Peace Negotiations

During peace negotiations and in all aspects of peace processes, the historical record on the participation of women has been dismal. No women have been appointed Chief or Lead Mediator in any UN-sponsored peace talks, and very few women have been members of mediation teams, averaging fewer than 8 percent of participants and fewer than 3 percent of signatories in recent cases, according to UN Women research. These gaps persist despite the recognition that civilian women and their dependants are overwhelmingly the victims of contemporary conflicts.

Women’s absence in part is due to the fact that negotiations traditionally include parties to conflict or their appointed representatives (whether state or non-state), as well as appointed mediators. Even today, these groups continue to be overwhelmingly represented by men, despite the increased presence of women in senior leadership roles in national parliaments and at the United Nations.

Over time, peace negotiations have also evolved and become more inclusive, with better representation from civil society groups at informal stages. Yet formal processes still fail to consistently incorporate women and gender perspectives. Even when women are included, they are rarely present from the start of negotiations. The result can be that many defining decisions are made long before women get to the table.

Various policy and legal instruments call for greater representation of women in negotiations and peace processes, most significantly UN Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1889 on women, peace and security.

The participation of women and incorporation of gender perspectives in all stages of peace negotiations is important for many reasons:

• Setting the agenda: Women should have the opportunity to influence decisions that are made during negotiations. These early decisions set the stage not only for early recovery activities, including disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR), but also for longer-term peacebuilding, including transitional justice and electoral processes. As a result, they can have defining and long-lasting impacts on women’s conditions and their ability to participate in post-conflict governance.
• Strengthening prospects for conflict resolution: Where they have gained access to peace processes, women have often succeeded in reaching across conflict divides, such as in Ireland, where women’s groups spent a decade building trust between Protestants and Roman Catholics, setting the foundation for the eventual accord. Women have also reinvigorated stalled negotiations, such as in Sierra Leone, where they helped parties to climb down from entrenched positions to reach an agreement.

• Enhancing conflict prevention mechanisms: Women involved in peace processes can strengthen prospects for sustainable peace by enhancing early warning mechanisms aimed at preventing conflict renewal. Women are particularly motivated to prevent conflict because they and their dependants bear most of the consequences. In the Solomon Islands, women have been included in the development of gender-sensitive early warning indicators aimed at strengthening efforts to prevent the recurrence of conflict.

UN Women’s Approach

Increasing advocacy and awareness: UN Women works with other UN entities and relevant actors to ensure that all parties to negotiations understand why and how the integration of gender perspectives in peace processes can contribute to sustainable peace. For example, UNIFEM (now UN Women) seconded a Gender Advisor to the office of the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the peace talks in northern Uganda, in order to raise awareness about women’s issues and ensure that they were effectively addressed during the peace process. In Darfur, UNIFEM (now UN Women) supported a Gender Expert and Support Team (GEST) to participate in the Abuja Inter-Sudanese Peace Talks in 2006. As a result, a substantial portion of women’s priorities were integrated into the Darfur Peace Agreement, including provisions on wealth-sharing and land rights, physical security, women’s participation in the DDR process, and a gender-responsive reconciliation commission.

Strengthening stakeholders’ dialogue: UN Women has been instrumental in strengthening the dialogue between different actors involved in preventing conflict-related sexual violence. In June 2009, UNIFEM (now UN Women) co-hosted a High-Level Colloquium on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence & Peace Negotiations, aimed at developing effective responses for peace negotiators on issues of sexual violence. The colloquium produced a set of recommendations on how to strengthen guidance on five key areas of peace negotiations: pre-ceasefire humanitarian access and human rights agreements; ceasefires and ceasefire monitoring; DDR and SSR arrangements; justice; and reparations and recovery.

Building capacities: UN Women provides direct support to women’s organizations in conflict-affected countries to ensure that their voices are heard during negotiations. UN Women develops training materials and programmes to help women prepare advocacy activities and to identify key entry points for engaging actors on issues related to sexual violence. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, UNIFEM (now UN Women) organized training sessions on constitutional, electoral and judicial reform to ensure that delegates could adequately represent women’s issues during negotiation processes.