Strengthening Practice : Mediation and gender

What issues are involved in exploring the issue of gender and mediation?

The HD Centre is interested in exploring all avenues for improving the quality of peace processes. One of these avenues is to evaluate the impact of women's involvement and the consideration of their views as well as of gender issues more broadly, on a peace process; or more pertinently, what impact the neglect or exclusion of women at the peace table has.

Despite the 2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and growing commitment by governments and international organisations to implementing the latter, women's participation in peace processes, and the inclusion of gender considerations in decision-making to end conflicts remain very limited. 

The HD Centre aims to highlight the costs of continued exclusion and benefits of increased inclusion, and to use focused research, analysis and advocacy to help peace process actors take gender issues seriously.

What activities is the HD Centre undertaking to address this issue? 

The HD Centre has been at the forefront of promoting gender in mediation since 2005, as part of its efforts to make UN Security Resolution 1325 a reality in conflict mediation. As the 10th Anniversary of 1325 approaches, HD is actively engaged with key actors to bring women who have been politically involved in mediation processes together to support stronger and more concrete recommendations on enhancing women's participation at senior levels.

With the important passage of 2008 Security Council Resolution 1820, the HD Centre also partnered with the UN (UNIFEM, UNDP BCPR, DPA (MSU) and DPKO) on a high level session on addressing sexual violence and mediation.  This meeting brought together senior level mediators with key technical experts to discuss and propose key strategies and principles for addressing sexual violence in different aspects of mediated processes.  The session took place in June 2009 in New York. 

On the Resolution's Fifth anniversary in 2005, the HD Centre sparked an ongoing debate with its Opinion Piece We the Women - Why Conflict Mediation is not just a Job for Men. This paper offers a cogent set of reasons as to why the impediments often cited to women's participation in peacemaking at the political level are surmountable or irrelevant, and suggests practical options to counter the discrimination and inertia which remain.

Since then, the HD Centre has convened senior level decision-makers in and around the UN system in New York and at its flagship annual meeting for senior conflict mediators, the Oslo forum, to continue raising awareness of the issues and to identify and push practical options for action. This included the publication, as part of the Oslo Briefing Pack in 2008 of Gender Sensitivity, Nicety or Necessity in Peace Processes.  Oslo forum participants in 2006 and 2007 offered names for potential mediators and peace process actors, and started to outline strategies to involve women and gender perspectives in peace processes. One result has been the development of an informal database of names of potential women candidates to be suggested for senior peacemaking vacancies. Oslo forum participants also called for the issue to remain central to the event's agenda in coming years. At the 2008 Oslo forum, mediators again devoted a session to sharing and identifying practical strategies for including women and their views at peace tables.

The HD Centre will continue to maintain, expand and informally network the database of names of potential women candidates.  It will publish research and analysis to enhance understanding of the issues in particular through spotlighting the empirical and practical contributions of women's perspectives to peace processes.