Scenes from a rehearsal session with Colombia’s Cantadora Network, a network of singers using traditional Afro-Colombian music to preserve their culture and promote peace. According to the Global Network of Women Peacebuilder, funds are being diverted from women-led peacebuilding organisations, and from peacebuilding processes more broadly. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 2020 (IPS)

Women need to be given roles as negotiators, not just offered representation through advisory groups, Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) told IPS.

Santos spoke with IPS after the Wednesday, Oct. 28 webinar “Beyond the Pandemic: Opening the Doors to Women’s Meaningful Participation”. At the conference,  policymakers and analysts spoke about ways to ensure that women have more leadership roles in society.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP). Courtesy: GNWP

Santos was responding specifically to comments by Kavya Asoka, executive director of  the NGO Working Group (NGOWG) on Women, Peace and Security, who said that women should not be allotted to “any participation” but “meaningful participation” in peacemaking decisions. 

Yifat Susskind, executive director of Madre, a women’s rights organisation, told IPS, “women have been holding leadership positions at the grassroots level for a long time, and we need to see more women in influential positions in policymaking”.

During the webinar, Jeanine Antoinette Plasschaert, special representative of the secretary-general for Iraq and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, highlighted the importance of taking into account the social, economic, political and historical contexts when engaging women in leadership roles.

The current coronavirus pandemic adds to the challenges.

“Our partners report that funds are being diverted from women-led peacebuilding organisations, and from peacebuilding processes more broadly,” Santos told IPS. “For example, in Colombia, women peacebuilders report that COVID-19 has served as an excuse to divert funds away from the transitional justice mechanisms.”

She added that another  challenge is also the digital divide, which affects women disproportionately. This is exacerbated by the fact that not all peacebuilding work can be performed over the Internet – such as reconciliation work, dialogues between conflicting communities and support to trauma survivors – which can’t be easily moved to the virtual space owing to their “delicate and sensitive nature”.

“At the same time, the pandemic has also shown the incredible resilience of women peacebuilders and women’s movements,” she said. “Despite the digital barrier, women have continued to organise, and find innovative ways to use the internet and other communication means to continue their work.”

Excerpts of the interviews with Susskind and Santos follow:

Yifat Susskind, executive director of Madre. Courtesy: Madre

IPS: What entails meaningful participation of women in the peacebuilding processes?

Yifat Susskind (YS): Women must have more than a seat at the table in formal peace negotiations. They must also have the power and influence to set the agenda, ensuring that gender impacts are addressed as a priority and bringing community demands to the forefront. Crucially, this access must be available to grassroots women peacebuilders rooted in frontline communities, who have a deep well of knowledge about war’s impacts at home, who can help build community trust in the peace process, and who can ensure that any resulting peace agreement is implemented at the ground level.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos (AFS): The most common understanding of “meaningful participation” is that it’s the kind of participation that allows women to actually impact the outcomes of peace negotiations and other processes.

It also means participation of diverse women, and participation of women at all levels. Women need to be included in decision-making bodies and peacebuilding processes at the local, national, regional and international levels. Further, when we talk about women’s participation we have to think of women from all walks of life – refugee and internally displaced women, indigenous and ethnic minority women, young women, women with disabilities, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans women, etc.

IPS: Madre focuses especially on climate change and how rural women are most affected by this. How have they been affected during the coronavirus pandemic?

YS: Rural women worldwide on the frontlines of climate change are forced to confront daily its worst impacts, typically carrying the heaviest burden as those responsible for providing families with food, water, and household fuel. The coronavirus pandemic has only deepened this burden of care work on women and girls.

Lockdowns have shut down markets, limiting the availability of food and making it impossible for many rural women to sell livestock, crops, and wares. The lack of income, combined with the spike in food prices and the continued effects of the climate crisis, has made food scarce for many families.

IPS: GNWP involves women from countries around the world. How do you address the diverse set of challenges they face from different parts of the world?

AFS: A key aspect of our work is to elevate the voices, recommendations and practical solutions of women peacebuilders to global policy spaces. We do this through research, as well as by creating spaces and opportunities for women peacebuilders to share their perspectives and recommendations directly with global policy makers.

