Gender Perspective in Peace Initiatives: Opportunities and Challenges

The global campaign for the acceptance of women's rights as human rights and of violence against women as a violation of their human rights, captured centre stage in the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights and this led to the introduction of ‘mainstreaming gender' into the international human rights system. While considerable progress has been made on this approach and for women's equality at the conceptual level, the question still remains as to how these concepts are realized practically and a great deal of work remains to be done in surfacing the manifestations of the gendered features of the violations of fundamental freedoms. This task is particularly difficult in situations of conflict which in today's context are invariably violent in nature and armed.