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UN: 20 Years After Landmark UN Resolution, Women Still Excluded in Peace
Processes

Margaret Besheer

   NEW YORK - Twenty years after a landmark U.N. Security Council
   resolution seeking to include more women in the prevention and
   settlement of conflicts, the head of U.N. Women says "exclusion is
   still the norm."

   "Evidence shows that peace processes that involve women are'¯key to
   long-lasting peace, yet women are still systematically excluded,
   confined to informal processes, or relegated to the role of spectators,
   while men sit in the rooms that will define their lives and decide
   their future,"'¯Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of U.N.
   Women, told a Security Council meeting marking the anniversary
   Thursday.

   She said in peace negotiations from 1992 to 2019, only 13% of
   negotiators, 6% of mediators, and 6% of peace agreement signatories
   were women.

   "These negotiations are still structured in a way that elevates and
   empowers the actors that have'¯fueled'¯the violence, rather than
   empowering the constituencies who make peace," she said.'¯

   Resolution 1325 was adopted unanimously by the Council on Oct. 31,
   2000. It stresses the importance of equal participation of women in
   both the prevention and resolution of conflicts, as well as
   peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction. The resolution also
   calls on parties to conflicts to protect women and girls from
   gender-based violence.

   "This resolution was born out of the horrors committed against the
   bodies of women and girls'¯in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the example'¯set
   by women who fought for representation'¯in Northern Ireland, southern
   Africa, and Central America,"'¯Mlambo-Ngcuka'¯said.'¯

   While she commended women and civil society groups for bringing
   atrocities committed against women and girls from the shadows into the
   light, she said justice is yet to be won for most victims and impunity
   continues to be the norm.

   "We had to wait until last year to see the first ever successful
   conviction for sexual and gender-based violence at the International
   Criminal Court," she noted.'¯

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