By Janet Malzahn
As Miriam Coronel Ferrer signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro with Moro Islamic Liberation Front, she not only ended the forty-year-long armed conflict between the Philippines and Moro rebel factions but also became the first woman to sign a final peace accord. The year was 2014. Although glass ceilings around the world are shattering, and women are entering male-dominated industries at higher rates, peacemaking remains men’s work. Women are underrepresented in peacekeeping troops and peace delegations—and both women and security are worse for it. Without a sympathetic voice to speak up for women’s issues, the problems women face during and after war, like gender-based violence, are left unacknowledged and unresolved. Women need more from peace.
Peace may also need more from women. As conflict evolves to include elaborate terrorist networks and greater civilian targeting, peace has become increasingly fragile and elusive. Almost half of the conflict-resolution agreements from the 1990s crumbled within five years of their creation. Ninety percent of the civil wars in the 2000s broke out in countries that had already fought at least one other civil war within the past 30 years.[i] In order to assure peace and stability in the international system, states must look to new ways to achieve lasting security. Enter: women.
As direct targets of violence from war, women already have a legitimate claim to be included in post-conflict settlements to pursue the justice and help they have been continually denied. But beyond securing justice for themselves, women bring unique benefits and resources to the peace process. Evidence has shown that the inclusion of women in peace negotiations and peacekeeping teams makes the resultant peace stronger, more equal, and more durable. If the world values justice, equality, and security, it will give women a greater role in the crafting of olive branches.
War, today, looks different from the ones fought in the past. Legions of state-sponsored soldiers have been replaced by elaborate terrorist networks. As the tools and rules of warfare evolved, with drones and controlled strikes replacing traditional guns and battles, the lines dividing the war front from the home front have blurred. Civilian casualties have increased. The bulk of refugees driven from their homes are women and their children. War, though rarely initiated or fought by women, still costs them.
While women face the same carnage of conflict that all civilians do, much of the violence women face in war is not just an externality or side-effect. In modern warfare, sexual violence is pervasively used as a war strategy. In ethnic conflicts, raping and impregnating women in another tribe or group is meant to sow shame and dissension into the opponent’s community, acting as a tool for social control.[ii] During the Bosnian War in the 1990s, Serbian soldiers made Bosnian women “give birth to Serbian babies” as a tool of ethnic cleansing.[iii]
Although it almost needs no stating, these victims of sexual violence bear social, psychological, and physical trauma for years to come. The rape by an aggressor often brands its victims with overpowering stigma, precluding them from marriage or full integration into society. Since ethnicity is often socially derived from the father rather than the mother, the children of these crimes also face alienation for being of the other ethnic group.[iv]
More than just another form of pillage and spoil collecting, the forced impregnation of women is an intentional strategic tool of war. It is also a war crime.[v] Previously regarded as a crime against humanity, instances of war-time rape are now being charged as acts of genocide thanks to a recent change in jurisprudence.[vi] Although the prosecution of these crimes is important, it does little to improve the actual situation of their victims.
Punishing the perpetrators of these crimes only goes so far. Evidence shows that the current prosecution of gender-based violence has low deterrent potential, as the victims are still ostracized in society even after the court date.[vii] Peace agreements present post-conflict parties with the opportunity to make meaningful change for women, either by offering them assistance, taking measures to counteract the social stigmatization of rape, or extending their rights during peacetime.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the vast majority of peace agreements fail to even mention women or gender-based violence. In peace agreements made between 1990 to 2017, 81% do not mention women, and 95% do not mention conflict-related gender-based violence.[viii]
It is even harder to pursue justice when women’s rights are not protected during times of peace. The subordinate status of women often means domestic abuse is deemed acceptable or completely overlooked. The same patriarchal norms weave their way into the manner in which violence in war is handled, deepening their grasp on society. For example, under Peruvian law, up until 1997 men charged with rape could exonerate themselves by marrying their victims. These laws acquitted dozens of Peruvian soldiers who raped women of Shining Path throughout the bloody 20-year civil war and countless other rapists during times of peace.[ix] In Marrying Your Rapist: Domesticated War Crimes in Peru, Jelke Boesten, a reader of gender and development at King’s College, explains that “rape in wartime not only unsettles […] socio-cultural structures, it is also a reflection of these structures.”[x]
War is undeniably abominable, but it presents an opportunity at its end. Post-conflict states and societies quite literally reconstruct themselves. New constitutions are written, new laws are passed, and aid is distributed. This period of change can be used to erode and replace prior policies and norms that disadvantaged women.
Presently, such a view seems too optimistic. Unless governments take active steps to promote the rights, welfare, and economic empowerment of women, post-conflict reconstruction often pushes women further back into domestic roles. The wounded state prioritizes maintaining stability and neutralizing the male soldiers who may pose threats in the form of unrest, leaving women behind. As Miriam Coronel Ferrer said, “when the going is difficult and when there are so many other things that have to be settled, most of the time the gender issues are the ones that get sidelined.”[xi] Although wars could result in a more progressive society, in reality, the post-war period is often even worse for women: they continue to face vestigial violence from the war and are subject to new, intensified backlash and aggression.[xii]
A peace process with greater representation and sensitivity towards women’s issues would help promote gender equality and more effectively rebuild a society following war. Of course, the inclusion of women in the peace process is no guarantee that gender-based issues will be addressed. As is often the case, quality is more important than quantity: women must be included meaningfully to truly make a change.