But equally, if not more, important is the other aspect of our work – global to local. Localisation of Women, Peace and Security is one of flagship programmes of GNWP. It brings together local women, youth and representatives of other historically marginalised groups, as well as religious and traditional leaders and local authorities — mayors, governors, councillors, etc. Together, they analyse their local context and the relevance of the global resolutions and national policies on WPS to it. They identify concrete measures to translate these global and national laws into tangible actions and impacts on the ground.

Localisation also leads to institutionalisation of the commitments to WPS, and to harmonisation of the existing laws and policies on gender equality, women’s rights and peace and security. We have seen it yield concrete impacts and results across the world – for example, inclusion of women in traditional conflict resolution councils in the Philippines, increased SGBV reporting in Uganda, etc.

IPS: What are some ways to ensure women are given leadership roles in addressing the pandemic?

YS: We must first recognise that at the community level, women are already vital leaders in pandemic response: caring for people who become sick, ensuring food for their families, organising their communities and more. Many are trusted, longtime activists who understand deeply and specifically the needs of their communities and who are known locally as reliable sources of support and information. We must ensure that these women — including those in hard-hit places like refugee camps and climate disaster zones — have the space to offer their expertise to shape policy responses.

What’s more, since long before the pandemic, grassroots feminists worldwide have grappled with the need to meet urgent needs while simultaneously working towards long-term, systemic solutions. Learning from these approaches, policymakers can implement emergency relief efforts, whether distributing food or providing health information, while setting the stage for long-term recovery. This means continually reasserting the need for a shift in the values driving our policies, amplifying feminist approaches of collective work and community care.

AFS: Women are already leading the responses to COVID-19. From mobilising and organising humanitarian responses in their communities, to drafting Feminist Recovery Plans (for example in Northern Ireland), to monitoring the ceasefires and the implementation of peace agreements.

What is sorely lacking is their inclusion in decision-making about the pandemic recovery. We spoke to women peacebuilders and civil society across the world, and we have consistently seen that women are being excluded from COVID-19 Task Forces and planning committees. Globally women make up less than a quarter of such committees (according to CARE). One way to ensure that women are given leadership roles is to guarantee that all COVID-19 Task Forces and Committees include at least 50 percent  of women. This must include women from the civil society, who are at the forefront of COVID-19 response; and women in all their diversity.

When armed conflict in the Casamance region of Senegal flared up afresh in December 2010, women organised a demonstration calling for peace. Credit: Abdullah Vawda/IPS TerraViva

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

Governments have long pledged to bring more women to the peace table, but for many (if not most), it has been little more than lip service.

In a bid to accelerate this process, the Global Network of Women Peace-builders (GNWP) in partnership with the Permanent Missions of Chile and the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations organised an international workshop on Apr. 23 to better integrate the Women, Peace, Security (WPS) U.N. Security Council Resolutions within the security sector.

The seminar focused on recommendations for the implementation of Resolutions 1325 and 1820 at the international, regional and national level, in order to bring more women to the peace tables in conflict areas, and bring their perspectives into post-conflict reconstruction processes.

According to the 2014 Secretary-General’s report on WPS, a reform of the security sector is needed in order to accomplish these goals.

Speaking from U.N. Headquarters in New York, the International Coordinator of GNWP, Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, stressed “the need for a systematic implementation of Resolution 1325 at the international level.”

In the past three years, GNWP has conducted over 50 localisation workshops in 10 countries, in various communities and municipalities, inviting police officers and the military forces to learn about Resolution 1325.

“It is no surprise to us when they come to our localisation workshops that these officers hear about Resolution 1325 for the very first time. However, working only at the local level is hard, because final approvals come from the higher ups, in order to actually get a full reform and training of officers of the security sector,” highlighted Cabrera-Balleza.

The GNWP is not only calling for a global reform of the security sectors and armed forces for the inclusion of women in peace-building, but also for demilitarisation of countries and the elimination of conflicts to achieve peace worldwide.

Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former under-secretary general and member of the High-Level Advisory Group for Global Study on Resolution 1325, who was present at the seminar, underlined the inadequacy of governments and peacekeepers in protecting civilians, and especially women, in recent years.

