Excerpt from World Civil Society Conference: Women, War and Peace
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
Sheri Gibbings
July 20th, 2002

This afternoon I would like to suggest strategies for implementation of SC 1325 that could be used at the local, regional and national levels. I'm going to pass along 5 general thoughts to remember when planning these strategies, and hopefully you'll add the next 6 and the next 15 and so on. This is definitely not the whole list of ideas that needs to be included. Many of you have probably already begun to think about this in the work that you have been doing, particularly in places that are trying to overcome conflict or on their way to doing so.
Within the Strategy some Key Elements that must be taken into Consideration are:

Number 1: Raising Our Voices:
We cannot be quiet. In our own countries I think it is important to ask in every situation "Where are the women?" as well as "Who are the women and how can they best be incorporated?"

We cannot sit back happily saying, OK, this is great…the resolution has been passed. There is no guarantee that the Security Council is going to remain actively seized because the resolution did not put the issue of women as a regular item on the Council's agenda. I think one of our interests is that this should go on the agenda formally because at any minute the issue of women can be subsumed in other debates. We must raise issues that have not been implemented yet such as the gender unit at the DPKO and we have to continue to be vigilant on this.

Number 2: Disseminating information and engaging more women and men in the process
Media coverage is needed, getting powerful political leaders willing to speak about it, as well as getting various women's organizations and NGOs to make it an issue they organize around. Publishing and more generally, education about its existence and its content has to happen everywhere in Geneva and around the rest of the world.

Key for Security Council Resolution 1325 is the need for it to be translated, distributed and recognized, thus providing a common platform from which to work for women’s empowerment, similarly to the Platform for Action (PFA). Greater political pressure for the implementation requires greater public awareness of SC 1325 as well as organization around it. In order to gain public awareness around the world and to mobilize various women's organizations and NGOs around SC 1325 it needs to be translated into many languages besides the official UN languages. Not just language translation is needed but also cultural translation. People need to ask how 1325 fits or translates into local situations?

The Citizens' Security Council KATU (NGO-based conflict prevention network), the Finnish UN Association and the UNIFEM Finland have translated the resolution 1325 into Finnish and are going to distribute the brochure to all political decision-makers, NGOs, media and other interested.

Number 3: Being Creative
Women's grassroots peacemaking and peacebuilding activities are often original and startling in their creativity and their ability to reap results. Some of these imaginative activities used by grassroots women's organizations to protest violence and advocate peace have included the wearing of black, using their bodies as shields to convey their messages, employing street theatre, holding demonstrations, vigils, peace camps, and peace walks and convening peace trains. These creative means need to continue for implementation of SC 1325…let us call them "1325 inventions". The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security produced a document called "Putting Peace into Practice" Ideas for Advocacy and Implementation of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This document suggests some "1325 inventions" on how to educate and inform, generate awareness and strategize, impact policy, spreading the word, network and share information. Again it is just the beginning, so please add more of your own ideas.

Number 4: Building Coalitions and Collaborating
I think as NGOs it is particularly important that we work toward coalition building, and realize the importance of meeting and consulting with local goverments and people who are working for the implementation SC Resolution 1325. The unique positioning of NGOs with their flexibility and independence creates opportunities to effectively converse with grassroots, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organizations. NGOs are thus well positioned to facilitate coalition-building and inter-organizational cooperation for implementing SC Resolution 1325. The strongest way to implement 1325 is to develop networks, share expertise and resources and link peace-related issues.

An example of such coalition is the NGO Working Group on Women Peace and Security that came together in June 2000 to move forward a focused campaign on SCR 1325. The NGO Working Group on Women Peace and Security consists of the following partners: WILPF; International Alert; Hague Appeal for Peace; Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children; Women's Caucus for Gender Justice; and the International Women's Tribune Center. The group’s key activities are to: 1) interface with policy and decision makers; 2) provide policy prescriptions to key member states and the UN system; 3) promote dialogue between women, member states, and decision and policy makers; 4) further the debate on the effective implementation of a small range of instruments; 5) liaison with and support change agents within the UN system; and 6) bring women into the system to affect change. The group seeks to promote the participation of women and the promotion of a gender perspective in peace and security, policymaking, conflict management and peace building initiatives.

Another example of this is the Friends of Women, Peace and Security: An inter-governmental initiative. WILPF is invited to attend meetings of this group of like-minded states brought together by Canada and other governments pushing issues of 1325. As participants, we have the opportunity to encourage this group to use its collective strength to press for the implementation of issues contained in SCR 1325, including demanding gender content in Secretary General reports and gender sensitivity policies in UN Peacekeeping Operations, for example.

