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http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/07/women-peace-and-security-agenda-still-hitting-glass-ceiling/
Armed Conflict – Women & Children Most of Victims, But Women
Still Marginalized in Peace Process
Liberian
National Police Officer Lois Dolo provides security at the third annual
commemoration of the Global Open Day on Women, Peace and Security in Liberia.
The event was themed “Women Demand Access to Justice”. Credit: UN Photo/Staton
Winter
By Nora Happel
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 30 2015 (IPS) - This
October will mark the 15th anniversary of the adoption of U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1325. The landmark resolution on Women, Peace and
Security (WPS) recognises not only the disproportionate impact armed conflict
has on women, but also the lack of women’s involvement in conflict resolution
and peace-making.
It
calls for the full and equal participation of women in conflict prevention,
peace negotiations, humanitarian response and post-conflict reconstruction and
urges member states to incorporate a gender perspective in all areas of
peace-building and to take measures to protect women from sexual violence in
armed conflict.
Since
its passage, 1325 has been followed by six additional resolutions (1820, 1888,
1889, 1960, 2106 and 2122).
But
despite all these commitments on paper, actual implementation of the WPS agenda
in the real world continues to lag, according to humanitarian workers and
activists.
Data
by the U.N. and NATO show that women and girls continue to be
disproportionately affected by armed conflict.
Before
the Second World War, combatants made up 90 percent of casualties in wars.
Today most casualties are civilians, especially women and children. Hence, as
formulated in a 2013 NATO review, whereas men wage the war, it is mostly women
and children who suffer from it.
Kang
Kyung-wha Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy
Emergency Relief Coordinator at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who spoke at a recent lecture series on WPS, cited
as example the situation of women and girls on the border between Nigeria and
Niger, where the average girl is married by 14 and has two children by age 18.
Secondary
education for girls is almost non-existent in this area and risks of violence,
sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking are particularly high, she said.
“Thus
marginalised and disempowered, [these women and girls] are unlikely to play any
part in building stable communities and participate in the socio-economic
development of their societies and countries,” Kang said.
“Despite
1325 and the successor resolutions…women and girls continue to be routinely
excluded from decision-making processes in humanitarian responses as well as in
peace-negotiations and peace-building initiatives.”
High
expectations are placed on the World Humanitarian Summit, scheduled to take
place in May 2016 in Istanbul. Activists hope that the summit will help turn
the numerous rhetorical commitments into concrete actions.
Marcy
Hersh, Senior Advocacy Officer at Women’s Refugee Commission, who also spoke on
the panel, told IPS: “Women and girls are gravely implicated in peace and
security issues around the world, and therefore, they must be a part of the
processes that will lead to their protection.”
“The
key challenges in protecting women and children in emergencies, and ensuring
women are able to participate in these processes, is not related to knowing
what needs to happen…We need a commitment to do it. We need to see leadership
and accountability in the international community for these issues.”
“If
humanitarian leadership, through whatever mechanisms, can finally collectively
step up to the plate and provoke the behavioral change necessary to ensure
humanitarian action works with and for women and girls, we will have undertaken
bold, transformative work.”
Another
challenge in making the women, peace and security agenda a reality is linked to
psychological resistance and rigid adherence to the traditional status quo.
Gender-related issues tend to be handled with kid gloves due to “cultural
sensitivity”, according to Kang Kyung-wha.
“But
you can’t hide behind culture,” Kang said.
Also,
women activists continue to face misogyny and skepticism in their communities
and at the national level. Christine Ahn, co-founder of the Korea Policy
Institute and former Senior Policy Analyst at the Global Fund for Women, told
IPS that often enough the involvement of women in peace-keeping processes seems
inconceivable to some of the men in power who hold key positions in
international relations and foreign policy.
“They
are calling us naive, dupes, fatuitous. Criticism is very veiled of course, we
are in the 21st century. But even if it is a very subtle way in which our
efforts are discounted, it is, in fact, patriarchy in its fullest form.”
Christine
Ahn spoke at the second event of the lecture series at the United Nations. She
is one of the 30 women who, in May 2015, participated in the Crossing of the
De-Militarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea as part of a one-week
long journey with North and South Korean women.
The
project aimed at fostering civil society contacts between women in North and
South Korea and promoting peace and reconciliation between the countries.
The
symbolic act for peace at one of the world’s most militarised borders can be
seen as a practical example of Security Council resolution 1325.
Ahn told IPS: “We will use resolution 1325 when we advocate that both of Korean women are able to meet because under each government’s national security laws they are not allowed to meet with the other – as it is considered meeting with the enemy."