WUNRN
UN News Centre
Link to Report - Women's
Participation in Peacebuilding - Multilingual: http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=a/65/354
More Needs to Be Done to
Ensure Gender Equality in Peacebuilding, UN Secretary-General Warns + Report
8 October 2010 – Ten years
after the adoption of a Security Council resolution calling for equal participation
by women in post-conflict peacebuilding, much remains to be done to ensure they
can play their part in shoring up peace, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in
a report released
today.
“Now is the time for systematic, focused and sustained action, backed by resources and commitments on the part of all stakeholders – national and international, public and private, women and men,” he writes, laying out a seven-point action plan aimed at changing practices among all actors and improving outcomes on the ground.
These
include ensuring that women are fully engaged in all peace talks and
post-conflict planning, including donor conferences, that adequate financing is
provided to address women’s specific needs and advance gender equality, and
that women participate fully in post-conflict governance as elected
representatives or decision makers, including through temporary special
measures such as quotas.
The
plan also calls for rule-of-law initiatives to encourage women’s participation
in seeking redress for injustices committed against them and in improving the
capacity of security actors to prevent and respond to violations of women’s
rights, and for prioritizing women’s involvement in economic recovery, such as
employment-creation schemes, community-development programmes and delivery of
front-line services.
“Ensuring
women’s participation in peace-building is not only a matter of women’s and
girls’ rights. Women are crucial partners in shoring up three pillars of
lasting peace: economic recovery, social cohesion and political legitimacy,”
Mr. Ban says, noting that several world economies that grew the fastest during
the past half-century began their ascent from the ashes of conflict, based in
part on women’s increased role in production, trade and entrepreneurship.
“Recognizing
the ability of women to contribute to sustainable peace and the obstacles they
face in attempting to do so requires an approach to peacebuilding that goes beyond
restoring the status quo ante. Rebuilding after conflict is an enormous
undertaking, but it also represents an opportunity to ‘build back better.’”
Mr.
Ban stresses that strengthening national capacity and ensuring national
ownership are crucial elements of effective peacebuilding since external
support can bring countries only so far in their quest for sustainable peace.
“Enabling
women to contribute to recovery and reconstruction is integral to strengthening
a country’s ability to sustain peacebuilding efforts,” he says. “Similarly,
efforts to facilitate an increased role for women in decision-making processes
must be based on recognition of the fact that peacebuilding strategies cannot
be fully ‘owned’ if half the nation is not actively involved in their design
and implementation.”
Increasing
the confidence of women in the political process requires robust action in the
immediate post-conflict period to bring more women into public office, elected
and appointed and Mr. Ban says creating a “critical mass” of women officials is
crucial, as this will encourage women to engage more substantively within male
dominated institutions, especially in the uniformed services.
“Increasing
women’s political presence must begin even before conflict ceases,” he writes.
“Peace negotiations not only shape the post-conflict political landscape
directly, through peace agreements’ provisions on justice, power-sharing and
constitutional issues, but also indirectly, by lending legitimacy to those
represented at the peace table.”
He
notes that progress made by the UN itself in promoting greater engagement by
women in peace processes has been too slow, with women constituting less than 8
per cent of negotiating delegations in UN-mediated efforts and less than 3 per
cent of peace agreement signatories. He pledges to appoint more women as chief
mediators in such processes and to include gender expertise at senior levels in
mediation support activities.
With
regard to gender equality in the political process, Mr. Ban acknowledges that
it is up to sovereign States to choose an electoral system, with the UN
proposing and facilitating but not imposing. “But neither may we abdicate our
responsibility to remind States of their international commitments, including
the need to increase the proportion of women in elected bodies and other public
institutions,” he stresses.
“We
should harbour no illusions, however, about the challenges of implementation
[of the action plan],” he concludes. “Revising procedures and designing
programmes requires careful deliberation.
Additional
resources are also needed, and the Secretary-General urges Member States to
make substantial, long-term investments in women’s security and productive
potential, which act as “force multipliers for lasting peace.”