“(We need) the integration of the culture of peace and non-violence in national and global policies, and education for global citizenship. We need a human security policy, and a more inclusive human way of thinking about our future, where women and men can share equally the construction of a safer and just world,” he said.

One positive example of the inclusion of women during peace negotiations comes from the Philippines.

Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, chair of the Philippine Government Peace Panel with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), explained that after 17 years of peace negotiations between the Philippine authorities and the MILF, in the last two decades, the government and armed forces have moved toward the “civilianisation” of peace processes.

“More and more women were allowed in, either as members of the bureaucracy or government, or civil society leaders, or academia members, and they have all been sitting at the peace table.”

As Coronel-Ferrel said, women brought a more gender-based response into the signing of the final peace agreement between the government and the MILF.

“Not only because there were more women inside the negotiating tracks, but also women around the panels, who would be lobbying the government but also the counter party, making sure that diverse frameworks would be included in the text.”

In addition, the reform of the security sector in the Philippines created local monitoring teams, where either police officers or lower ranking members of the armed forces worked closely with MILF members, leading to trust building and cooperation for better security on the ground, concluded Coronel-Farrel.

Participating in the event were also officers from police and military forces from Argentina, Australia, Burundi, Canada, Colombia, Ghana, Nepal, countries which are implementing reforms within their security sectors at the local, regional and national level.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A scene from the 57th Commission on the Status of Women. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2015 (IPS)

The meeting is billed as one of the biggest single gatherings of women activists under one roof.

According to the United Nations, over 1,100 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and more than 8,600 representatives have registered to participate in this year’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).“This is a reality check on the part of the member states." -- Mavic Cabrera-Balleza of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders

Described as the primary intergovernmental body mandated to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, the 45-member CSW will hold its 59th sessions Mar. 9-20.

About 200 side events, hosted by governments and U.N. agencies, are planned alongside official meetings of the CSW, plus an additional 450 parallel events by civil society organisations (CSOs), both in and outside the United Nations.

Their primary mission: to take stock of the successes and failures of the 20-year Platform for Action adopted at the historic 1995 Women’s Conference in Beijing. The achievements are limited, say CSOs and U.N. officials, but the unfulfilled promises are countless.

The reason is simple, warns Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “We cannot fulfill 100 percent of the world’s potential by excluding 50 percent (read: women) of the world’s people.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein says the U.N.’s 193 member states have to go beyond “paying lip service” towards gender equality.

They should “genuinely challenge and dismantle the power structures and dynamics which perpetuate discrimination against women.”

But will they?

Yasmeen Hassan, global executive director of Equality Now, told IPS in the Beijing Platform for Action, 189 governments pledged to “revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex”.

Twenty years later, just over half of the sex discriminatory laws highlighted in three successive Equality Now reports have been revised, appealed or amended, she said.

“Although we applaud the governments that took positive action, we are concerned that so many sex discriminatory laws remain on the books around the world,” Hassan noted.

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator at Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, a programme partner of the International Civil Society Action Network, told IPS she was happy to see the latest draft of the Beijing + 20 Political Declaration, presented by the Bureau of the CSW, expressing “concern that progress has been slow and uneven and that major gaps and obstacles remain in the implementation of the 12 critical areas of concern of the Beijing Platform for Action.”

“And it [has] recognized that 20 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women [in Beijing], no country has achieved equality for women and girls; and that significant levels of inequality between women and men persist, and that some women and girls experience increased vulnerability and marginalization due to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.”

“This is a reality check on the part of the member states, which is welcomed by the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders and the rest of civil society,” she added.

Speaking specifically on reproductive health, Joseph Chamie, a former director of the U.N. Population Division, told IPS the work of the CSW is important and it has contributed to improving women’s lives.

Pointing out the important areas of health and mortality, he said, when the CSW was established seven decades ago, the average life expectancy at birth for a baby girl was about 45 years; today it is 72 years, which, by any standards, is a remarkable achievement.

With respect to reproductive health, he said, great strides have been achieved.

In addition to improved overall health and lower maternal mortality rates, most women today can decide on the number, timing and spacing of their children.

“Simply focusing attention, policies and programmes on the inequalities and biases that women and girls encounter, while largely ignoring those facing men and boys, will obstruct and delay efforts to attain true gender equality and the needed socio-economic development for everyone,” Chamie warned.

