The Vital Role of Women in Peace Building Sustainable peace requires the full participation of women at all stages of the peace process—yet they have been largely excluded from formal efforts to develop and implement fresh, workable solutions to seemingly intractable struggles. Their involvement in these mechanisms, which prevent conflict, stop war, and stabilize regions damaged by warfare, is essential.
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Women are community leaders, with formal and informal authority.
Women are often at the center of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), popular protests, electoral referendums, and other citizen-empowering movements whose influence has grown with the global spread of democracy.  Because women frequently outnumber men after conflict, they often drive the on-the-ground implementation of any peace agreement; they therefore have a responsibility to be an integral part of the peace process.
- As the minister of gender and social affairs in Rwanda, Aloisea Inyumba created programs to bury the dead, find homes for more than 300,000 orphaned children, and resettle refugees after the genocide of 1994. She also served as executive secretary of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, which organizes national public debates promoting reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis, and she has been governor of Kigali-Ngali Province.
- Nanda Pok is leading efforts to promote women's participation in the political process as Cambodia struggles to recover from Pol Pot's killing fields. Her organization, Women for Prosperity, has trained more than 5,000 women to hold political office, including 64 percent of the women elected to local commune councils in February 2002.
“After the genocide, women rolled up their sleeves and began making society work again.”
– Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda
Women are adept at bridging ethnic, religious, political, and cultural divides.
Social science research indicates that women generally are more collaborative than men and thus more inclined toward consensus and compromise. Women often use their role as mothers to cut across international borders and internal divides. Every effort to bridge divides, even if initially unsuccessful, teaches lessons and establishes connections to be built on later.
- In several instances during the peace talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, male negotiators walked out of sessions, leaving a small number of women, like Monica McWilliams and other members of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, at the table. These women focused on mutual concerns and shared vision, enabling the dialogue to continue and trust to be rekindled.
- Luz Méndez, sole woman negotiator in talks to end the decades-long civil war in Guatemala, was able to build consensus among representatives of the warring factions, civil society, and the United Nations by creating individualized strategies to engage the different parties around bringing concerns of women into the peace process.
 The final treaties contained unprecedented commitments to gender equity.
“For generations, women have served as peace educators, both in their families and in their societies. They have proved instrumental in building bridges rather than walls.”
– Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Women have their fingers on the pulse of the community.
Living and working close to the roots of conflict, they are well positioned to provide essential information about activities leading up to armed conflict and to record events during war, including gathering evidence at scenes of atrocities. Women can thus play a critical role in mobilizing their communities to begin the process of reconciliation and rebuilding once hostilities end.
- An obstetrician in Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Raja Habib Khuzai saw firsthand the violence perpetrated against her country's citizens. In a time when other doctors fled the country or went into hiding, Khuzai expanded her practice. Following Hussein's overthrow, she opened organizations to assist women and children in the community and was named a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, where she continued her important work.
- In Kosovo, pediatrician Vjosa Dobruna collected evidence from victims at sites of massacres and other atrocities and was targeted by Serb special police as a result. She later became one of only three women appointed
 to the UN's Joint Interim Administrative Structure of Kosovo, as the minister responsible for democracy building and civil society.
“The official political echelons seem to get bogged down in the old historical issues. The women in the community feel that their housing, education, and childcare are the important things.”
– Helen Jackson, Labour Member of Parliament for Sheffield, United Kingdom
Women have access because they are often viewed as less threatening.
Ironically, women's status as second-class citizens is a source of empowerment, having made women adept at finding innovative ways to cope with problems. Because women are not ensconced within the mainstream, those in power consider them less threatening, and allow women to work unimpeded and “below the radar screen.”
- After riding deep into the jungles of Colombia to interview the leaders of that country's armed factions, journalist Maria Cristina Caballero took courageous action to end the violence. With support from the International Red Cross, the National Commission on Conciliation, and the news magazine Cambio, she published “Peace on the Table,” a 60-page document presenting the views of each party in this long-standing conflict—the government, civil society groups, and rebel factions—and highlighting the points of agreement.
- During the violence of the first Intifada in the Middle East, Israeli and Palestinian women like Naomi Chazan and Sumaya Farhat-Naser created Jerusalem Link, an umbrella group of women's centers on both sides of the conflict, to convey to the public a joint vision for a just peace. In a time when both communities forbade cross-community meetings, Jerusalem Link activities were permitted because “it's just a group of women talking.”
- “Women can reconcile more easily. We feel free to go anywhere, meet anyone—maybe because everyone knows we weren't carrying guns; we weren't in the death squads.”
– Alenka Savic, Manager for Mercy Corps
Women are highly invested in preventing, stopping, and recovering from conflict.  Women are motivated to protect their children and ensure security for their families. They watch as their sons and husbands are taken as combatants or prisoners of war; many do not return, leaving women to care for the remaining children and elders. When rape is used as a tactic of war to humiliate the enemy and terrorize the population, they become targets themselves. Despite—or because of—the harsh experiences of so many who survive violent conflict, women generally refuse to give up the pursuit of peace.
- At the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, Ida Kuklina demands military reform based on the establishment of professional military service for soldiers rather than involuntary conscription. This powerful NGO defends soldiers' human rights, confronting judges, generals, and presidents with the deaths of 3,000-5,000 soldiers who perished not because of war, but because of abuse by their commanders and peers during peacetime.
- Visaka Dharmadasa, cofounder of Parents of Servicemen Missing-in-Action, lobbied the government of Sri Lanka to reciprocate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's releasing of soldiers and civilians, resulting in the liberation of 10 LTTE suspects. She created a support network for women from each side of the conflict to share their grievances, stories, and strategies.
“If we'd had women around the table, there would have been no war; women think long and hard before they send their children out to kill other people's children.”
– Haris Silajdzic, former Prime Minister of Bosnia |