RIGHTS: Norway Takes a Step for Women

By Tarjei Kidd Olsen Reprint | | Print |

OSLO, May 29 2006 (IPS) - Norway has begun ambitious steps to promote awareness of gender issues in conflict situations.

In 2000 the UN Security Council took a stance on the role of women in armed conflict for the first time. Resolution 1325 on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ states that women should play a much greater role in conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peace building initiatives, and that steps need to be taken to protect women’s human rights.

The Norwegian foreign ministry unveiled its own action plan for Resolution 1325 in March 2006. It is intended as a ‘living document’ that will continue to be developed as needs be.

The plan spells out a wide range of measures to follow up on Norway’s commitments to international peace operations and peace efforts, conflict prevention, peace negotiations and peace building, human rights and the protection of women.

“In today’s conflicts the civilian population often suffers the most. Women and children constitute the majority of the populations, and are therefore particularly affected,” the Norwegian foreign department’s gender advisor Guro Vikør told IPS.

“Women’s role has been marginalised until recently. They have not been involved in peace processes or the follow-up after peace has been achieved. We see their participation on equal terms as necessary for securing lasting peace,” Vikør said.

She reasons that women play a different role in society than men.

“Women are often not around the decision table, but in many countries with conflict make up the majority of the population, are responsible for bringing in food and taking care of children and the elderly. They help the society structure to survive – while men are out fighting.”

Vikør thinks it is particularly important that women get involved with efforts to sustain peace in post-conflict societies. This includes incorporating women into political parties, and increasing female voter participation.

“Women need to take part in governing society, as we have seen in Liberia. Registered women voters increased from 21 percent at the last elections to 51 percent this time. I assume that is what elected Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female head of state in Africa,” Vikør said.

Uganda is one country where women in conflict have made international headlines. Ugandan government forces have been battling northern rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) for years. LRA men have been known for their brutal abuse of the civilian population including the rape and forced enslavement of women and girls.

Uganda is also one of Norway’s largest recipients of development aid for issues such as women’s rights, democratisation and humanitarian help.

Siv Mjaaland, a master student writing thesis on the subject at the University of Oslo, says the Ugandan constitution is gender sensitive, granting extensive rights to women, while parliament is bound to include one woman from each administrative district as member.

But though the constitution grants many rights, these are not always implemented. Mjaaland told IPS that Ugandan women find different degrees of representation depending on where they live.

“The problems are much larger in northern Uganda, where the structure of society has collapsed, than in the south where women are much more empowered,” she said.

The government has created the Ugandan Human Rights Commission to look at the rights of women, particularly in the north.

“But this is a bit of a paper tiger so far – in reality the government does little,” Mjaaland said. The best thing would be for the government to make its own action plan for Resolution 1325, but I doubt this will happen anytime soon.”

Mjaaland said the government has done little to follow up on Resolution 1325. Local women’s non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been left to pioneer the incorporation of the resolution into development and peace building work.

“I think it is very important that NGOs the world over familiarise themselves with Resolution 1325 and use it to pressure governments,” she said.

“Women’s NGOs in northern Uganda use the media actively for political activism and to spread information. They are also engaged in political lobbying, and arrange workshops to train female members of parliament.”

Norwegian researcher Torunn Tryggestad at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), one of the external resource persons commissioned to put the Norwegian action plan together, told IPS that implementation of the plan is dependent on sufficient political will.

“Ideally an action plan would not be necessary. These issues should already be internalised with participants in peace operations. But I think this initiative is important for making the issues visible,” Tryggestad said.

Although the Security Council passed Resolution 1325 six years ago, Tryggestad said that little has been done since then either by the UN itself or by its member states.

She thinks that Norway the peace negotiator is particularly well placed to promote the increased participation of women in peace operations. “Norway cooperates on many bilateral initiatives, and here I think it should work very actively towards promoting gender issues.”

According to Tryggestad there is a great need for more female soldiers and officers in national militaries. Norway should also provide better training for mission personnel in peace operations as current training is often inadequate and dependent on particular instructors.

Tryggestad thinks the greatest challenge posed by the Norwegian action plan might be the sheer number of issues it seeks to address.

“The action plan mirrors the wide scope of Resolution 1325, and that might be a weakness because it covers initiatives in so many different topic areas that it will be quite a challenge to follow through. On the other hand I have been contacted by many different foreign organisations that think it is a very exiting document.”

The issue of women’s roles in highlighting women’s rights is hotly debated. Mjaaland argues that the empowerment of women at the grassroots and political level is not in itself a guarantee that women’s rights will be protected.

“Women are an enormously large and complex group. Their performance is very varied. My informants in Uganda did not consider female politicians gender sensitive, although they thought that they could and should be.”

There are good and bad politicians among both women and men, “and women don’t necessarily have to be the ones to highlight women’s issues,” Mjaaland said. “(U.N. Secretary-General) Kofi Annan has been good at putting a focus on women.”

Britain has already launched an action plan on Resolution 1325, while Canada and Denmark have taken related steps. Sweden is working on its own action plan to be released later in 2006.