According to U.N. Women, only one in five parliamentarians is a woman.

Approximately 50 per cent of women worldwide are in paid employment, an increase from 40 per cent more than 20 years ago, with wage inequality persistent.

At the present rate of progress, said U.N. Women, it will take 81 years for women to achieve parity in employment.

In 2000, the groundbreaking Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security recognised the need to increase women’s role in peacebuilding in post-conflict countries. Yet, from 1992 to 2011 only 4 per cent of signatories to peace agreements and nine per cent of negotiators at peace tables were women.

Hassan told IPS there are still laws that restrict women’s rights in marriage (women not allowed to enter and exist marriages on the same basis as men; appointing men as the head of a household; requiring wife obedience; allowing polygamy; setting different ages of marriage for girls and boys).

There are also laws that give women a lower personal status and less rights as citizens (women not being able to transmit their nationality to husbands and children; women’s evidence not equal to that of a man; restriction on women traveling).

And women being treated as economically unequal to men (less rights to inheritance or property ownership; restrictions on employment); and laws that promote violence against women (giving men the right to rape their wives; exempting rapists from punishment for marrying their victims; allowing men to chastise their wives).

“The fact that these laws continue to exist shows that many governments do not consider women to be full citizens and as such it is not possible to make progress on the goals set 20 years ago,” Hassan said.

Cabrera-Balleza told IPS the CSW political declaration also states that member states reaffirm their “political will and firmly commit to tackle critical remaining gaps and challenges and pledge to take concrete further actions to transform discriminatory social norms and gender stereotypes,” among other very good promises.

This is where the crux of the matter lies, she said.

“We’ve heard these promises many times before from past CSW sessions and yet recent data, such as those from the World Health Organisation (WHO), indicate the following:

– 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced either intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime;

– on average, 30 percent of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence by their partner.”

Globally, she said, as many as 38 percent of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.

She predicted that issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights will remain contentious in this CSW, as in previous years.

“It also worries me that while thousands of women have died and many more continue to suffer because of ongoing conflicts as well as violent extremism around the world, none of this is addressed in the political declaration.”

Sadly, the U.N. continues to operate in silos, she said. The Security Council remains disconnected with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) under which the CSW functions.

“Having said all of this, I want us, in civil society, to push the envelope as far as possible in this 59th CSW session,” she added.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Women protest insecurity and living conditions at a tent camp in central Port-au-Prince, January 2011. Credit: Ansel Herz/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2014 (IPS)

Can violence against women be prevented or eliminated with a new international treaty signed and ratified by the 193 member states of the United Nations?

Rashida Manjoo of South Africa, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, told the General Assembly last week the absence of a legally binding agreement represents one of the obstacles to the promotion and protection of women’s rights and gender equality."I'm all for the practical measures...but no more legal conundrum, please. Women around the world already have law and policy-fatigue. What they want to see is implementation." -- Mavic Cabrera-Balleza

“A different set of laws and practical measures are urgently needed to respond to and prevent the systemic, widespread and pervasive human rights violation experienced largely by women,” she told delegates.

But women’s groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) took a more cautious approach to a new treaty.

Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), told IPS, “In principle, the idea of stronger and more specific legislation is a good one.”

Clearly, laws, norms and policies are critical to shifting practices and changing attitudes.

“However, we know they are not enough. There are many countries — from the United States to members of the European Union and beyond, such as Pakistan — where laws exist, but violence against women continues in many spheres of life in diverse forms and at horrendous rates,” she said. “So legislation has to come with other pillars and elements to ensure effective implementation.”

Dr. Palitha Kohona, a former chief of the U.N. Treaty Section, told IPS there needs to be substantial international support, not only for a treaty text to be eventually adopted, but even for negotiations to commence – perhaps following a U.N. resolution.

“The promoters of a treaty will have to convince the international community there is a real need for such a legal instrument,” he said.

He pointed out this will involve ensuring the existing international legal instruments are inadequate to address the issues that the promoters of a new treaty seek to address.

