WOMEN AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE

While women have long added their support to help foster peaceful resolutions, they have largely been excluded from participating in international peace advocacy.

In 1854 Swedish feminist Frederika Bremer advanced the idea of a women-only peace group. In 1889 Bertha Von Sutter published the influential book “Lay Down Your Arms,” which championed arbitration. Jane Addams convened a meeting of women’s peace groups in 1915 out of which the Women’s Peace Party emerged. Its platform raised issues that later were adopted by the International Congress of Women, including an international police force, removal of economic causes of war, and the manufacture and sale of arms. Some were critical of the congress including Theodore Roosevelt, who called the congress a “shrieking sisterhood of pacifists.”

Decades later in 2000 the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security (WPS), which linked gender equality to the maintenance of international peace and security. The goal, established by the United Nations, was full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding by 2030.

Between 1992 and 2019 women constituted 13% of negotiators in peace processes. In 2020, women represented 23% of negotiators in active peace processes led or co-led by the United Nations. In 2022, women represented only 16% of negotiators. Of the eighteen peace agreements concluded in 2022, only one had a woman signatory.

Research has shown that women’s participation in these processes contributes to reaching lasting agreements and increases the probability of it abiding for at least two years by 20% and lasting fifteen years by 35%.

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Fred Jandt is the author of several books, including his latest, “How To Survive a Mediation.”