WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY RESOURCES: WOMEN ORGANIZING FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PEACE
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Civil Society and NGO Reports, Papers and Statements

Mairin Iwanka Raya: Indigenous Women Stand Against Violence
International Indigenous Women’s Forum (FIMI)
This report reflects FIMI’s efforts to develop effective strategies to combat violence against indigenous women, and to bridge the gap between the global women’s movement and the international indigenous women’s movement. The report puts forward an indigenous conceptualization of gender-based violence. It reflects the fruitful result of efforts by indigenous women around the world, highlights promising practices in research, political mobilization, and community organizing and describes future challenges to guarantee that indigenous women have the right to live a life free of violence. This is a companion report to the United Nations Secretary-General's Study on Violence Against Women (Indigenous Women's Forum, 2006)

For complete report, please click here.

Feminist Resistance to War and Violence in Serbia
Lepa Mladjenovic and Donna M. Hughes, Frontline Feminisms, August 2007(Accessed)
The war in Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia resulted in terrible violence, much of which targeted women with rape, torture and death. Lepa Mladjenovic and Donna M. Hughes give a feminist perspective on war resistance in the midst of that horror.

Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuilding in Sudan, Congo and Uganda
International Crisis Group - Africa Report, 28 June 2006
Peacebuilding cannot succeed if half the population is excluded from the process. Crisis Group’s research in Sudan, Congo (DRC) and Uganda suggests that peace agreements, post-conflict reconstruction, and governance do better when women are involved. Women make a difference, in part because they adopt a more inclusive approach toward security and address key social and economic issues that would otherwise be ignored. But in all three countries, as different as each is, they remain marginalised in formal processes and under-represented in the security sector as a whole. Governments and the international community must do much more to support women peace activists.

For complete report please click here

A Culture of Peace: Women, Faith and Reconciliation
Marigold Best and Pamela Hussey, Published by the Catholic Institute for International Relations, 2005
Building a culture of peace is perhaps the biggest, the most complicated and the most important issue in the world today, ranging from the international scenario down to the smallest family unit – even down to each one of us. The importance of the issue is shown by the prominence given to it by every organisation working for true peace and development. CIIR is one of these. They agree too that, without the full participation of women, enjoying equal rights with men, there can be no real peace, no real development, no real reconciliation, in fact no real hope for the world.

Women Building Peace: Sharing Know-How, Assessing Impact: Planning for Miracles
Judy El Bushra with Ancil Adrian-Paul and Maria Olson, International Alert, June 2005
The issue of impact measurement in conflict transformation and peacebuilding work has gained a higher profile in the last few years as a result of several research and development initiatives. These initiatives have not addressed the issue of gendered impacts in any depth, nor have they reflected the specific circumstances of women's organisations engaged in peacebuilding. This report, based on a workshop on assessing impact, seeks to broaden the scope of peace and conflict impact monitoring by highlighting issues of concern to women, and by showing how these issues may enrich the field. It distils some of the experience and thinking of women's organisations engaged in peacebuilding on how - and why - they carry out impact assessment.

Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in Armed Conflict
Save the Children, 28 April 2005
Save the Children is today calling on world leaders to better protect the large numbers of vulnerable and innocent girls whose lives are destroyed every year by conflict, with the launch a new report ‘"Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in Armed Conflict". The report identifies a ‘"hidden army" of girls, some as young as eight, who are abducted against their will to live life in the army. The roles of the girls vary from being actual soldiers through to serving as porters, cleaners and cooks. Almost all are forced to serve as sex slaves or ‘"wives".

Naga Women Making a Difference: Peace Building in Northeastern India
Rita Manchanda, Women Waging Peace, Washington DC, Policy Commission, January 2005
This report chronicles the innovative approaches of Naga women who mediate among armed actors and mobile for peace and reconciliation across conflict divides, including their activities to sustain the ceasefire, strengthen the formal peace process, and encourage the pursuit of long-term stability in northeastern India.

Appeal Against Fundamentalisms: WLUML statement to the World Social Forum
Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), 21 January 2005
For more than two decades, women have identified one of the warning signs of fundamentalisms to be anti-women policies, whether it is the attacks on contraception and abortion in the USA and in Europe, or the imposition of dress codes and forced veiling and the attacks on freedom of movement and on the rights to education and work under Taliban-like regimes. Women have massively mobilized for Afghan women starving under their burqa or Nigerian women sentenced to death by stoning for sex outside marriage, while so-called religious laws were invading these countries.

