“Cease-fire negotiations that exclude women are more likely to fall apart. Here’s how the U.N. can boost their participation at the bargaining table.” Nov. 8 2018
New Research from Melanne Verveer —executive director of the Institute for Women, Peace, and Security at Georgetown University; U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, 2009-2013 — and Anjali Dayal —an assistant professor of international politics at Fordham University, and research fellow at she Georgetowns IWPS — confirms that talks are more effective with women involved.
....To date, women are vastly underrepresented in formal peace negotiations, [being] only 2 percent of mediators, 5 percent of witnesses and signatories, and 8 percent of negotiators….
That’s a major problem. Beyond the fact that women deserve an equal hand in shaping their societies... their participation leads to better outcomes. Studies find that when civil society groups and women’s groups are included ... resulting peace agreements are 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years. That is huge, considering that settlements break down more often than not. A more gender-balanced process enhances local trust and buy-in, injects legitimacy into the process, and increases the chances that problematic social norms and power imbalances that contributed to the conflict will be rectified.
[But although women are largely excluded from formal negotiations, they are not] passive observers of men’s efforts to resolve conflict. Rather, they’ve actively engaged in what negotiators call Track II processes ...
In Liberia in the early 2000s, for example, formal [Track I] negotiations were bolstered by Track II efforts by women, who launched mass campaigns and sit-ins to demand peace; organized consultations among warring parties, negotiators, and regional actors; and legitimized formal negotiations by calling for rebels and the government to sit down together….
[This is] not unique. In the first systematic study of women’s involvement in informal peace processes, the [GIWPS] recently found that, of 63 such negotiations in the post-Cold War era, 38 involved informal initiatives. In a majority of those, women’s groups were actively involved….
Much more at the date-link up top.
Links to related material cited there:
