Lanka, Kosovo, Zimbabwe,
Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Columbia, Angola, Uganda, Burundi, Timor,
Nepal, Nigeria, The Great Lakes, Aceh. The issue of security was high
on their agenda. Historically, “security” has meant keeping
states safe from enemies. Women activists have redefined its meaning to
refer to human security.
The need to protect women is often invisible to international organisations.
One speaker gave the example of a World Food Aid programme in Columbia
which neglected to include security to protect women growing food. And
these parallel universes are also divided by the different vocabularies
used in the formal (mainly male) sector and by women in civil society.
Ancil Adrian-Paul of International Alert points out that Nepalese women
working with military and police on human rights are in fact working on
security sector reform (SSR), though they don’t describe their work
that way.
Several participants observed that media portrayal of women as victims
of war obscures their potential role as peace leaders. Illustrating that
dictum about sowing seeds of future conflict, one woman argued, “in
current peace processes the peace is not for the people, it is for the
power groups. This is the wrong focus.” As well as being unanimous
that they want to be included on equal terms with men in peace-building,
the women from conflict countries called for at least 40% women to be
appointed to decision-making roles in international peace operations,
and for all men and women to have several days’ high quality gender-awareness
training before they are deployed.
Making a difference
The inclusion of women from the informal sector in formal peace talks
can change the paradigm of how peace agreements are made. The negotiating
team which drew up the 1996 South African constitution was 50% female.
This remarkable gender balance was fundamental to an outcome acceptable
to twenty six different political parties, according to former South African
High Commissioner to London, Cheryl Carolus.
How does a group made up of half the world, the sex most deeply and desperately
impacted upon by ‘modern’ conflict, but lacking heavyweight
political or economic power, break into power structures designed over
centuries to suit another power group? Women are up against an obstacle
best illustrated by American comedian Groucho Marx, who once said: “Ma’am
I’d give up my seat to you, if it wasn’t for the fact I’m
sitting in it myself!”
Readers, you can help!
You can help get the UN and EP resolutions implemented. We need to move
debate from “why include gender?” to how to make certain that
women become equal partners in conflict reconstruction and peace-building.
You can lobby your politicians, diplomats, military leaders and anyone
else you think can bring about the changes needed. Project Parity, an
NGO I co-direct, campaigns for the implementation of the EP Resolution
and its accompanying recommendations and can suggest ways of doing this
to maximum effect.
With the support of several organisations, Project Parity is trying to
find out the following information:
- The number of women and of men holding senior posts on EU conflict
and post-conflict missions globally, and deployed in EU member state
peace initiatives, peace missions and post-conflict missions compared
to 5 years ago.
- The number of women compared to men from EU states currently holding
any of the senior posts in European Commission or other EU entities involved
in security issues, conflict prevention, mediation or post conflict reconstruction
globally compared to 5 years ago.
- Women’s NGOs have often been involved in peace initiatives at
community level – what steps has the EU taken to include women’s
NGOs in peace initiatives rather than mainly talking to high ranking politicians,
diplomats and male combatants?
- Project Parity would also appreciate the names and e-mail addresses
of Parliamentarians and Members of the European Parliament who are committed
to the UNSCR 1325 and /or the EP resolution on gender and conflict.
Please email: tim.symonds@shevolution.com
What actions are needed?
-
An agreed international format that all decision-making and peace negotiations
should comprise at least 40% men and 40% women and a maximum 60% of either
sex, and that these personnel should be trained on how to mainstream gender.
The international community is at ease with ethnic and geographic balance
so why not also have a gender balance?
- Every man and woman – civilian and military – deployed
in peace operations should have to show they have had at least three days’
training in how to look at planning, programmes and policies from a gender
perspective. Gender mainstreaming means looking at every process and policy,
every decision and activity and examining how it meets the needs of each
section of the community, male and female.
- The processes of recruitment, selection and appointment of personnel
for peace operations need an overhaul to ensure outreach to women as well
as men, and to look at the criteria.
- Ensure that women as well as men are consulted and listened to right
from the pre-planning stage of post-conflict operations, and every step
of the way.
- Include women’s NGOs – international and from the conflict
zones – in planning, preparation and simulation exercises ahead
of deployment for peace operations. They often already have good networks
with women’s initiatives in countries of conflict.
- Organisations should call for gender to be part of contract compliance.
A good example is the US Agency for International Development (Usaid).
Usaid have a system by which any contractor applying for funds has to
show how they will integrate gender perspectives throughout their programme.
Gender is included in the monitoring and evaluation of the programme.
- Develop procedures which ensure women are fully included, without discrimination,
as decision-makers, holding leadership positions, beneficiaries of services
and resources, and as personnel at all levels – including the most
senior posts.
- The UN and other organisations should stop insisting on a university
degree as a qualification for applying for senior posts. Many women worldwide
are well qualified for posts (they often bring more real life experience)
but have not been to university. Recognising that they were missing out
on talent, the British Civil Service modernised their recruitment and
promotion policies a few years ago – their ads now call for ‘university
degree or demonstrable appropriate experience.’
- Train a pool of women in leadership and negotiation skills.
- Inclusion of gender mainstreaming should be part of evaluations and
job appraisals. For too long, gender considerations have been viewed as
an optional bolt-on luxury extra: ‘if we have extra time or extra
resources we’ll fit it in.’
Gender perspectives need to be incorporated into: planning phase ahead
of deployment; the phase immediately after conflict; emergency and security;
civil unrest; restoration of essential services; groundwork for long term
stability; reconstruction, recovery and moving forward; appointment of
national and municipal interim and transitional governments; work with
local population and international community; physical rehabilitation;
restoring local machinery of government; developing local capabilities;
conflict prevention; mediation; civil military cooperation; peace-keeping;
disarmament, demobilisation reintegration (DDR); support for institutions
and the rule of law; support for DPRE returns; support for the democratisation
process; support for elections; support for the reconstruction of the
economy and infrastructure; synchronisation of the civil military effort;
governance; design and security of refugee and DP camps; media; social
and economic well-being; justice and reconciliation.
Copyright © Lesley Abdela, Published by openDemocracy Ltd. |