The Kigali Declaration Of The Great Lakes Regional Women's Meeting
9 October 2004, Kigali, Rwanda
We, the delegates representing the core countries of the Great Lakes Region, namely Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia and the co-opted Republic of South Africa, assembled at the First Regional Women’s Meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda on 7 – 9 October 2004, as part of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region under the auspices of the African Union and the United Nations; Concerned, with the multi-dimensional conflicts in the Great Lakes Region, resulting in untold suffering of communities especially women and children and loss of human lives...

Women in Armed Opposition Groups Speak on War, Protection and Obligations under International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law: Workshop Report
Dyan Mazurana, Geneva Call and the Program for the Study of International Organization(s), Geneva, 26-29 August 2004
This report covers the key protection and obligations for women and girls in armed opposition groups under international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Drawing on the voices of the 32 women present from 18 armed opposition groups as well as previous relevant studies, the report then investigates the ways in which women and girls enter into armed opposition groups and their active participation within the groups. It documents and analyzes the ways women experience empowerment in armed opposition groups, and the ways they are disempowered. It examines the reasons girls under 18 years of age enter into armed opposition groups, their roles, and the threats to their rights and physical and mental integrity from forces both outside and within their armed group. The report then moves to cover key disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) issues raised by the women participants. It concludes with an investigation into the potential gains and obstacles facing women and girls within armed groups and those wishing to work with them in promoting and enforcing humanitarian and human rights law within armed opposition groups. Each section is followed by key lessons learned from discussions with women in armed opposition groups.

Gender and Peace-building in Africa
Kari Karamé (Ed.), Training for Peace Program, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)-Oslo, the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)- Durban and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS)- Pretoria, 2004

Rethink: A Handbook for Sustainable Peace
Kvinna Till Kvinna, 5 March 2004
We want to demonstrate how simple it is to make women become actors in the process of creating a sustainable peace. We also want to show how much there is to gain –for everyone –when women enjoy the power and the means to fully participate in processes of peace and reconstruction.

Women Building Peace: Sharing Know-How
Judy El-Bushra, International Alert, June 2003
This report aims to synthesise the findings to date of International Alert’s Women Building Peace: Sharing Know-how Project. It makes use of a varied set of project activities (including conferences, key-informant interviews, documentation from partner organisations, and the deliberations of the Sharing Know-how Workshop held in Oxford in November 2002) as well as a range of sources drawn from literature on the emerging theme of women and peacebuilding. The Oxford workshop brought together women peace activists from South Asia, South America, Africa, the Caucasus and the South Pacific, to identify, analyse and assess their conflict-resolution work as well as peacebuilding practices and strategies developed by women. The workshop looked at women’s understanding and analysis of conflict, their experiences of armed conflict and their responses to it.

Report on WILPF Australia’s Activities Related to Security Council Resolution 1325
WILPF (Australian Capital Territory- ACT) branch, Canberra, June 2003
Two years ago, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Australian Capital Territory (ACT) branch in Canberra began working on Resolution 1325. Over the past two years they have made presentations and conducted workshops at the local level and also at national and international conferences, representing the WILPF Australian Section. In addition, they have received a grant to develop educational /informational packages on Resolution 1325.

UNSC Resolution 1325: South Asian Women's Perspectives
Nicola Johnston, International Alert, June 2003
The South Asia consultation on Women, Peace and Security facilitated by International Alert (IA) forms part of the Gender Peace Audit Project of IA’s Gender and Peacebuilding Programme. It was the fourth consultation of its kind facilitated by IA. The preceding consultations were held in Nepal, the Caucasus and Nigeria in 2002. These consultations aim to bridge the gap between global policy and the practical realities faced by women in regional, national and post-conflict contexts. The outcomes of these consultations are disseminated to global and regional policy-makers for the development and refinement of international policies and practices relating to women, peace and security through the Global Policy Project (IA’s Gender and Peacebuilding Programme). The consultations generate and contribute to local, national and regional advocacy activities and strategies to address issues and concerns that affect women’s peace and security.

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security: Two Years On Report
NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, 31 October 2002

NEPAD Reluctance to Address Gender Issues: an Analysis
Sara Hlupekile Longwe, 11 October 2002
This paper assesses whether NEPAD, The New Partnership for African Development, can provide the basis for action on issues of gender inequality, and therefore whether the newly formed African Union provides a new opportunity and mechanism for progress towards equal rights for women in Africa. The assessment of NEPAD's intention to address gender issues is analysed by looking at NEPAD as a planning sequence, from expression of principles and goals, through to the identification of the specific actions proposed to achieve these goals. The interest is to examine the attention to gender through the sequence of planning steps, looking specifically at the consistency of the logic in the treatment of gender issues as the planning sequence unfolds.

