Publications

Mainstreaming Women's Issues in Peace and Security

A Field Guide for Practitioners and Policymakers

Foreword

With the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security in October 2000, women's peace and security issues became hype at all levels and in all sectors. A good number of global, regional, sub-regional, national and grassroots initiatives have been launched by women practitioners, activists, academics, policymakers and implementers to make the Resolution a reality. In Africa additional rights-based instruments such as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (2003) and the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004) have also been adopted to further advance women's empowerment and gender equality. However, notwithstanding the plethora of normative frameworks that call and/or demand women's rights to peace and their involvement in peace and security processes, women continue to be peripherally represented in the governance of peace and security. Security institutions and structures --particularly in Africa-- are still largely male driven, oriented and dominated, and women are expected to become "masculine" in order to fit into these setups. The lack of political will and commitment on the part of governments to translate these instruments into action further inhibit the effectiveness of these normative frameworks and makes their realization far-fetched. Thus for civil society and particularly women's groups, it became imperative to take alternative measures in order that losses do not outweigh the gains made. Consequently rather than see these normative frameworks as an end in itself, they were seen as a means or vehicle for the achievement of the overarching goal of altering negative power relations, gender inequality and the disempowerment and impoverishment of women.

In  2004 a 'Women in Peacebuilding' Regional Conference was organized against this premise and brought together sixty-eight (68) representatives (mostly females) from civil society, the West Africa Regional Economic Community --ECOWAS, governments, donor agencies, academia and the media to develop Policy Recommendations for Mainstreaming Women's Issues into Peace and Security in West Africa. The policy recommendations development process was civil society driven/led and was meant to complement and operationalize existing frameworks on women peace and security in West Africa. The recommendations have been extensively disseminated over the last three years and have become a reference for particularly grassroots women and national gender (women) machineries working or seeking to work in the area of peace and security. Popular requests for the recommendations to be published as a handbook for field workers and policymakers led to the recent revalidation of the policy recommendations to assess its significance and validity. This field guide is an outcome of the feedback that was given during the validation exercise which held in May 2007 under the auspices of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-Africa) and with support from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

The Field Guide is intended to serve as a reference and is designed to orient practitioners and policymakers to core themes and ideas on how to integrate women and mainstream their issues into peace and security. The practical examples underlined are based on findings from the contemporary work of activists, practitioners and researchers on women, peace and security. It also benefits from and underlines the experiences, the work that has been and can be done by the United Nations, ECOWAS and its Gender as well as Peace and Security Structures, National Gender (Women) Machineries, Civil Society --particularly Women's Groups-- to bring about greater gender parity in peace and security. The Field Guide is by no means an all-inclusive or sole reference. It is based on the experiences and work of the delegates who attended the Strategic Reflection Forum that was organized by WIPSEN-Africa; and is thus limited to examples from the West Africa sub-region. Practitioners and policymakers are urged to use this guide as an additional reference to complement other existing guides from within the continent --particularly those from other regions (East, Central, South and North Africa) and abroad. The Field Guide is also intended to serve as an impetus to further and more inclusive studies and documentation of the efforts being made towards mainstreaming women's issues in peace and security. Therefore this volume comes as a first edition. It is envisaged that it would be revised overtime to incorporate emerging strategies, best practices and lessons learned. For the present, it is our hope that the guide would be instrumental to furthering the efforts currently being made towards the empowerment and full participation of particularly grassroots women in the governance of peace and security at all levels.

We once again acknowledge and thank West African Women, Gender Machineries and ECOWAS for their contributions which have made the development of the Field Guide possible. The contributions of Sisters from Uganda and South Africa who also participated in the Strategic Reflection Forum is acknowledged and highly appreciated. We finally would like to thank our Donors and Strategic Partners --GTZ, AWDF and ELCA-- for their continued support and commitment to empowering women to participate in the decision making processes involved in the maintenance of peace and security at all levels --from the community, state, sub-region, continent and global. 

Ecoma Alaga
Director of Programmes
WIPSEN-Africa