“Peacebuilding cannot be successful if half the population is excluded…”

Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuilding in Sudan, Congo and Uganda, a new report out on the remarkable peace building work that women are doing, discusses how women are being left out of the peace-building process and what needs to be done to incorporate more of the work and resistances of these women.

In all three [countries], an array of women’s organisations and leaders are doing remarkable work, under difficult circumstances, especially in community organisations and informal conflict resolution mechanisms. Still, women remain marginalised in formal peace processes and post-conflict governments. Donors and others in the international community all need to do much more to offer sustainable support rather than just rhetoric.
“Peacebuilding cannot succeed if half the population is excluded from the process�, says Caty Clement, Director of Crisis Group’s Central Africa Project. “Our research shows that peace agreements, post-conflict reconstruction and governance work better when women peace activists are involved�.

Diverse opinions are always necessary in any type of alliance or peace building negotiations, but it is also important to see how militarization is a gendered machine and is based on a model of patriarchal aggression. It is not safe to say that just the inclusion of women in such a process would challenge that fact (although in this case it seems that it is), but it would indeed disrupt the male domination of war/peace politics.
The report says,

The stereotype of “women as only victims� should not be reinforced. An array of women’s organisations and women leaders are doing remarkable work in each of the three countries, under difficult circumstances. The daily struggle for survival greatly limits the numbers who have become peace activists but their potential is significant. Because those who are courageous and capable enough to involve themselves as catalysts in peacebuilding are an endangered minority, they should be safeguarded and strengthened with funding, training and inclusion in assessment missions and other decision-making mechanisms that shape fundamental questions of security.

Nuff said.
via Reuters.