DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION of National Action Plans ...

Section 1: IntroductionWomen and children bear the brunt of conflicts and wars all over the world. They aresubjected to unbelievable horrible atrocities during these conflicts – rapes, sexualabuses including abduction and sexual slavery, forced marriage and mutilations (forcedpregnancies and HIV/AIDS); presently rape is being used as a weapon of war. According toGeneral Patrick Cammeert (2008) “It is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be asoldier in modern conflicts”. About 70% casualties in recent conflicts are non combatants– majority of who are women and children. Violence against women during or after armedconflicts has been reported in every international or non international war zone. Rape andother sexual violence are often used in wars to shame and humiliate the enemy, as a rewardto the conquering side and as a means to spread terror and to weaken morale. Duringthe Rwandan genocides of the Hutus and Tutsis, an estimated 50% of the women wereraped. In the former Yugoslavia, more than 20,000 women were raped. In Western Darfur,an estimated 80% of Camp residents are women and children, many of whom have beentargets of gender based violence.Unfortunately, women are often viewed only as helpless victims of violent conflicts, insteadof being seen as change agents whose potentials can be tapped in the peace processes.They are often relegated to an inactive role and their impact in the reconstruction of peace,the rehabilitation of the community and national reconciliation are ignored. For example,at the Arusha peace talks to end the civil war in Burundi, only 2 out of 126 delegates werewomen although women had been the leading voices for peace within their communitiesin the region; there were only five women in leadership positions in the UN mission toKosovo although women had forged the way for groups to cross ethnic barriers and rebuiltfractured relationships; there were no Bosnian women at the 1995 Dayton peace negotiationto end the war in the former Yugoslavia, even though the conflict has affected women in amost devastating way. One of the reasons for this marginalization is that peace and securityhave been perceived by many as the exclusive prerogative of men.There are many reasons why women should be playing an active role in the peace process.Some of them are highlighted below:••Women constitute about half the world’s population; lasting peace cannot be establishedwithout the equal participation of women and men and the inclusion of genderperspectives in both formal and informal peace processes. Any formal or informal peaceprocess that does not involve women is inherently unsustainable.••Women know the cost of violence (having lost husbands, brothers, sons and evendaughters), extremism and exclusion, the cost of destroyed states and economies andthe cost of accumulated conflicts so well that they are also often better equipped thanmen to prevent it.••Women are known to be wagers of wars as combatants in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Namibia,Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Liberia and Algeria.••Women play a significant role in addressing peace and conflict issues – as peacepromoters reaching across warring sides to other women; as peace-builders helpingcombatants and victims readjust to post-conflict normalcy; they serve as negotiators3