Another crucial collaboration discussed at the April 11th dialogue was the among academics, activists and UN Officials about how to share resources effectively and make academic research relevant to NGOs and the UN as well as how to feed academics with the research that can be most useful to them.

Number 5: Bringing 1325 into Everyday Culture by Allowing the Implementation to be Culturally Specific: gender issues must to become everyone's issues.
We need to translate this document and allow women to bring out their own experiences of armed conflict so that people can take it, carry it through academia, through research, through the education system, religion, everywhere - so that it becomes not just a Security Council Resolution. Although it is a pretty impressive document, it needs to become more of a living document that informs all of our work, one that is accessible to everyone and can be used. Ultimately, when you think of the UN, what is the use of having this huge area of real estate if it does not have a practical implication on the lives of the ordinary citizens?

Implementing SC Resolution 1325 should be culturally specific. Local approaches to implementation should be recognized and built upon; this includes traditional peacebuilding approaches and "1325 inventions" of women-centered and local groups.

I thought I could quickly mention several things the WILPF UN Office in New York is doing around SC Resolution 1325:

PEACEWOMEN.ORG
In response to this strategic political moment for women around the world, WILPF has developed its PeaceWomen project, which seeks to operationalize SCR 1325, by nurturing communication among a diversity of women's organisations by providing an accessible and accurate information exchange between peace women around the world and the UN System so women can emerge as equal partners in local, regional and global peace processes. Also, the full implementation of SCR 1325 requires simultaneous and collaborative effort on the part of the United Nations (UN) system, governments and the non-governmental organization (NGO) community, and WILPF works to facilitate this process through various PeaceWomen activities. The PeaceWomen project saw the development of PeaceWomen.org, a Web site and meeting place for women's peace campaigners that contains an enormous database on women's peace organizations, translation of the UN system and annotated bibliographies and resources on women and peace. PeaceWomen is a clearinghouse for breaking news, detailed background information and a contact point for the exchange of ideas with like minded groups. The demand for information exchange is growing quickly, as evidenced through the 2000 - 5000 hits the site receives per day.

NEWSLETTER
Futhermore, the UN Office for WILPF is now publishing a bi-weekly newsletter, called 1325 PeaceWomen E-News. The newsletter's purpose is to raise the visibility and maintain the momentum of Security Council Resolution 1325. It strives to keep all parties informed of the others' endeavors. Often the UN agencies know little about women’s initiatives on the "ground" and the information from the UN is often maintained in ways that are not accessible to everyone.

COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN (CSW) TRAINING
In March this year, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, of which WILPF is a member, held a training on SC Resolution 1325 at the Commission on the Status of Women, the oldest UN body working for women’s empowerment. Approximately 100 women and men attended this training. At the end of the session everyone wrote down on a post card a couple things they would do to work towards the implementation of SC Resolution 1325. Three months later WILPF mailed the post-cards back to the women. We are just starting to hear responses. Some examples of the responses are: The National Assembly of Korea translated 1325 into Korean and printed 1000 copies. They distributed the resolution to security and women related institutions such as the Ministry of Defense, National Defense Committee in the National Assembly, Ministry of Gender Equality, Women's Committee in National Assembly, and NGOs working on women's issues and peace. Furthermore, they have included SC Resolution 1325 in their seminars and lectures to raise awareness. Another woman from Japan translated 1325 while she was still in NY in March and distributed copies among Japanese participants at the CSW. After coming home she distributed copies at several other conferences. She also proposed that 1325 be one of the seminar themes for the 2004 International Federation of University Women conferences held in Japan. In addition, UPEACE in Costa Rica is holding an international course for 20 participants from around the world that will cover Security Council Resolution 1325 in November.

Recently, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security has been focusing its efforts on pushing for the necessary resources and budgetary allocations to form gender units, including a senior gender advisor at the Department of PeaceKeeping Operations. The working group is holding a round-table discussion on July 25, 2002 for key NGOs on the implementation of Resolution 1325. This event seizes the occasion offered by the UK Presidency of the Security Council and the open meeting the UK Mission has planned on gender, conflict and peacekeeping on July 25 also. Recently the NGO Working Group wrote a report on the experience of women's organizations during the Security Council visit to the Great Lakes region which highlights the importance of a gender units in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and United Nations Peacekeeping missions. This document can be found on the PeaceWomen.org website.

Conclusion:
I strongly believe that the power of implementation rests in the hands of individuals working in partnerships. It was the power of women working together and using their creativity that made 1325 possible and it is the power of the women that is going to ensure the implementation. I think the initial steps toward implementation should include determining country, regional, or local and culturally specific implementation strategies. Follow-up action should encompass raising your voice, disseminating information, being creative, building coalitions, and bringing 1325 into everyday culture by allowing the implementation to be culturally specific with global impact.

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