Making Women Count - Not Just Counting Women: Assessing Women’s Inclusion and Influence on Peace Negotiations

Abstract

Fifteen years after the adoption of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325, women remain significantly underrepresented in peace and transitional processes. A central challenge is the lack of evidence-based knowledge on the precise role and impact of women’s inclusion on peace processes. When women have been included in the past, it was mainly due to normative pressure applied by women’s groups and their international supporters. The results of the “Broadening Participation in Political Negotiations and Implementation” project — an ongoing multi-year research project started in 2011 at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, under the leadership of Dr. Thania Paffenholz — address these empirical knowledge gaps. Comprised of 40 in-depth qualitative case studies, this project examines the role and impact of all actors and groups— in addition to the main conflict parties—included in peace and political transition processes throughout all phases, including post-agreement implementation. The objective of this report is to present an analysis of women’s inclusion distilled from the larger “Broadening Participation” research project to date, in order to provide UN Women (and other organizations studying women’s inclusion) with direct comparative evidence on women’s influence in previous cases of peace processes since the 1990s. For the purpose of the research, ‘women’ were defined as organized groups (such as women’s delegations and women’s civil society organizations, networks, or coalitions) participating alongside other actors, such as civil society, political parties, or previously-sidelined armed groups.