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UNIFEM works to get women a seat at the peace table
peacekeeper Nearly ten years after the adoption by the UN Security Council, of its groundbreaking resolution on Women, Peace and Security, known as 1325, women are still not sufficiently represented at peace negotiations. UNIFEM's campaign for the tenth anniversary of resolution 1325, called "Women count for peace" seeks to prove the importance of women's participation at the peace table. Our correspondent in London, Ratko Petrovic found out more about this from Anne-Marie Goetz, UNIFEM's chief adviser on governance, peace and security:
Goetz: Not only are women 50% of the population and therefore, their views are highly relevant, but it's wrong to assume that security means the same for everybody and that governance means the same for everybody and if you're going to have proposed security and governance solutions, we absolutely must ask women what are their priorities.
Petrovic: Is it possible to have peace, without actually properly addressing the issue?
Goetz: Of course, it's not possible. And indeed, there's a huge risk that without addressing human rights violations and without ensuring that future human rights violations are actively prevented, that peace will dissolve quite quickly. And, of course, this is the view of the entire international community, it's not just women who feel this way, but women want to stress that their own perspectives on this conflict and their own rights need more direct attention, if we're going to have long term stabilization. And the reason for that is if we don't prioritize preventing violence against women, getting girls in school, ensuring that women participate in decision-making - if these are not priorities, fast-tracked, then you're not going to be getting a very useful added voice for peace and development.
Petrovic: What's UNIFEM planning for 2010?
Goetz: For UNIFEM, the issue of how we handle peace settlements and their implementation is a major priority. And for this reason, in the course of this year, 2010, which is the 10th anniversary of resolution 1325, UNIFEM is prioritizing trying to set up and institutionalize systems for the automatic representation of women in peace processes, in donor conferences and in institutions that implement peace deals, such as truth commissions, human rights commissions, land commissions, post-conflict planning and recovery bodies. It's worth noting that UNIFEM has recently done an analysis of the proportion of delegations to peace talks, which are women. Since 1992, in 24 peace processes, the proportion of negotiators, who are women is 7.1 percent, which is very, very low. And our data indicates that if anything, that proportion seems to have gone down since the passage of resolution 1325 in the year 2000. So there clearly is a need for the UN to support and to find more concrete and practical ways of supporting women's direct engagement in peace processes. If women are not in a peace process, they can't get their concerns in the peace deal. Let me give you an example of what this means. In many conflicts today, sexual violence is used as a method of fighting by one or both sides of the conflict. This means there is widespread and systematic sexual violence occurring. So it's a way of fighting. Now, we've analyzed 300 components of peace deals signed since 1989 and only 18 mention anything to do with violence against women and only six explicitly discuss sexual violence as a prohibited act. Can you imagine if women had been in these peace processes? This concern would have been raised more centrally and there would be more direct efforts to address this issue post-conflict.
Petrovic: You expect that the Secretary-General and the Organization as a whole will change?
Goetz: I very much expect that this year, this Tenth anniversary of 1325 will see much greater movement, accelerated movement to implement 1325. Women's empowerment is one of the Secretary-General's 7 priorities for this year. The Secretary-General has consistently supported this issue in his public statements and we know that he cares about this matter, as well as high levels of sexual violence in conflict. This year, indeed will see the appointment of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Sexual Violence, which is high time that a position was created for this horrendous violation of civilian rights. So there's a lot of institutional movement to ensure that women's needs are addressed.
PRES: Anne-Marie Goetz, UNIFEM's chief adviser on governance, peace and security speaking to Ratko Petrovic in London.
Producer: Bissera Kostova
Duration: 4'04"