Women for Peace: A Call for Action
Sharm El Sheikh Initiative, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, 22 September 2002

Women's Roles in Conflict Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Literature Review and Institutional Analysis
Tsjeard Bouta and Georg Frerks, The Clingendael Conflict Research Unit, June 2002 Part I | Part II

New Bridges to Peace: Enhancing National and International Security by Expanding Policy Dialogues Among Women Conference Report
Women in International Security, April 2001
Forty women leaders from international organisations, the US Government, the Military, Academia and local NGOs met at a 2-day seminar conducted by the Washington DC-based organisation Women In International Security (WIIS). Speakers included Fatima Gailani of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, Shirin Tahir-Kheli of Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, South Africa's Deputy Minister of Defence, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, and the UN's Funmi Olonisakin.

Engendering Peace in Africa: A Critical Inquiry Into Some Current Thinking on the Role of African Women in Peace-building
Louise Vincent. Africa Journal in Conflict Resolution. No. 1. African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, 2001

Women Making Peace
South Asia Forum for Human Rights, R. Manchanda, B. Sijapati, R. Gang, Kathmandu, Nepal 2001
This report details a regional workshop held in June 2001 entitled 'Strengthening Women's Role in the Peace Process.' Reporting on the workshop's experiments with developing overarching and comparative frames of women's experiences in conflict zones and their coping strategies in South Asia, this publication provides a solid reference for Best Practices in peacebuilding and maintenance.

Women, Governance and Conflicts in Africa
Maria Nzomo, Ph.D, DPMF/OSSREA Conference on African Conflicts: Their Management, Resolution and Post Conflict Reconstruction, Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, 13-15 December 2000

Rapport del'atelier sur la transformation des conflits en Afrique: La perspective des femmes africaines
Association des Femmes Africaines pour la Recherche et le Developpement (AFARD) et International Alert. Dakar, Institut de Goree, 23-36 mai 2000

Women in War and Peace: Grassroots Peacebuilding
Donna Ramsey Marshall. Peaceworks. No.34. Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2000

Women and Peacebuilding
Dyan Mazurana and Susan McKay. Montreal: International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1999
If progress is to be made towards building more peaceful, cooperative and just societies where human security is valued as paramount, building peace must more deeply involve women and women’s approaches. As documented throughout this essay, women’s roles in, and contributions to, peacebuilding have been underutilized and lacking in recognition at community, national, and international levels. Despite women’s marginalization outside the mainstream peace and international security arenas, their work in peacebuilding is substantial. order this publication



UN Reports

Can conflict analysis processes support gendered visions of peacebuilding? Reflections from the Peace and Stability Development Analysis in Fiji
UNDP, 2006
This paper was prepared at the request of the UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery to highlight key issues, lessons and opportunities with regard to the integration of gender issues and concerns in conflict analysis processes such as the Peace and Stability Development Analysis (PSDA) in Fiji. The report draws from the work, experience and insights of many people who have been active participants of the PSDA process.

Guide on Women, Peace and Security
UN-INSTRAW, 2006
To commemorate the International Day of Peace, September 21st 2006, the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) offers a new manual on how to create a successful action plan on women, peace and security. Designed as a resource for governments, international and regional agencies and civil society organizations, the guide -"Securing Equality, Engendering Peace: A guide to policy and planning on women, peace and security"-provides good practices, specific recommendations and a practical six-step model process.

Gender Approaches in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations
UN Development Programme (UNDP), 2001
This manual was compiled during a seminar entitled “Approccio di genere in situazioni di emergenza, conflitto e post-conflitto” (Gender approach in emergency, conflict, and postconflict situations), which was held in Rome on 2-6 April 2001. The seminar was organized by the UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in Rome and the Emergency division of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and included participants from various Italian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies directly involved in emergency, crisis response and recovery operations. During the seminar, a needs assessment session was held and participants expressed their interest in having a “how to” manual that could help them better integrate a gender approach during humanitarian, recovery and development activities.

Women are half of the community, why are they not half of the solution?
UNIFEM Independent Experts' Assessment Report. Progress of the World ’s Women 2002, Vol.1: Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and the Role of Women in Peace-Building, 2002

Women Say No to War
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizational (UNESCO)
Women speak up against war. This book supports their voices. Photographs from all corners of the world and short commentaries by key spokespersons of the peace movement illustrate women's rejection of war and violence.