Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations - Transitional ...

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women’s lives – symptomatic of deeper and unresolved stereotyping and attitudes unaffected by formal legal regulation. In societies experiencing ethnic or political violence all these matters are further complicated by the reality of public violence which ‘hides’ or silences the experiences of women by virtue of the legal, political and social preoccupations with what are perceived to be broader political issues. Notably as Nthabiseng Motsemme has affirmed writing from the South African context, ‘Various studies exploring the ways ordinary women speak about their traumatic pasts under violent regimes have consistently shown how they tend to place their narratives within everyday lived experiences, rather than nationalist concerns’. 1 This is but one specific example of a theme which can be extracted from the micro-analysis contained in this report, namely that women’s broader experiences, those which define their lived lives, are not reflected in the issues that shape and dominate conflict resolution and the transition that may follow from political agreement. Transition and the Potential for Change The end of conflict, or at least the transition away from conflict seems to provide an opportunity to many societies, not only to re-imagine their political futures and the relationships between deeply divided sectors of society but, a moment of pause in which a broader array of societal issues around equality and personal dignity can be addressed. In this space it is both theoretically and practically possible that women’s rights issues could be substantively addressed by the willingness of negotiations to understand that a peace agreement could also reshape a range of inequalities and discriminations within the conflicted society. The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement was arguably one such moment in the protracted history of the Northern Ireland conflict. This report, drawing on the broader mandate of the TJI in understanding the direction and shape of the Northern Ireland transition, seeks to take some of our broader theoretical and policy insights and apply them to the particular experiences of women in the post Good Friday/Belfast Agreement environment. The report concentrates on the key areas that we believe indicate how women have fared through the enforcement of the Agreement’s principles and policies, and indicates where we as a society might be doing better. It is generally agreed the gendered dimensions of transition have been neglected by both policy makers and academics. We would argue (with others) that peace processes are typically deeply gendered, thereby raising awkward questions about the neutrality of the transitional project. 2 While women will often have been at the forefront of peace initiatives throughout a conflict, peace agreements are usually negotiated predominantly, if not exclusively, by men. 3 The conduct of violence and war is predominantly male, leading to a male bias in negotiations, and mediators are usually men. 4 Despite the presence of the Northern Ireland’s Women’s Coalition (and their sizeable impact on the shape and 1 Nthabiseng Motsemme, The Mute Always Speak: On Women’s Silences at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 52(5) Current Sociology 909-932 at 909. 2 See Bell, Christine, Colm Campbell and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Justice Discourses in Transition Journal of Social and Legal Studies (2003) 3 Bell, Christine, Women Address the Problems of Peace Agreements (2005) PEACE WORK: WOMEN, ARMED CONFLICT AND NEGOTIATION (ed. Radhika Coomaraswamy & Dirukshi Fonseka) Women Unlimited: International Center for Ethnic Studies. 4 Goldstein, Joshua S. (2001) WAR AND GENDER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Askin, Kelly- Dawn. (1997) WAR CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN: PROSECUTION IN INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff; Yuval-Davis, Nina (1997) GENDER AND NATION. London: Sage.
language of the Agreement) this was also true of the negotiation process which led to the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. The absence of women at peace talks and in peace processes persists despite the Platform for Action which emerged from the Fourth World Conference On Women in Beijing in 1995 which asserted that: 'in addressing armed or other conflicts, an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes should be promoted so that before decisions are taken an analysis is made of the effects on women and men, respectively'. 5 The Bejing Platform approach has been confirmed by the highly visible UN Resolution 1325, which ‘urges UN Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels … for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict’. Its requirements are framed by the acknowledgement that women play an important role in ‘the prevention and resolution of conflict and in peacemaking’; and that ‘women and children constitute the vast majority of those affected by armed conflict’. Such exclusion has a double effect. Arguably, it operates to narrow the problems faced to a ‘male’ conception of conflict revolving around allocations of power and territory, and stopping certain forms of violence. 6 These questions may impact only peripherally on many women's day-to-day lives. They may leave untouched socio-economic exclusions, and even violence, which women may not see as compartmentalised into 'conflict' and 'non-conflict' related, but rather experience as a continuum only partially addressed by cease-fires. 7 We believe that this is the theme one should keep in mind when assessing the gender audit contained in this report. Only relatively recently has the gendered dimension of war and of international law in particular, been closely examined. 8 This work has been supplemented by consideration of the gender dynamics of ethnic conflict, and internal conflict more generally. 9 We would argue that this body of research creates a baseline from which more nuanced analysis of the relationship between gender, conflict, transition, and peace can be undertaken. It also operates to reveal that there is a tangible link between the experience of women during conflict and the exclusions we have identified in the transitional context. A gendered understanding of peace processes is required to address how women can practically assert a presence at peace negotiations, while simultaneously re-framing the questions these processes revolve around. Addressing gender is not just a matter of addressing women's needs. The experience of how women work can be vital to peace-making and peacebuilding. In particular women are often well positioned to further connections between civic society (where women often predominate) and political institutions (where men often predominate), and in so doing reshaping the notion of what is politics, and what is democratic participation. Northern Ireland: Local Lessons for a Global Context 5 World Conference on Women, UN Doc.A/CONF. 177/20, 1995: para 141; See also, UN SC Resolution 1325 of 31 October, 2000. 6 Bell supra note 3. 7 Cockburn, Cynthia (1999) THE SPACE BETWEEN US: NEGOTIATING GENDER AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES IN CONFLICT London: Zed Books 8 Askin, Kelly-Dawn. (1997) WAR CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN: PROSECUTION IN INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff; Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala (2000) 'Sex-based Violence and the Holocaust - A Reevaluation of Harms and Rights in International Law', Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 12: 43-84. 9 Yuval-Davis, Nina (1997) GENDER AND NATION. London: Sage.
Page 1 and 2: Women and the Implementation of the
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Page 9 and 10: An overall assessment of the succes
Page 11 and 12: 1. RESEARCH 1.1 Sources Primary doc
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Page 17 and 18: ecent history of communal conflict
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equality clause purports to deal wi
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8.3 Equity Monitoring 200 There are
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• Females are more likely than ma
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ecommended 228 a ‘programme of ac
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conferencing system for juveniles.
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Gender is ‘piggy-backing’ on th
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The Independent Commission of Polic
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oadly reflective of the population
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linked to women with caring respons
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competitions for police officers (u
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9.8.7 PSNI and Equity Monitoring ov
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9.11.4 Other Policing Challenges De
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with not the same emphasis as the i
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REFERENCES Bell, C. (2003) PEACE AG
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____ (2004) Model Equal Opportuniti
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____ (2003) ‘New Era for Local Po
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____ (2003) Peace Agreements As A M
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