“While gender-based violence, or any other form of violence, is to be unreservedly condemned, this would pose a challenge for the promoters of a treaty on gender-based violence,” said Ambassador Kohona, who is Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

“It is also well known that while laws can be useful for modifying social and community attitudes, it would take more than an international instrument to bring this abhorrent behaviour to an end.”

He said humanity must stand up and condemn violence, in particular gender-based violence, “and we are experiencing too much of it in our world today.

“As one philosopher observed, we inhabit this planet only for a short period. Why hurt another during this brief existence?” he added.

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator at the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the elimination of violence against women is already well-covered in the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its General Recommendations, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly back in 1979.

“Why do we need another law?” she asked. “I do not see any added value in having another treaty on the same issues. If anything, we run the risk of undermining CEDAW that women around the world fought for. It already has almost universal ratification.”

Cabrera-Balleza said there is no point lobbying governments again. “And with many conservative governments in power, there is very little chance to get another law ratified,” she added.

Furthermore, the current international instruments we have that promote and protect women’s rights, women’s empowerment and gender equality were mostly achieved through the global conferences of the 1990s.

“We don’t have that global momentum anymore. There will never be a World Conference on Women again in the same magnitude and impact as the 1995 Beijing Conference,” she said. “I’m all for the practical measures…but no more legal conundrum, please. Women around the world already have law and policy-fatigue. What they want to see is implementation.”

ICAN’s Naraghi-Anderlini told IPS: “We cannot deny the cultural or ‘religious’ backlash against the so-called progressive agenda on women’s rights.”

In societies where patriarchal norms are dominant – and that’s pretty much everywhere – and women are considered to be men’s property, the social conservatives can easily tap into traditions and cultural norms to generate a backlash against increasing women’s rights.

“We are seeing external forces (e.g. Saudi-based religious ideology, the Catholic Church, etc) being proponents of more conservative rulings and practices,” she pointed out.

At a minimum therefore, new laws have to come with tailored messaging – via respected outlets – be that media, law enforcement, recognised and respected national figures or community or religious leaders, to challenge those norms.

She said there has to be effective training and equipping of the local law enforcement/services to be able to implement the new legislation (e.g. provide care for victims, protection for those who come forward etc) – and police officers have to be held accountable for their actions or inactions or transgressions.

It would also be interesting and innovative to see a grounds-up accountability mechanism introduced, she said.

For example, she said, would the United Nations be willing to support a Women’s Security Campaign where local women’s organisations/groups are given the technical/financial and political support needed to reach out to police/law enforcement/local community leaders and together devise a charter that binds the authorities to ensuring they protect women from violence?

And will the national police force and its local chapters be willing to sign up to a charter in which they promise to protect women who are reporting cases of violence, promise not to violate/rape/harass etc. witnesses/victims, prevent further violence, etc.?

“If they agree to sign such a charter, than it is a social compact made with local actors who can hold them accountable. If they don’t or they try to water-down the conditions, it is indicative of a deep lack of political will or commitment to women’s security,” she declared.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Manjoo told the General Assembly last week that despite progress, there is continuing and new sets of challenges hampering efforts to promote and protect the human rights of women.

This she pointed out, is largely due to the lack of a all-inclusive approach that addresses individual, institutional and structural factors that are a cause and a consequence of violence against women.

Making a case for a new treaty, she said that with a specific legally binding instrument there would be a protective, preventive and educative framework reaffirming the international community’s assertion that women’s rights are human rights and that violence against women is a pervasive and widespread human rights violation, in and of itself.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Malaysian women peacekeepers of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) at a medal ceremony in Kawkaba, south Lebanon, on Jan. 11, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2013 (IPS)

Amidst a rise in sexual violence in the world’s war zones, the United Nations has begun appointing women to head some of the key political and peacekeeping missions in conflict areas – and also created Gender Advisers as a second line of defence.

Still, there is growing scepticism among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activist groups that much of the progress is scarcely more than window dressing."There is just a shortage of political will to see women in positions of power." -- Mavic Cabrera-Balleza

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proudly claimed the appointment of five women as heads of U.N. peacekeeping missions, in Liberia, South Sudan, Cyprus, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

But Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), a programme partner of the International Civil Society Action Network, told IPS, “We also need to look beyond the top leadership positions. We need to examine where women are in the overall architecture of peacekeeping missions.”

