On Sunday December 11, FOKUS, Forum for Women and Development, hosted a seminar with Tawakkol Karman and other leading advocates and experts to talk about the need for women’s inclusion in all stages of conflict prevention and peacebuilding processes. With an audience of over 200 people, the discussions on SCR 1325 on Sunday centered around the challenges to meaningful implementation, overcoming cultural misconceptions and finally the future for women’s inclusion in the Arab Spring and other conflict-ridden areas of the world.
The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security recognizes women’s roles and perspectives in all stages of war, armed conflict and peacebuilding processes. With SCR 1325, women were fully recognized as agents of change; inextricably linked to conflict management and sustainable peace. The Resolution mandates that women should be included in all stages of peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction, but also that their human rights are to be respected in all conflict situations. The issue of gender is to be an integrated part of all policies related to post-conflict reconstruction, reconciliation and peacebuilding. According to the Resolution, there will be no sustainable peace without these provisions.
A civil society’s Resolution
Since its conception in 2000, only 20 countries have developed National Action Plans (NAP) for the implementation of SCR 1325. The main problem in implementing SCR 1325 seems to be lack of political will at the national level. Anne-Marie Goetz, Chief Advisor for peace and security issues at UN Women, opened the seminar by highlighting how patriarchal institutions and animosity towards the UN often stood in the way of the implementation of SCR 1325.
“Given these obstacles, the most important thing the international community can do is finance local civil society’s work on peace and women’s inclusion,” Goetz said. “For instance, look at Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee. She and her White T-shirts Movement received no funding from the outside, but she still managed to topple a dictator. The UN needs to encourage such local, civil activism in the future.”
Many of the panelists echoed this statement and saw civil society as playing a key role in forwarding this agenda. The Resolution was originally advocated for by international civil society, lobbying the Security Council to start focusing on women’s participation in all aspects of peacebuilding processes. In this spirit, Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, proposed the development of a civil society’s NAP for the implementation of SCR 1325 in countries where the government is not moving forward on the issue.
The panel was in agreement that one of the main challenges in the years ahead is finding ways to overcome the argument that the Resolution needs to yield way to local culture and traditions.
“One of the main challenges to implementing SCR 1325 is the debunking of the myth that the Resolution is an imposition of an external agenda,” Anne-Marie Goetz said. “As a representative for the UN, I am often met with the message from male politicians that women’s participation and inclusion in peacebuilding and conflict management is “alien to our culture.” In these instances, I always ask them: Can we ask the women about that? So, we need to do two things at the same time: make universal values resonate with local contexts, and, at the same time, insist on the message highlighted by this year’s Nobel Peace Prize; that the fight for women’s rights is indeed universal and cross-cultural.”
Local contexts, local challenges
One of the countries where the implementation of SCR 1325 has proven to be most effective is post-conflict Nepal. After the decade-long civil war, local and international civil society, diplomats and representatives of the UN travelled to all of the country’s regions to consult with people on the NAP for SCR 1325. The consultations with local peace councils, women’s groups, and families affected by the insurgency, resulted in over 1,500 recommendations for the policy provisions of SCR 1325 I Nepal. The recommendations included everything from political representation and inclusion of women and minorities to provisions for reconciliation, psychological treatment for trauma victims and survivors, and longer maternity leave. Bandana Rana, the director of SAATHI-Nepal, an organization that works with changing traditional views on violence against women, was one of the activists travelling with The Peace Support Working Group. She explained how the Resolution has been vital in formulating demands and establishing an inclusive framework for ensuring women’s participation in peacebuilding.
(from left) Anne-Marie Goetz, Harriette Williams, Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Bandana Rana, Piedad Cordoba.
“Nepal is the first country in South Asia with a NAP for the implementation of the Resolution,” Rana said. “The plan ensures the mainstreaming of gender perspectives in state institutions, specific allocation of resources for SCR 1325-related policies, and accountability for stakeholders in the peace process. However, to achieve lasting peace on the grassroots’ level, we need to challenge traditional views of violence against women and start working where it all starts, at home.”
