Women can end wars better - but they are not at the negotiating table

Although politics is becoming more and more diverse, peacemaking is still almost exclusively a men's business.

Why?

• Women in peacemaking have special skills - if they were to sit at the negotiating table.

• According to columnist Janine di Giovanni, women are usually not the actors who go into battle, but rather those who later try to put the pieces of a broken society back together.

• The author is convinced that various contributions to peace processes will have positive effects on the results.

• This article is available for the first time in German - it was first published by

  Foreign Policy

  magazine on October 10, 2021

  .

In

the fifth century BC

comedy

the Greek poet Aristophanes.

The women of ancient Athens and Sparta forge a clever plan to end the war between the two city-states.

They refuse to have sex with their husbands until they stop fighting and make peace.

This is arguably the most original and effective peacemaking strategy ever developed.

Even if the method described by Aristophanes is not necessarily suitable for ending the wars of our time, such as the ongoing wars in Syria and the Ethiopian region of Tigray *, the associated statement is still valid today: When women attack Setting the negotiating table to resolve conflicts, they often bring unique peacemaking skills with them.

But how is it that - in contrast to many other areas of politics and policy-making - so few women are involved as negotiators, mediators or community organizers in peace processes or as mediators in so-called Track 2 dialogue processes?

Why is it still almost exclusively reserved for men to decide on questions of war and peace?

Women are better at ending wars - but they are not at the negotiating table

There are now so many courses of study, think tanks and zoom conferences that deal with the topic of "Women, Peace and Security" that the English abbreviation WPS ("Women, Peace and Security") has become commonplace.

For example, on October 21st, the United Nations held the annual open debate on WPS.

The “Women, Peace and Security” agenda receives a lot of attention, gives those involved the feeling that they are driving something important, and meets all the requirements of the respective donors.

Unfortunately, WPS is little more than a technocratic term. Although I'm one of those women and I work for peace and security - for example, I've worked with the United Nations, teach peace and conflict studies at Yale University, and have written several books and numerous articles on peace and security - I was able to but for years nothing to do with this term. What exactly is meant by WSP? Should civil society be encouraged to take a more active role in conflict resolution? Should women take on a leading role at the negotiating table in the future? Or should more women be trained in peacebuilding?

In theory, all of these demands sound good, but in practice there are only a few examples.

The groundbreaking United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 recognized the disproportionate, gender-specific and grave effects of conflict on women and girls.

The resolution pursued the goal of increasing the participation of women and “including gender-specific perspectives in the peace negotiations”.

Governments should implement national action plans to support women as peacemakers.

Peacebuilding: Hardly any women involved in conflict resolution - and the example of Asma al-Assad

In the current raging conflict around the world, however, I rarely see women conducting peace talks or deciding which participants to invite to a peace conference. In Syria, Yemen and other war zones, the peace efforts of the United Nations have come to a standstill due to disruptions from individual member states that benefit from a continuation of the respective conflicts. Therefore, there is an increasing tendency to be observed that private organizations for conflict resolution, such as the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, the Berghof Foundation in Berlin or the European Institute of Peace in Brussels, lay the foundations for the Track 2 dialogue, i . H. for informal, behind-the-scenes peace processes.

In Track 2, the first steps towards ending a conflict are usually worked out by representatives of civil society. The actors at this level often include religious dignitaries and - at least that is the aim - women's groups. Although women's groups are an important part of civil society, they are rarely represented in this area. Interestingly, all of the three above-mentioned conflict resolution organizations are headed by men who previously held senior positions at the United Nations.

The women who are close to the warmongers could also exert a great influence. However, the influential wives of heads of state are not always peacemakers, when they should be. Events could very well take a different turn if asked to use their influence in peace processes. The wives of high-ranking military commanders are also influential, and often even have greater influence over their husbands than their closest advisers. Since they are often mothers themselves, they should show compassion. They could help prevent massacres or serious human rights violations.

Just think of Asma, the wife of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who was silent when her husband carried out a poison gas attack in 2013 on Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, which killed numerous children.

This came just shortly after she gave 

an infamous interview (which has since been removed from the internet) talking about her children's charity.

Asma was silent when her husband bombed the houses of families in Homs and razed Aleppo to the ground with barrel bombs * and accepted the destruction of schools and hospitals in the process.

The wives of dictators and their roles - gender imbalance

Asma was also silent when her husband, with his strategy of giving up or starving, starved the people of Muʿaddamiyyat ash-shame to death. She could have reminded her husband that he had children too and asked how he would feel if they met the same fate. Like the strong women in 

, she could have asserted her relationship with her husband, but chose not to.

