Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000): How far have we come after three years?
Sandra Krähenmann, On Agenda Item 12a: Violence against women, Room 17-NGO News Center

Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS), a member of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, invited to a panel discussion in order to discuss the progress made in the implementation of the Security Council Resolution 1325 which was adopted in October 2000.
This resolution is the first of its kind ever adopted by the Security Council on the issue of women, peace and security. Among others, the Security Council calls on all actors involved to adopt a gender perspective when negotiating and implementing peace agreements. This includes measures to ensure the protection and the respect of human rights of women and girls, particularly as they relate to the Constitution, the electoral system ,the police and the judiciary. The moderator of the debate, Bineta Diop, the director of FAS, highlighted the importance of resolution 1325 which serves them as their guiding tool. The purpose of the panel discussion was to show the missing gaps and to make recommendations in order to ensure that the implementation of the resolution became reality. The first speaker Joyce Mends-Cole, Senior Co-ordinator, UN High Commissioner for refugees, started by stressing the uniqueness and importance on this resolution which she qualified as a blueprint for integration of gender perspective in peace operations and humanitarian action. It was the first time that the Security Council deliberately thought about women and peace and security. First of all she presented briefly the two reports which were elaborated as a consequence of this resolution. The first report by the Secretary General Kofi Annan contains a 25 point action plan in order to implement this resolution. The second one was an independent experts' assessment on the impact of armed conflict on women and women's role in peacebuilding sponsored by unifem. During her speech she pointed out the importance of continuing the strategy to appoint women on high levels in the UN agencies, including as special rapporteurs. Furthermore there has been a multiplication of gender action plans in many UN agencies. Women need to be integrated from the beginning until the end: in conflict prevention, during the conflict where women are particularly vulnerable and in the post-conflict situation. After a presentation of UNHCR's work on women and peace and security, she concluded by underlining the importance of the partnership with the civil society: without this partnership no move towards the implementation of 1325 was possible. Her last remarks were greatly appreciated by the following speaker, Krishna Patel, the President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, a representative of this civil society. Similarly to the former speaker she stressed the importance of this resolution by calling it a "landmark": For the first time the Security Council has looked at the consequences of war on women and took into consideration their conflict and post conflict situation. She briefly outlined the three most important parts of the resolution: First, the Security Council called on all States to end impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, including those relating to sexual and other violence against women and girls. Secondly, the Security Council called on all actors involved to adopt a gender perspective when negotiating and implementing peace agreement. In respect to this point she wondered what happened when there were more women on the higher levels of the decision making process: In what way does this influence the power structure? Does this lead to more or less war making? She wished to underline her view that the women's movement was not about more women in power positions, but about power and the number of women waging peace, not war. At last the Security Council resolution also took into account the gender based violence which was often occurring during armed conflicts in violation of International law. In her critical discourse she underlined several issues: First of all, as result of this resolution we now have information concerning the situation of women during the conflict and in post-conflict situations, but the resolution does address the role of women in prevention of conflicts. Stressing that women wanted above all prevention of conflict, she called for a shift from this concern with conflict and post conflict situations to more emphasis on the role of women in conflict prevention. She gave examples of women committees actively engaged in conflict prevention, as for example the European's Women Lobby saying no to the war in Iraq. Krishna Patel underlined the need to follow this path. But unfortunately even the focus on women in conflict and post conflict situations is often subject to political considerations and the resolution is not fully implemented. In order to illustrate this point she made a comparison between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq: During and after the war in Afghanistan the situation of women was widely reported because of political reason, while now nothing is know about the conditions of women in Iraq. She remembered the mostly female audience that during the last years conflicts and the number of women suffering in conflicts were increasing. She identified as another gap of the resolution its failure to look at the connection between violence against women and human rights in general: Violence against women involves automatically the violation of many human rights: the right to life, the right to dignity...the list could go on forever. She concluded that therefore violence against women involved necessarily violations of human rights. This mass violation of Human rights occurs not only at the individual, private level, but is also often state sponsored. Krishna Patel concluded by fully endorsing the policy of the EU women lobby: No to war and hold to militarization. The last speaker was Colette Samoya from the Bangwe project whose speech served to illustrate the insights of somebody engaged at the grass root level. She pointed out that even before this resolution the African women were already conscious of the role of women in peace negotiation. She went on by presenting several initiatives of women in conflict zones in order to re-establish the dialogue between the warring parties. But after her impressive account of how in war torn regions women were often leading the initiatives for peace negotiations, she spoke about the great challenges in order to implement resolution 1325. First of all, it is not easy to change mentalities which stilly perceive women mainly as protectors of the children and mourning wives. She expressed her concern about the growing number of young women participating more and more in military and militia activities. Those women are often exhibiting great cruelty, perpetrating or encouraging human rights violations. As an illustration she gave the example of a Rwandan women accused of having ordered the rape of other women. As a last point she wished to underline once more the particular vulnerability of women during armed conflicts where they are often the main target everywhere and of all kinds of violence, including rape. One of her most important recommendations in order to progress towards full implementation of 1325 was the need to inform: the content of the resolution and the reports should be disseminated as widely as possible and not be confined to governmental services. During the following discussion it was pointed out that women were not only victims but often encouraged their husbands and sons to humiliate other women. Therefore it is crucial to underline that every women can do something, by rising her boys in respect for women in general, and not only for the mother. After this panel discussion it was clear that much still needs to be done, by both men and women.

THis article can also be found at http://room17.org/women1