Participation

This short submission builds on Conciliation Resources’ practical peacebuilding experience to promote more inclusive peace processes. Despite international commitments to greater inclusion in the field of peace and security, including increased women’s participation, peace processes remain male-dominated and elitist.

This paper draws on inputs from nearly 30 contributors from around the world – Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. They include grassroots activists, global level experts, peace negotiators, former MPs, researchers, academics and civil society champions. The paper makes a case for broadening ways the WPS agenda is applied, so to tackle various manifestations of violence – including violence conflict, non-conflict armed violence, IPV to violent extremism – their gender dimensions and weapons use.

This 40-page report highlights key steps that Libya should take to meet its international obligations by firmly rejecting gender-based discrimination in both law and practice. The report calls on Libya’s parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), to ensure that women are involved on equal terms with men in the entire constitution drafting process, including active participation in the Constituent Assembly tasked with preparing the draft.

Women and girls experience armed violence within and across contexts. This is especially so in post-conflict settings, which tend to be long-lasting and often characterized by residual fighting or high levels of lethal violence. Yet, there is a continuity of violence across contexts: conflict-era dynamics surrounding VAWG influence the magnitude and types of VAWG in post-conflict environments. Disarmament programmes rarely translate into the total removal of all firearms from the community.

During and following conflict, men, women, boys, girls and gender minorities are often direct victims of small arms violence including domestic violence, sexual violence, forced recruitment into armed groups, injury, and death. Indirect consequences of armed violence include taking care of injured family members and an inability to access work, education, and health care. Yet armed conflict can also create spaces to transcend traditional gender roles.

The Women, Peace and Security agenda will only be fully realized when states and other key stakeholders prioritize its radical premise of preventing conflict and violence rather than just cleaning up the pieces afterward. This requires an integrated approach that dismantles the current economy of violence and war and instead invests in an economy of gender justice and peace.

This paper outlines recommendations from CARE International and its local civil society partners towards the 15th anniversary review of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), and the Global Study informing the review.  The following are three major opportunities in the current year to strengthen and accelerate progress in realizing women’s rights and gender equality through the framework and operations established by this landmark resolution.  

The changing nature of conflict has placed numerous demands on peace operations, giving more emphasis to multidimensionality and the need to increase women participation as well as mainstream gender issues in a mission environment. Women peacekeepers have proven that they can perform the same roles, to the same standards and under the same difficult conditions, as their male counterparts.

Women’s peace and security agenda has advanced notoriously in the last 15 years. The adoption of the seven UNSCR on this issue as well as National Action Plans and other regional tools have contributed to the political impulse the WPS agenda has acquired during this period. Nevertheless, there is a long way ahead before the objectives that were clearly set up in 2000 are fully accomplished.