Gender and Constitution Building - Women for Women International

Implementing Gender Equality
Provisions: Lessons from the Central
American Peace Accords
ILJA A. LUCIAK
Introduction
Starting a decade ago, women’s participation in
armed conflict and peace negotiations, as well as their
central role in the reconstruction of post-conflict societies,
were starting to gain international recognition. This
prompted a series of international conferences and
meetings that emphasized the importance of looking
at these issues from a gender perspective, a lens that
permits greater insight into the roles of women and
their potential in post-conflict societies. 1
Today, gender equality is an accepted normative
goal, yet we have only made limited progress in transforming
societies toward greater gender justice. In the
specific context of peace accords and subsequent constitutions
containing gender equality provisions, the key
issue is their substantive implementation. Peace accords
and constitutions share an inherent weakness. They are
often normative documents, agreed to under duress by
negotiating parties with mutually exclusive views rather
than specific agreements or frameworks that can be effectively
executed. 2 The Central American experiences,
specifically El Salvador and Guatemala, show that
women’s participation in the design of peace agreements
and the explicit recognition of women’s rights in the
accords themselves do not guarantee that the struggle
toward greater gender equality is won.
Typically, as long as the attention of the world community
is focused on a particular crisis, the gender content
of peace accords and women’s participation in the
process receive coverage. The rhetoric of officials involved
in the process and the formal provisions guaranteeing
women’s rights that are included in official
documents permit the key actors involved to claim success.
Yet the crucial implementation phase most often
occurs after the attention of the international community
has moved on to the next crisis. It is this stage,
however, that is the key to substantive change and requires
close scrutiny and enforcement of the document’s
guarantees. Thus, the formal participation of women
in peace negotiations and constitution-building and the
inclusion of gender provisions in peace agreements is
but a first important step toward gender equality.
Women’s Participation in the Wars
On January 16, 1992, the government of El Salvador
and the guerrilla forces integrated in the Farabundo
Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) signed historic
peace accords at Chapúltepec Castle, Mexico. This
agreement ended a 12-year conflict that had traumatized
a whole nation. 3
On December 29, 1996, another Central American
peace accord was completed. The guerrilla forces
integrated into the Guatemalan National Revolutionary
Unity (URNG) and the Guatemalan government,
headed by President Alvaro Arzú, signed an agreement
that ended the conflict that had engulfed Guatemala
for 36 years. 4
El Salvador
Women played an important role in the guerrilla
movements of El Salvador. At the time of the 1992
demobilization of the Salvadoran FMLN, female combatants
represented 29 percent of the fighting force.
In addition, women were part of the political personnel
constituting close to 37 percent of the cadres. 5 Only
in exceptional cases did women join the struggle in order
to change prevailing gender relations. Instead, they
chose to take up arms out of a sense of social justice
or to survive the blanket repression unleashed by the
army and police forces. The FMLN did not explicitly
address women’s rights in its early programs and announcements.
FMLN commanders, whether male or
female, did not focus their energy or thoughts on
women’s rights, although women did start to organize
within the FMLN in the last years of the struggle.
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