Beyond retribution and rehabilitation for specific gender-based crimes and obstacles, the inclusion of women in peace processes—whether it be as peacemakers or peacekeepers—creates a stronger, more lasting peace. Not only does the presence of female negotiators improve the enforcement, implementation, and efficacy of treaties, but peace accords with female signatories often include more resolutions aimed at government reform to ensure lasting stability.[xiii] Quantitative evidence suggests that peace agreements with female involvement are 35% more likely to last more than 20 years.[xiv]
Women also bring unique value to stabilization efforts as peacekeeping officers. Female peacekeepers can access certain areas and populations that male peacekeepers cannot, allowing them to glean information essential to the implementation of accords.[xv] In addition, increased representation of female officers increases the rate that sexual assault is reported.[xvi] Women have the capacity to connect with an area’s female population and other marginalized communities, gaining intelligence and trust.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, women occupy few seats at the negotiating table for peace accords. In the major peace processes from 1990 to 2017, women made up only 2% of mediators, 5% of witnesses and signatories, and 8% of negotiators.[xvii] This gap persists in enforcement: women only comprise 4% of military peacekeepers and 10% of local police forces.
This is not an obscure problem. The UN has long recognized the need to increase its number of female peacekeepers. Since Security Council Resolution 1325 first recognized the unique ways war impacted women, the UN has passed seven more resolutions directly emphasizing the importance of women in peace processes and calling for greater participation.
How can the UN and negotiating countries increase female peacekeeper representation? One policy proposal is the addition of financial incentives—both at state and individual levels. The UN already offers a financial bonus to peacekeepers who deploy to dangerous locations, and the Council on Foreign Relations suggests that it also pay this premium for the unique strengths that women bring to peacekeeping. This incentive structure could also work well at the country level: countries who contribute police and troops with high enough proportions of women to UN peacekeeping operations could receive extra compensation.
But only increasing the sheer number of female peacekeepers might not be enough. How and where they are distributed also matters. Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley, political science professors and prominent peacekeeping researchers, find that women are assigned to missions that are safer and carry lower risk.[xviii] This means that the most unstable regions that could benefit the most from the contribution of women security forces, also have the fewest. Even more troubling, their findings suggest that the inclusion of women in peacekeeping efforts is largely symbolic, with women serving as tokens rather than actors.
Increasing the number of women in the creation of the peacekeeping settlements is more difficult, especially from the outside. Since each party selects its own negotiators, women are often excluded due to existing gender biases. Mediators open to the inclusion of marginalized groups, such as women, have been shown to increase the participation in the peace processes.[xix] However, in reality, the inclusion of women’s groups is rare and usually for normative reasons. Gender-focused civil society groups can also be effective in wielding influence over the peace process, albeit from the margins.[xx]
The preponderance of evidence suggests that including more women in peacekeeping will improve the outlook of peace agreements for everyone—but especially the women themselves. Given the interplay between existing and persisting social norms and laws, war settlements present a critical opportunity to advance justice and women’s rights. Greater representation of women in the peace process helps to ensure that an opportunity for change does not collapse into a setback—or another war.
Illustration by Samantha Malzahn
[i] Bigio and Vogelstein, “How Women’s Participation in Conflict Prevention and Resolution Advances U.S. Interests.”
[ii] Smith-Spark, “How Did Rape Become a Weapon of War?”
[iii] Weitsman, “The Politics of Identity and Sexual Violence.”
[iv] Weitsman.
[v] Cronin-Furman, “Managing Expectations.”
[vi] McCausland, “From Tolerance to Tactic: Understanding Rape in Armed Conflict as Genocide.”
[vii] Cronin-Furman, “Managing Expectations.”
[viii] Council on Foreign Relations, “Tracing the Role of Women in Global Peacemaking.”
[ix] Boesten, “Marrying Your Rapist: Domesticated War Crimes in Peru.”
[x] Boesten.
[xi] Ferrer, Profiles in Peace.
[xii] Pankhurst, “Introduction: Gendered War and Peace.”
[xiii] Krause, Krause, and Bränfors, “Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations and the Durability of Peace.”
[xiv] Stone, “Quantitative Analysis of Women’s Participation in Peace Processes.”
[xv] Bigio and Vogelstein, “How Women’s Participation in Conflict Prevention and Resolution Advances U.S. Interests.”
[xvi] Miller and Segal, “Do Female Officers Improve Law Enforcement Quality?”
[xvii] UN Women, “Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations: Connections between Presence and Influence”; Council on Foreign Relations, “Tracing the Role of Women in Global Peacemaking.”
[xviii] Karim and Beardsley, “Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing.”
[xix] Paffenholz, “Main Results of ‘Broader Participation in Political Negotiations and Implementation.’”
[xx] O’Reilly, Súilleabháin, and Paffenholz, “Reimagining Peacemaking: Women’s Roles in Peace Processes.”