Despite her long experience with the issues of women, peace and security in her home country, the Philippines, Cabrera-Balleza said that she could count on one hand the number of people in governing positions who had even heard of SCR 1325.
“Despite the fact that the Philippines is the only country in South-East Asia with a NAP for the implementation of SCR 1325, even policymakers directly involved in conflict resolution and peacebuilding have little awareness of women’s roles in these processes,” said Cabrera-Balleza.
Even after eleven years with SCR 1325, the statistics for women’s inclusion in peace processes highlights the massive democratic deficit that is still prevalent. According to UNIFEM (now UN Women), 2.6 % of all state-level peace negotiations has had women as heads of delegations and less than 3 % of all peace agreements have had women’s signatures on them. Women have only made up a total of 7 % of all official delegations in peace talks.
Enforcement and accountability
A recurring subject in the discussion on the implementation of SCR 1325 was the lack of enforcement and accountability. Harriette Williams, Advocacy Officer at Femmes Africa Soldarité, pointed to the recent outbreak of gender-based violence in Ivory Coast, one of the first African countries to implement SCR 1325.
“How can we translate the policies of SCR 1325 into something real,” Williams asked. “The Ivory Coast has been one of the champions of the Resolution, and yet it seems to make no difference when tensions in the local communities arise. Cases like Liberia show that a meaningful implementation can happen. We need to learn from their experiences.”
The Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 2011, Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Tawakkol Karman, have defied and corrected the stereotype that women in conflict are passive victims.
“In Nepal during the civil war, there were hardly any men in conflict-ridden areas,” Rana said. “The men were either out fighting or otherwise involved in the armed struggle. It was the women who stayed behind in the villages negotiating their day-to-day survival with both state and paramilitary forces. It is these women’s experiences and excellent survival skills that we need to build upon.”
The people negotiating peace accords after conflict and war are often the very same people who stood on opposite sides in the conflict. In addition to this, the peace negotiation delegates are almost exclusively male. In this situation, the brokered peace deal will not reflect the needs and interests of a large part of the population, including those of women. As Rana points out, women’s perspectives of armed conflict tend to be completely different from those of men. Oftentimes, women’s approaches to post-conflict reconstruction will take a more holistic view, where peacebuilding is thought of as something more than drawing up borders, building infrastructure and new state institutions. Safe access to health care, HIV/AIDS prevention, clean drinking water and measures to combat domestic violence are all vital in achieving sustainable peace and are all recurring themes when women are asked about their needs.
To the question of how the awarding of the Nobel Peace for 2011 will affect future work on SCR 1325, Rana replied:
“I felt sort of guilty sitting at the award ceremony yesterday. I’m sure very few of my countrymen in Nepal have even heard of the Nobel Peace Prize, let alone that three women fighting for women’s rights in peacebuilding processes received it. The challenge is making our own women see that they, just as Karman, Johnson Sirleaf and Gbowee, can make a difference. My experience is that as soon as the prize is awarded, everyone starts speculating about who will be next years’ laureate. We need to make this momentum last.”
“At first they laughed, now they are joining me”
The main guest of the event was this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist and human rights activist. Karman’s non-violent struggle for a democratic Yemen has made her one of the leading figures of the Arab Spring. She has played a key role in the struggle for women’s rights in Yemen, a country at the bottom of the UN Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index. Almost 50 percent of all Yemeni girls are married before the age of 17, and women are rarely a part of any public or political debate. With the Arab Spring, however, women are increasingly making themselves heard, and many can be seen camping with the protestors in the capital Sana’a’s Al-Tahrir square.
As one of her few public appearances while in Oslo, Karman discussed the challenges for women and gender equality in the Arab Spring.
(from left) Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide, Tawakkol Karman, Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini. Photo: Mette Moberg
“Before this year’s democratic revolution, the prevalent perceptions of Yemen were really bad,” Karman said. “Illiteracy, kidnappings, corruption, al-Qaida, and poverty were what sprung to mind when people thought about Yemen. Now, we want to change the image you have of Yemeni women, Muslims and Arab youth. When I first started my weekly protests in the Al-Tahrir square (“Freedom square”) in Sana’a, people laughed at me. Now they are joining me”.
