Peacebuilding Commission opens: UN Reform Process rolls on: Will Women's Voice be heard?
By Tanya Roberts-Davis

July 10, 2006 – (IWTC Women's GlobalNet) The UN reform process moved a step forward on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at UN Headquarters in New York, with the inaugural meeting of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), a new 31 member intergovernmental advisory committee. The role of the Commission is to facilitate collaboration and coordination among political, military, humanitarian, development and UN actors to help countries during the fragile transitional period between war and lasting peace.

During the inaugural meeting, provisional rules of procedure were adopted. Mr. Ismael Gaspar Martins, Permanent Representative of Angola, was elected to chair the PBC and Sierra Leone and Burundi were adopted as the first two countries on the Commission's peacebuilding agenda to receive advice (recommended by the Security Council). The next meeting of the Organizational Committee of the Commission is expected to convene within a few weeks and country-specific meetings are also expected to meet soon. Significantly, Carolyn McAskie from Canada was appointed by the Secretary-General as Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support.

Carolyn McAskie is the former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Burundi. She is known for strongly promoting gender equality and women's human rights principles within the UN peacekeeping mission in Burundi and hopes are high that gender concerns will take centre stage as the Commission begins its important work. In the words of Carolyn... ''Security Council res. 1325: Women, Peace and Security, will be important for the Commission and we intend to bring it to the attention of the members as a core issue at all levels....''

In addition to the Commission, a Peacebuilding Fund will be established to help (along with other monetary sources) to ensure sustained financing for early recovery initiatives and longer-term investment, while the Peacebuilding Support Office will provide the PBC with information and analysis as well as groundwork at the country level.

As the PBC begins to carry out its mandate, gender justice advocates around the world are closely tracking its progress. Many questions remain with respect to the actual commitment of the PBC to meaningfully integrate a women's rights architecture into its operations, such as:

- Will the delegates on the PBC Organizational Committee have expertise in gender-mainstreaming and be sensitive to the specific needs of women in conflict zones?
- Will the PBC implement the recommendations of Security Council Resolution 1325 by actively seeking to consult with and involve women representatives from governments and civil society organizations (from the local, regional and international levels) in not only the country-specific meetings, but also in any resulting initiatives in post-conflict zones? Specifically, what role will women's organizations in Sierra Leone and Burundi have in helping to guide the PBC in its advising capacity in these first two cases?
- Will the PBC meetings include the participation of representatives from UNIFEM, UNFPA and the Gender Advisory Offices in UN peacekeeping operations?
- Will the personnel in the Peacebuilding Support Office have a comprehensive understanding of the women-peace-security nexus and be able to effectively integrate a feminist perspective into their work?
- Will there be specific gender and peacebuilding advisors within the PBSO? Further, will they liaise with women's networks and groups at a national and international level?
- Will the Peacebuilding Fund have a significant portion of finances allocated to women-specific projects and towards strengthening the capacity of women's civil society to participate in peacebuilding initiatives? Further, will a gendered analysis be integrated into the Fund's operations in order to ensure that resources are dispersed in a manner that is responsive to the needs and priorities of women? For example, will the PBF prioritize the psychosocial reconstruction of communities?

Members of the commission will be from the Permanent Country Missions at UN Headquarters and were selected in the following ways for two year terms:

Seven members from the Security Council: China, Denmark, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Republic of Tanzania and the United States of America.

Seven members from the Economic and Social Council (five seats distributed to each of the five regional groups, two additional seats): Angola, Belgium, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Poland and Sri Lanka.

Five top providers of assessed contributions to UN budgets and of voluntary contributions to the UN funds, programmes and agencies: Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Norway.

Five top providers of military personnel and civilian police toUnited Nations missions: Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Seven members from the General Assembly: Burundi, Chile, Croatia, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji and Jamaica

However, additional opportunities for women to be involved in the PBC remain to be seen. Indeed, the PBC will only be effective in achieving its goals of facilitating long-lasting peace in post-conflict zones if it heeds SCR 1325, allowing for meaningful participation of women's networks at local, national and international levels.

From: http://www.iwtc.org/304.htm