The Foreign Service Journal, April 2011

In October 2000, the United Na- tions Security Council passed Reso- lution 1325, which recognizes the critical role that women can play in creating regional and global security structures. With an eye toward translating the promise of this reso- lution into reality, the Women and War Conference commemorated its tenth anniversary by convening an extraordinary coalition of national and international participants from a range of sectors, including international organizations, gov- ernments, civil society, the diplomatic community and the military. By underlining women’s involvement in peace- making as a security issue, the conference aimed to increase the participation of women in all aspects of international security, as well as inspire an agenda for action over the next decade and beyond. There have been 39 active conflicts over the last 10 years, yet most of the subsequent peace negotiations have excluded female participants. And out of some 585 peace treaties drafted over the last two decades, only 16 percent contain specific references to women. Thus the question needs to be asked: If women are critical to building the peace after conflict, then why not include women among those setting the conditions at the negotiating table? The absence of women from formal peace negotiations is all the more astonishing given the fact that women are increasingly parties to conflicts. In addition to being re- cruited into regular and irregular armed forces, they have also become powerful voices opposing conflict. In Sudan, for example, women and girls played active roles on the front lines of the two north-south civil wars, both as com- batants and peace activists. So how can peace be sustained without women helping to craft it in the first place? As New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof has pointed out, women comprise more than half of the world population. So whether they are combatants or survivors, peacebuilders or bystanders, women must play a role in the transition from war to peaceful development. What Women Bring to the Table This is not just a moral issue or a question of equality; it is a matter of efficiency. As things now stand, we are losing half of the world’s creative potential by not including women in all aspects of global problem-solving. When it comes to settling conflicts, we know that there are many more approaches than simply picking up a gun and threatening our enemy. There are countless exam- ples of women who have intervened in conflicts, but most of their stories have never been recorded, and their ef- forts are not counted. We see the value-added that women have brought to peacebuilding processes in the ability to form coalitions across conflict lines, as in North- ern Ireland in the 1990s when a group of Catholic and Protestant mothers said, “Enough!” More recently, Christian and Muslim women united to wage sit-ins at Liberian markets and refused to work to stop the out-of-control violence of former President Charles Taylor and his armed gangs. Women have been working across the Israeli-Palestinian divide for decades, as well, but have rarely been allowed into the formal peace processes. This must now change. U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer emphasizes that we must see women as leaders, not victims. We must also view their participation not as a favor to them, but as essential to peace and secu- rity. From mediation skills to logistical knowledge, from food and water security to a deep investment in the future through their children, women are the best investment to- ward building a workable peacebuilding process. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurs. At the Women and War Conference, Mullen examined women’s role in combat and peacekeep- ing operations and concluded that “we simply must do a better job tapping into [women’s] unique talents and un- derstanding their unique challenges. … Indeed, they have given us a competitive advantage.” To further this notion of inclusion, we need action at the international, national and local levels, and we need to en- gage the academic community. 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 1 F O C U S As it stands now, we are losing half of the world’s creative potential by not including women in all aspects of global problem-solving. Kathleen Kuehnast is the director of the Gender and Peacebuilding Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. She is co-editor with Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Helga Hernes of the book Women and War: Power and Protec- tion in the 21st Century (USIP Press, 2011). For more in- formation about the Women and War Conference, go to www.usip.org.