{"id":208498,"date":"2020-03-08T13:24:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T07:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=208498"},"modified":"2020-03-13T11:05:41","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T05:35:41","slug":"reframing-the-debate-around-women-peace-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/reframing-the-debate-around-women-peace-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Reframing The Debate Around Women, Peace & Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shreen Abdul Saroor<\/a> \u2013<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Shreen Saroor<\/p><\/div>\n

Reframing the debate around Women, Peace and Security:\u00a0A UN resolution is in danger of leading peace advocates down the wrong path<\/b><\/p>\n

When a peace deal is struck between warring factions, it is widely understood that peace has been achieved. However, when key sections of society\u2014in most cases all women\u2014are kept from the negotiating table, is that peace agreement likely to meet the needs of all citizens?<\/p>\n

As an individual who has lived through conflict from a young age, I know I have a different perspective on peacebuilding than those who have sat at the negotiating table on my behalf.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trying to address this problem two decades ago, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.\u00a0 Recognizing that women bear unique burdens of conflict and can offer critical insight on peacebuilding, UNSCR 1325 stressed the importance of ensuring that women participate in greater numbers at all stages of conflict-resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Since its passage, Resolution 1325 has become the organizing framework for thinking about women, peace, and security and is touted by the U.N. Security Council, U.N. Women, and other powerful international organizations.<\/p>\n

But while the impetus behind UNSCR 1325 may be sound, does its approach actually make things worse?\u00a0 Unfortunately, yes.<\/p>\n

The problem is conceptual.\u00a0 UNSCR 1325 defines security in terms of national security. But national security is not the same as individual security: unless a society treats its citizens equally, national security does not guarantee security for all. If we can agree that women bear a disproportionate burden of hardship and injustice in conflict, our priority should be reforming the structures that create those inequalities in the first place.<\/p>\n

We know that women face sexual violence in conflict and untold hardships in post-conflict reconstruction.\u00a0 Their lands and resources are grabbed by the state or non-state actors.\u00a0 The dead and missing are more often men, leaving women to rebuild their lives in the patriarchal societies that marginalized them to begin with. When the state takes over natural resources or land and sea access in the name of post-conflict security, war-affected women often find themselves with no means of livelihood.\u00a0 Governments like mine set up factories in the name of development, plucking women from their cultural lands and reducing them to unskilled factory labour with no pathway for advancement.\u00a0 Thus, the same women who were uniquely vulnerable during the war remain uniquely exploited after it. Recognizing their voices in conflict resolution and peacebuilding requires that we look at the broader context.\u00a0 That context includes not just physical security from violence but a transformation of their role in relation to the state.<\/p>\n

The drive for greater female representation in the armed forces\u2014although ostensibly about female empowerment\u2014works against women in the longer term, undermining arguments against violence. Indeed, the women\u2019s peace agenda is best served by a reduction of arms and security personnel. The answer to war\u2019s disproportionate impact on women should not be to deputize women as agents of war but instead to solicit women\u2019s views to reduce violence and reshape the structures facilitating it.<\/p>\n

In Sri Lanka, for example, Muslim women who for years protested the radicalisation of extremist youth were ignored by the state.\u00a0 When radicalized youth detonated bombs killing hundreds in churches and hotels, the state immediately responded with a repressive national security framework, restricting religious freedom, targeting refugee and asylum seekers for expulsion, and standing idle as manic but well-organised mobs burned Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and schools. States like mine also routinely promote \u201ccounterterrorism\u201d laws and apply them disproportionately to arrest and detain minorities. When their husbands are targeted, minority women become sole breadwinners and endure unannounced visits and harassment by security personnel. Adding women to the security apparatus will not change its basic character or incorporate women\u2019s perspectives on peace and security.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By defining the debate in terms of national security and working for greater participation of women in the security sector, UNSCR 1325\u2019s influence is leading governments and international organizations, including UN Women, astray. It is incumbent on civil society stakeholders to argue for an alternative framing.<\/p>\n

What women need is not a token seat at the table, but rather a chance to offer real input in peacebuilding and conflict resolution.\u00a0 We need our values and experiences to be heard to dismantle the structures of oppression and violence that leave us uniquely vulnerable.\u00a0 This means a commitment to disarmament, demilitarization, war crimes accountability, human rights and dignity, livelihood assistance, land rights, cultural rights, inheritance and divorce reforms, and lasting efforts to repair war-torn societies to a place perhaps better than before.\u00a0 It is in shaping this process that women need to be heard.<\/p>\n

How do I know I\u2019m right? Twenty years after UNSCR 1325, impunity persists for sexual and gender-based violence.\u00a0 Even as women have joined peacekeeping ranks in greater numbers, reports of rape and sexual violence against U.N. peacekeeping forces and state security personnel persist.\u00a0 And despite more women in the ranks, countries like mine maintain the same counter-productive counterterrorism framework in their approaches to peace and security.\u00a0 Well-qualified women are encouraged to enter politics, but when they do, they are mocked, their good intentions questioned, and forced to fight against the same patriarchal, discriminatory and often militarised structures their presence in politics seeks to change.<\/p>\n

What gains are we making in addressing the very problems that UNSCR 1325 sought to correct?\u00a0 If we take an honest assessment, it is clear we need a better path forward, one that actually considers women\u2019s perspectives in peacebuilding rather than treating them as placeholders in the same flawed approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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