She said the middle level positions are just as critical because they are the ones who directly interact with the local populations who are directly affected by the conflicts.

Regarding Gender Advisers, she said it is equally critical to know where these advisers are located in the hierarchy of peacekeeping missions.

“They are the ones who ensure that a gender perspective is fully integrated in the functions of the peacekeeping missions,” she noted.

The problem is that often, the Gender Advisers are very low in the pecking order of the missions, said Cabrera-Balleza, whose GNWP is a coalition of women’s groups and civil society organisations from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, West Asia, Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe.

Last month, the secretary-general said that more women occupy the senior ranks of the United Nations than ever before.

“And this year I want to mention a new milestone in the participation of women in our work for peace and security: for the first time, one-third of our peacekeeeping operations – five of 15 — are headed by women,” he added.

These include Hilde Johnson in South Sudan, Karin Landgren in Liberia, Lisa Buttenheim in Cyprus, Aïchatou Mindaoudou in Cote d’Ivoire and Sandra Honoré in Haiti.

Ban has also appointed the U.N.’s first woman lead mediator in a peace process: former Irish President Mary Robinson as the special envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa.

“We have more distance to travel,” he admits, “but we have never been this far before.”

Cora Weiss, U.N. representative of the International Peace Bureau, told IPS the secretary-general’s “words are fine and welcome but I wish we could feel his heart in this issue.

“When civil society women drafted what became the landmark Security Council resolution 1325 on women peace and security, we were looking at a future world without war,” she said.

Weiss also pointed out that while at least half the world’s population is female, Mary Robinson is the only woman lead mediator in a peace process: “And it’s 2013.”

“We need more women in decision making and peace making, but they need to be peace- and justice-loving women. The days of resort to force have to be over,” she stressed.

Addressing a Security Council meeting last June, Zainab Hawa Banguda, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, said that when she visited Bosnia early this year – “where an estimated 50,000 women had been targeted with rape and other forms of sexual violence” – she found that to date only a handful of prosecutions had occurred.

Thus, the victims of those crimes “continue to walk in shadow and shame, unable to lay the past to rest, and move forward,” she added.

After visiting the war zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) early this year, Ban admitted he met women and girls who had been raped and maimed by armed groups on all sides of the conflict.

He said many had a condition called traumatic fistula. In plain terms, they had been torn inside. Experiencing great pain and often unable to control bladder and bowels, they are disabled and often shunned by society, he added, pointing out the horrors of sexual violence in war zones.

The international community, through Security Council resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009) and 1960 (2010), has put in place a solid framework for responding to conflict-related sexual violence.

The mechanisms carry out global advocacy through U.N. Special Representatives, in collaboration with the U.N. Action Network against Sexual Violence in Conflict, comprising 13 U.N. entities.

Last month, the Security Council adopted yet another resolution (2122), also aimed at strengthening women’s participation in all aspects of conflict prevention.

“The argument that we in civil society have with the U.N. on the issue of women’s leadership remains: Practice what you preach. Lead by example,” Cabrera-Balleza told IPS.

“We also want to see more women with civil society backgrounds who have been working on peace and security issues for decades appointed to key positions in peacekeeping operations,” she said. “As we’ve seen in the past, bureaucratic experience has not contributed much in improving peacekeeping operations.”

She also said that while checking the list of peacekeeping missions again, she couldn’t fail to notice that there are three women deputy Special Representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs): for the U.N. Office in Burundi ( BNUB), the U.N. Integrated Peacebuilding Office in the Central African Republic (BINUCA), and the U.N. Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

“Will these three women ever become heads of peacekeeping operations?” she asked.

There’s no shortage of qualified women. “There is just a shortage of political will to see women in positions of power,” she said.

Michele Bachelet (left), Executive Director of UN Women, addresses a press conference on the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), taking place at UN Headquarters in New York, Mar 4-15 2013. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By George Gao
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2013 (IPS)

In her opening speech for the world’s largest conference on ending violence against women and girls, Michelle Bachelet summoned the spirit of 15-year old Malala Yousafzai, who’s skull was shattered on Oct. 9, 2012 by a Taliban bullet.