The two other panelists, Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide, Chair of the Norwegian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense, and Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, leading women’s rights advocate and one of the drafters of SCR 1325, both praised the speech given by Karman at the award ceremony. In a country which is described as one of the most patriarchal societies in the world, Karman is standing out as a firm, outspoken critic of oppressive, traditional practices in her own country, as well as the political oppression by an autocratic regime.
Fuelling tensions
“Karman’s acceptance speech underscores the universality of her demands for democracy and the inclusion of women in decision-making,” Naraghi-Anderlini said. “We see women on the streets of countries like Yemen, Egypt, Liberia, and Bahrain, all calling for democracy and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It shows us that these are not Western values, but values that we all share.”
For Karman, the decades-long dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh lies at the core of most of Yemen’s problems today.
“In order to justify his autocratic rule, Saleh has played the animosity between the West and the Arab world to his own advantage,” Karman said. “He has let religious extremism flourish in Yemen, while at the same time receiving financial support from the West, leading the West to believe he is an ally in the war on terror. Now we need to change people’s mentality after decades of oppression. “
Karman says the people in Yemen need to start dreaming again.
“Dreams are not far-fetched fantasies but represents goals for our future. Goals which will eventually turn into facts.”
To Naraghi-Anderlini, originally from Iran, expanding the mental horizons of the Arab youth was vital for achieving sustainable democracy in the region.
“In the Arab world, all we know is autocracy,” she said. “To dream of another future is difficult because we’ve never seen true democracy in our own countries. This means that there is a lack of ability to formulate an alternative, to articulate the dream of a society without dictatorship.”
A revolution hijacked?
Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide expressed concern that the peaceful revolutions of the Middle East and North Africa would be replaced by another kind of autocracy, that of Islamist forces.
“We see that the protestors on the streets are calling for two things: social justice and, at least in Egypt where I have monitored the situation closely, a civil state,” Søreide said. “Hopefully these demands will be translated into meaningful policies. We can still afford to be optimistic, and wait and see what the new governments actually do, and not focus as much on what they are saying in a very chaotic transitional period.“
Naraghi-Anderlini also criticized the time-frames given for the establishment of new, democratic states in the Middle East and North Africa.
“After decades of dictatorship, many of these new democracies are expected to hold elections in three months. However, in countries where patriarchy is so entrenched, and where political extremism has been funded by the government, you run the risk of reinstating oppressive rulers. We need to give people time to process and to facilitate the formation of new political alliances”.
Naraghi-Anderlini encouraged the democratic forces of the Arab Spring to, as she said it, “not always look to the West” for answers on democracy and civil rights.
“The countries that has made real headway, and proven to be true inspirations on the issues of women’s inclusion in peacebuilding and conflict management, are all countries from the global South,” she said. “New democracies in the Middle East and North Africa should really look to countries like Rwanda, Nepal and South Africa for input on processes of drafting a new and just constitution.”
Tawakkol Karman agreed that the transitional stage between revolutionary upheaval and the establishment of a sustainable, democratic state was difficult. However, she pertained that we need to be optimistic and that we all need to be part of the solution, not the problem.
“We need to empower the women and youth who have marched in the streets,” Karman said. “In our struggle we also need both men and women. We rely on one another: Women cannot gain their rights without men and men will not live in a just society until women are fully included and accepted as equals.”
Tawakkol Karman serves as a living example of what state institutions and post-conflict managers is missing out on when not including women’s voices in peacebuilding processes. The Arab Spring seems to provide an opportunity for women who in the past have been ignored and silenced, to speak up. She seems an embodiment of the message of SCR 1325: That women are not just victims, but provides vital contributions to rethinking security issues, and processes for building sustainable peace.
This is the fourth and final article in our article series on UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security after the Nobel Peace Prize 2011.