ISSUE 44: DECEMBER 2006-FEBRUARY 2007
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Study urges stronger role for women in peace processes
Enduring peace cannot be guaranteed unless women take a greater role in peace processes and in the reconstruction of post-conflict societies, according to a new study by the UNU associated institution Interntional Conflict Research and a number of research partners.
The study, Re-Imagining Women’s Security: a Comparative Study of South Africa, Northern Ireland and Lebanon, was funded under the UK Economic and Social Research Council New Security Challenges Programme and implemented through a unique research partnership between INCORE and Queen’s University, Belfast, the University of Ulster, Democratic Dialogue and research associates at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa and the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
The study's findings, launched at a workshop at UN Headquarters, New York Oct 12-13, showed that in all three situations women saw security as not only a ceasefire and physical safety but also having a job, an education for their children, a good health service and a feeling that society recognised the specific interests of women.
Project leader Professor Paddy Hillyard, of Queen’s University, Belfast, said: “The dominant institutions of the state following peace processes remain overwhelming male. Their transformation has to be part of the reconstruction effort before women can feel truly secure.”
The South African experience clearly demonstrated the critical importance of including women all levels of decision-making. In Lebanon women played a much more limited role. In Northern Ireland the experience of the Women’s Coalition showed that women operate very differently from male politicians, stressing issues that differ from traditional political preoccupations.
"The evidence is that lasting peace will never be achieved unless positive action is taken to guarantee women an equal position in the development of peace agreements and in all post-agreement political and civic institutions,” said researcher Margaret Ward.
Monica McWilliams, another researchers and now Chief Commissioner for Human Rights in Northern Ireland, argued that “there must be links between human rights and human security discourses to deal with the continuum of violence against women from the domestic and community to the national and global levels.”
© 2006 United Nations University