The same applies to Mirjana Marković, the wife of the former Yugoslav head of state Slobodan Milošević. In the 1990s, when Milošević tore the country apart through four wars, his wife was considered the most powerful whisperer in the background. In July 1995, when 8,000 Bosniak boys and men were downright slaughtered in Srebrenica, Marković was probably in Belgrade with her husband. Milošević was at the top of the chain of command and he was very fond of his wife. She could have acted on him and possibly prevented the genocide. However, Marković herself was a passionate nationalist and may even have pushed her husband into the horrific act. This again shows that politicians' spouses often play such an important role that they cannot simply be ignored.

The gender imbalance in Silicon Valley and Hollywood is evident to everyone. But the most important imbalance, namely the one that can make the decisive difference between life and death, can be observed in peace processes. In 2018, the World Economic Forum stated that only 4 percent of peace agreements made between 1992 and 2011 were signed by women. They were represented in the negotiating teams with only 9 percent. In stark contrast to this finding are the results of studies that show that the involvement of women is a decisive factor in achieving lasting peace. For example, the report notes that women in Liberia,Northern Ireland and the Philippines were instrumental in the settlement of armed conflicts.

Law under Trump: Women as agents of change in conflict prevention and mediation

It is by no means the case that no attempts have been made to involve more women in peace negotiations.

In 2017, for example, the United States * became the first country in the world to pass a comprehensive WPS law.

It states that the US government's WPS strategy recognizes the multiple roles women play as agents of change in conflict prevention and mediation, combating terrorism and violent extremism, and building peace and stability in the country Play time after dispute resolution.

According to the wording of the law, the WPS strategy aims to empower women to take on relevant leadership roles in political and civil life. In order to achieve this, women are to be supported in filling management positions and in making a significant contribution to peace negotiations in this role. Furthermore, they should be given the necessary skills and corresponding offers of support that they need to act successfully in these management positions, and they should be given opportunities and resources to participate in peace negotiations. Ironically, this law promoting equality for women was passed under one of the most misogynistic presidents in US history.

Like so many other government reports, I have read this law several times and still wonder what it exactly means - and how it will be put into practice.

According to UN Women, if women participate in a peace process, the likelihood that the negotiated peace will last longer than two years increases by 20 percent.

Janine di Giovanni

When it comes to promoting women's rights and women's engagement in peacebuilding, the Scandinavian countries are still far ahead.

Finland was the first country in Europe where women were given the right to vote.

The country also has impressive successes in terms of gender equality in politics.

However, at a famous unofficial annual meeting of peacemakers in Norway, I saw only a handful of women, most of them serving as special representatives of powerful men.

(Feminist Foreign Policy *: The United States must think bigger when it comes to combating climate change. Here's a suggestion of what that might look like.)

Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher - Women are often portrayed as victims of war

At the same time, the few powerful women in politics often do not seem to be treading a path of peacemaking. For example, the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led her country into the Falklands War in 1982 and the then First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, watched idly as her husband hesitated until it was too late to intervene in Rwanda and Bosnia.

Women are often portrayed as victims of war, especially victims of sexual violence. Women definitely have power. According to UN Women, if women participate in a peace process, the likelihood that the negotiated peace will last longer than two years increases by 20 percent. At the same time, the UN Security Council called for women to be more involved in the mediation of conflicts. The "Mothers of Srebrenica", an influential interest group and lobby group that was founded in 1995 after the genocide in the Bosnian city, are an impressive example of conflict resolution efforts that have grown out of the population.

An analysis by UN Women of 40 peace processes since the end of the Cold War shows that in cases where women could exert a strong influence on the negotiation process, the likelihood of an agreement was much higher than in the negotiations in which women groups only could exercise a weak influence or no influence at all.

In negotiations with strong female influence, an agreement was almost always reached.

Various contributions to peace processes will have positive effects on the results

If we really want to start giving WPS actual substantive weight, we have to prepare more women to take part in the field and in Track 2 processes. More women need to learn how to organize, moderate and negotiate. All too often, these skills, as well as decision-making, are left to men. In peace processes in countries like Mali, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, women were terribly underrepresented. Only in Colombia, where peace still reigns after a long and bloody war, were women more involved in the peace process.

More diverse contributions to peace processes will certainly have positive effects on the results of these processes. After all, women are usually not the actors who go into battle, but rather the ones who later try to put the pieces of a broken society back together. They know what needs to be done, how to heal and how to help broken people regain their courage to face life.

In my opinion, the 

 in its function as a metaphorical model for the successful planning and implementation of peace processes, should be made compulsory reading for every head of government in the world.

We should remember the wise words of the title character Lysistrate: “We always endured it patiently in the past and in the misery of war, humble nature as we women are now, however you men do it.

We weren't allowed to muck, that's how you held us!

[...] But if the women came together here, those from Boiotien, those from the Peloponnese, and we - we, united, could save Hellas! "

by Janine di Giovanni

Janine di Giovanni

 is a columnist for 

, Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University, winner of several journalism awards and author of 

(to be released October 2021 ) Twitter: @janinedigi

This article was first published in English on October 10, 2021 in the magazine "ForeignPolicy.com" - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.

* Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.

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