Women Gender Equality And Post Conflict Transformation

The end of formal hostilities in any given conflict provides an opportunity to transform society in order to secure a stable peace. This book builds on the existing feminist international relations literature as well as lessons of past cases that reinforce the importance of including women in the post-conflict transition process, and are important to our general understanding of gender relations in the conflict and post-conflict periods. Post-conflict transformation processes, including disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs, transitional justice mechanisms, reconciliation measures, and legal and political reforms, which emerge after the formal hostilities end demonstrate that war and peace impact, and are impacted by, women and men differently. By drawing on a strong theoretical framework and a number of cases, this volume provides important insight into questions pertaining to the end of conflict and the challenges inherent in the post-conflict transition period that are relevant to students and practitioners alike.

What happens to women in the aftermath of war and internal conflict? This book asserts that the post-war period is too late for women to transform patriarchal gender relations; the foundations for change must be built during conflict. The Contributors analyze what women endure and what they construct during and after conflict, what obstacles they encounter in their search for autonomy and what bonds of solidarity they create in building peace.

Issues of socio-economic development, democracy and peace are linked to gender equality. This book argues that gender equality needs to be placed on the policy and programme agenda of the entire spectrum of peace and conflict-related initiatives and activities to achieve conflict transformation.

Issues of socioeconomic development, democracy and peace are inextricably linked to gender equality. The main argument of Gender Mainstreaming in Conflict Transformation: Building Sustainable Peace is that gender equality needs to be placed on the policy programme of the entire spectrum of peace and conflict related initiatives and activities in order to achieve conflict transformation. These include conflict prevention and early warning mechanisms; peace negotiations and agreements; peacekeeping, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration; truth and reconciliation commissions; post conflict reconstruction; and peace building and peace education. In the Commonwealth, as globally, armed conflict has moved into the village, the community, the street and the home, resulting in a gendered distribution of suffering among women and girls, and men and boys. What is less well known, however, is that women have been making significant contributions to peace processes and rebuilding their societies in all phases of the conflict. In recognition of this, in 2000 the United Nations Security Council made an urgent call in passing Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), for "the equal participation and full involvement of women in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security", and emphasised "the need to increase their role in decision making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution". Commonwealth Members Responsible for Women's/Gender Affairs, in their new Plan of Action for Gender Equality 20052015, reaffirmed the 30 per cent target for all women in all peace initiatives, which was endorsed by Heads of Government (CHOGM, Coolum, 2001), and encouraged member States to mainstream gender equality in all peace processes. Gender Mainstreaming in Conflict Transformation: Building Sustainable Peace is intended as a contribution to the achievement of these goals. It grew out of a series of symposia and workshops held by the Commonwealth Secretariat in the post Beijing decade in collaboration with other partners. These fora contributed a wealth of analysis and case studies that made it clear that women's participation in processes of democratisation, as well as in a broad spectrum of peace initiatives in Commonwealth countries, were not just an ideal but rather a reality that needed to be better understood by policy makers and other political and social actors working in fields including democracy, development, peace and conflict. This book brings together this body of work into an advocacy, capacity-building and policy tool to contribute to gender mainstreaming in all processes of conflict transformation and in building sustainable peace. As one of the Commonwealth Secretariat's publications on gender mainstreaming in key development issues, it will be of interest to those working to achieve gender equality, peace, democracy and sustainable development, particularly in situations of armed and other forms of conflict.

Peacekeeping has become a major international undertaking throughout the world, from Africa to the Americas, from Europe to Southeast Asia. Yet until now, there has been no systematic analysis of the key role of gender in post-cold war conflicts and of post-conflict peacekeeping efforts. This groundbreaking volume explores how gender has become a central factor in shaping current thinking about the causes and consequences of armed conflict, complex emergencies, and reconstruction. Drawing on expertise ranging from the highest levels of international policymaking down to the daily struggle to implement peacekeeping operations, this work represents the full span of knowledge and experience about international intervention in local crises. Presenting a rich array of examples from Angola, Bosnia Herzegovina, East Timor, El Salvador, the former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, and Serbia, the authors offer important insights for future peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding; understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation. Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women’s peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims’ dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge. Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women’s activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and feminist ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Peacebuilding will be of particular interest to peace practitioners and to students and researchers of peace and conflict studies, international relations and gender politics.

Gender oppression has been a feature of war and conflict throughout human history, yet until fairly recently, little attention was devoted to addressing the consequences of violence and discrimination experienced by women in post-conflict states. Thankfully, that is changing. Today, in a variety of post-conflict settings--the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Northern Ireland --international advocates for women's rights have focused bringing issues of sexual violence, discrimination and exclusion into peace-making processes. In On the Frontlines, Fionnuala N? Aol?in, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Naomi Cahn consider such policies in a range of cases and assess the extent to which they have had success in improving women's lives. They argue that there has been too little success, and that this is in part a product of a focus on schematic policies like straightforward political incorporation rather than a broader and deeper attempt to alter the cultures and societies that are at the root of much of the violence and exclusions experienced by women. They contend that this broader approach would not just benefit women, however. Gender mainstreaming and increased gender equality has a direct correlation with state stability and functions to preclude further conflict. If we are to have any success in stabilizing failing states, gender needs to move to fore of our efforts. With this in mind, they examine the efforts of transnational organizations, states and civil society in multiple jurisdictions to place gender at the forefront of all post-conflict processes. They offer concrete analysis and practical solutions to ensuring gender centrality in all aspects of peace making and peace enforcement.

Utilising Northern Ireland as a case study, this book presents an analysis of the gender and sexual politics of conflict transformation. The book synthesises a vast array of international sources with the author’s empirical and theoretical research to produce a powerful gendered critique of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. It maps the negative effects of the region’s violent conflict on gender and sexual equality and explores the potential of the conflict transformational processes, set in motion by the 1998 Peace Agreement, to transform relationships between different genders and sexualities. Starting from the feminist proposition that building peace requires the inclusion of issues of gender and sexual equality, the author analyses how the new institutional and semantic structures of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland preserved older conservative narratives about gender and sexuality. As older narratives clashed with progressive forms of sexual and gender politics, the core sites of conflict transformation became arenas of gender and sexual struggles. The book outlines these struggles, and charts the positive and inclusive visions of peace developed by activists throughout the period of conflict transformation. This book will be of much interest to students of gender studies, conflict transformation, ethnic conflict, peace studies and Irish politics.