“It is for Malala – and for every girl and woman, and every human being – that we must come to a strong action-oriented agreement to prevent and end violence against girls and women,” said Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women.

The Taliban singled out Yousafzai for advocating girls’ education. She miraculously survived the attack, as surgeons fitted her skull with a titanium plate.

The atrocity highlights a fact many diplomats and civil society members have taken to heart: that violence against women and girls undermines international development goals and U.N. values.

The 57th session of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW57) took place at U.N. headquarters from Mar. 4-15 and addressed this issue. It resulted in an outcome document, adopted with consensus by member states.

On the heels of CSW57 is another series of diplomatic negotiations, for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The U.N. has allotted 11 days from Mar. 18-28 for delegates to reach an agreement. Here, too, the issue of gender-based violence is on the table.

A sigh of relief, but the fight continues

Civil society organisations and U.N. member states were largely relieved that a document of “Agreed Conclusions” came through this year, after last year’s CSW session failed to produce one.

“It was a very difficult process because of the broad range of political interests and agendas that member states represent,” said Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator for the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP).

This year, “we (successfully) lobbied for language on the link between violence against women and peace and security, women human rights defenders, sexual and reproductive health, small arms and light weapons,” she told IPS.

“(But) the final document was not as strong as we want it to be,“ she said.

Cabrera-Balleza noted that member states failed to “reaffirm” – and only “recalls” – Security Council resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889, and 1960 on women, peace and security.

“However, in negotiations with member states, you cannot play an ‘all or nothing’ game,” she explained.

Radhika Balakrishnan, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, told IPS, “There were quite a few things we gained in this new document… which we might have lost if negotiations continued.”

“One of the successes was that (member states) weren’t able to invoke (traditional values and morals),” she said, noting that some governments had been trying to use “traditional values” – as well as “state sovereignty” – as a trump card against women’s human rights.

“But many issues that women’s groups have been fighting for, (such as) sexual orientation (and) gender identity, were lost in the document,” she noted.

Daniela Rosche, a policy and advocacy adviser in gender justice for Oxfam, told IPS that CSW57 established new norms, but did not address how to implement them.

“If you really want to do something to fight the surge of violence and take concrete steps to solve it, you need to also develop an ‘international action plan’, basically to operationalise the standards that are there,” she said.

“We couldn’t convince governments to commit to this,” she added.

“What would ensure accountability is (if they) set concrete targets,” she said, citing the annual Millennium Development Goals reports as an example.

Linking arms with gender justice

“The relationship between small arms trade and violence against women is in the (CSW57) document, and I think that’s very important,” said Balakrishnan of CWGL, who’s 16 Days Campaign highlighted the issue.

Widney Brown, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International, explained to IPS that while the CSW57 outcome document is not legally binding, it can be a powerful instrument for activists to pressure their governments.

On the other hand, “the Arms Trade Treaty will be law” if it goes through, said Brown. “But in terms of enforcement– it’s mostly a peer pressure mechanism.”

She noted, “In the Jul. 27, 2012 draft of the Arms Trade Treaty, there’s a reference to gender-based violence and violence against children.”

However, some governments will likely use the issue of gender-based violence as a bargaining chip.

“Anytime you have references to things like gender-based violence in international negotiations, there’s a group of states who are always going to be willing to say, ‘We’ll give you this, on the condition that you take (that) off’,” she explained.

“I think it will be in play again, and we’re going to have to be very vigilant against that,” she added.

Brown explained that Russia, Syria, Iran and Egypt have often impeded member states negotiations for women’s rights and gender equality – and may also act as barriers during ATT negotiations.

At CSW57, for example, the Vatican worked with Syria and some other member states to strip out any reference to gender identity. “This battle has been going on for years now,” she said.

“Fortunately, the NGO community is holding very strongly on why it’s important to talk about gender-based violence,” she stated.

Statement on CSW57 from the SGs office

On Mar.15, the spokesperson for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement welcoming the conclusions of CSW57:

“No matter where she lives, no matter what her culture, no matter what her society, every woman and girl is entitled to live free of fear. She has the universal human right to be free from all forms of violence so as to fulfil her full potential and dreams for the future.”