Women don’t usually start wars, but they do suffer greatly from the consequences. Conflict leads to much higher rates of sexual violence. It makes women vulnerable to poverty, job losses and the destruction of assets such as homes. Essential health services are crumbling, and maternal mortality is on average 2.5 times higher in conflict and post-conflict countries (UNwomen).

In 2000, the UN Security Council adopted the groundbreaking Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. It recognizes that war affects women differently, and reaffirms the need to increase women’s role in decision-making regarding conflict prevention and resolution. Progress is being made: in 2013, more than half of all signed peace agreements included references to women, peace and security. But the pace of change is too slow. From 1992 to 2011, women made up less than four percent of peace agreement signatories and less than ten percent of peace table negotiators (UNwomen).

UN research has shown that educating girls has a positive impact on the economy, health, well-being and peace.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury said: “Women in particular have an important role to play in promoting the culture of peace in our violence-ridden societies, bringing lasting peace and reconciliation. Although women are often the first victims of armed conflict, they must also and always be recognized as the key to conflict resolution. I am convinced that unless women engage in promoting the culture of peace on an equal level with men, sustainable peace will continue to elude us.” (Kosmos Interview, December 15, 2015).

The following is from a speech by Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, at the High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace, at UN Headquarters in New York, 9 September 2014:

“The promotion and achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment is both a means and an end for the deconstruction of militarism, negative masculinity and the patriarchy that glorifies violence and aggression and supports the culture of war.

[…] As UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and other resolutions on women, peace and security affirm, women must not only be protected from war and the violence it unleashes, but must also be seen as agents of conflict prevention, of peacemaking and as reconcilers in post-conflict peacebuilding.

[…] [Because] women—mothers, grandmothers, and other family members—are often children’s first teachers, they can play a crucial role in raising young people to value peace and not war.”

As Jane Addams¹ said: “Peace is not just an absence of war, it is a nurturing of human life and in time this nurturing will bring an end to war as a natural process.”

In the speech, Puri also talked about the tendency of some groups such as Boko Haram and the Taliban in Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan to sabotage girls’ education. A well-known example of this is Malala Yousafzai². She was shot by a member of the Taliban in Pakistan while taking the bus from school to her home. She was treated in a hospital in England and through her blog for the BBC she spoke out for the right to education. She became the youngest Nobel laureate at the age of 17 when she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. With the Malala Fund, founded in 2013, she works to promote girls’ education by breaking down barriers – such as discrimination on gender, poverty and war – leaving 130 million girls out of school. The Fund supports the right of every girl around the world to receive 12 years of free, safe, quality education and works primarily in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Syria and Brazil.

An example where women actively participated en masse in the peace process is the group “Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace”³. After the civil war broke out in 2001, many people fled to the capital of Liberia. A woman named Laymah Gbowee brought together women from her church to protest against war and slowly this spread to other churches and mosques. More than 2,500 women daily called on the president for peace negotiations. They eventually managed to persuade the rebel leader to engage in dialogue. Peace negotiations were eventually held in Ghana, but violence in Liberia continued. Ghanaian women joined the Liberian women and surrounded the negotiation building, refusing to leave until an agreement was signed. The women remained active after this agreement, to ensure democratic elections and to assist in the process of disarmament. In 2005, the first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was elected. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 together with Leymah Gbowee. The story is also told in the film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”.

A second example of the active involvement of women in peacebuilding is Rwanda. Because most of those killed were men and because many male perpetrators fled to neighboring nations, 70 percent of Rwanda’s post-genocide population was female. Faced with ensuring their families’ very survival, women stepped up. Mothers took in orphaned children and organized support groups for widows. Women moved from cleaning buildings to reconstructing them. They farmed and started businesses. Throughout the country, they created stability in the aftermath of unspeakable violence.Women played key roles in Gacaca, a kind of truth and reconciliation process that operated most often at the community level.Women held 3 of the 12 seats of the commission tasked with drafting a new constitution for Rwanda, approved by referendum in 2003. Encouraging and reflecting the rise of women into both informal and formal leadership, the commission established a 30 percent quota for women throughout government as well as a gender monitoring office. Today, with 64 percent of its seats held by women, Rwanda’s parliament leads the world in female representation.⁴

For more inspiration on several women that played important roles in peacebuilding, you can read The power of women peacebuilders, October 28, 2019, UN Women.