Minerva, Spring 2008 (Volume 32) - Citizens for Global Solutions

1) Participation of women in peace and security initiatives including peace
processes,
2) Inclusion of gender training for peace operations,
3) Protection of women and girls and promotion of their rights in armed conflict
and in post-conflict situations and
4) Gender mainstreaming throughout relevant programmes related to conflict,
peace and security. 29
Progress in actually implementing Resolution 1325 has been uneven and can probably
only be meaningfully evaluated within a long-term framework. However, it is patently
clear that precious little has been done about the meaningful “protection of women and
girls and promotion of their rights in armed conflict”. Within the context of the responsibility
to protect, this should be a top priority of all women leaders.
At a broader policy level, there are two strategies that women leaders and advocates
can adopt in order to advance the responsibility to protect. First, they can work to incorporate
the concept into existing work programmes focused on women, peace and
security.
The responsibility to protect provides an important complement to existing commitments
to protect women’s rights and security. Early consultations on the responsibility
to protect highlighted the need for women’s groups and women leaders to become
more engaged. For example, following a series of consultations across Africa, Project
Ploughshares found that:
The disproportionate burdens borne by women in armed conflict, the fundamental
role of women in traditional African mechanisms of conflict resolution,
and the urgent need for women to be much better represented in positions
of authority are widely recognized as foundational truths that must be
acknowledged in Africa’s new peace and security architecture. Yet women are
consistently underrepresented in fora where grand decisions around peace and
security are made. 30
The focus on the protection of populations at risk as well as the inclusion of crimes
against humanity in the threshold criteria of the responsibility to protect have been
welcomed by advocates of this agenda. The government of Canada, speaking to the
Security Council on behalf of the Human Security Network in 2005, illustrated the
linkages between the responsibility to protect and all programmes aimed at preventing
and combating gender-based violence:
. . . [T]he Network welcomes the recent adoption of the principle of the Responsibility
to Protect by world leaders in the World Summit Outcome. We
were particularly pleased that the threshold for action that was endorsed is
an inclusive one, in that it holds not only genocide and war crimes but also
crimes against humanity as a key trigger for action. The definition of crimes
against humanity includes all of the most egregious examples of gender-based
violence — the horrific results of which we have seen in too many conflict
areas. … In particular, a rigorous monitoring and reporting mechanism for
gender-based violence will be essential to ensure that states shoulder their
responsibility to not only prevent such violence but also to protect their own
citizens from such crimes. 31
In a similar vein, the World Federalist Movement through its Civil Society Network
calls on organizations focused on women, peace and security to view the responsibility
to protect and Resolution 1325 together, as mutually reinforcing commitments by
governments toward preventing and stopping mass atrocities including international
crimes against women and children.*
21 • Minerva #32 • June 2008
Footnotes 29–31:
29 See Jennifer Bond and Laurel Sharret,
A Sight For Sore Eyes: Bringing
Gender Vision to the Responsibility to
Protect Framework (INSTRAW, October
2005).
30 Greg Puley, The Responsibility to
Protect: East, West and Southern African
Perspectives on Preventing and Responding
to Humanitarian Crises, Working
Paper (Waterloo: Project Ploughshares,
2005), 25.
31 Security Council Open Debate on
Women, Peace and Security, 27 October
2005.
* [See next page]