Sudan, Congo, & Uganda – Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuilding
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: June 26, 2006
Click here to view the full report as a PDF file in A4 format. For more information about viewing PDF documents, please click here. This document is also available in MS-Word format |
|
Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuilding in Sudan, Congo
and Uganda
Africa Report N°112
28 June 2006
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Peacebuilding cannot succeed if half the population is excluded
from the process. Crisis Group’s research in Sudan, Congo (DRC) and Uganda
suggests that peace agreements, post-conflict reconstruction, and governance do
better when women are involved. Women make a difference, in part because they
adopt a more inclusive approach toward security and address key social and
economic issues that would otherwise be ignored. But in all three countries, as
different as each is, they remain marginalised in formal processes and
under-represented in the security sector as a whole. Governments and the
international community must do much more to support women peace activists.
The scale of discrimination and violence against women in each
armed conflict – and the impunity with which it continues to be committed –
remain the central obstacles to expanding the good work being done by women
peacebuilders. The international community speaks a great deal about including
women in formal peace-making processes and recognising their peacebuilding
contributions but fails to do so in a systematic, meaningful way. Advances have
been made in understanding the links between gender, development, human rights,
peace, security and justice. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000
reaffirmed the role of women in preventing and resolving conflicts and mandates
UN member states to take steps to increase women’s participation in
decision-making. However, endemic discrimination and sexual violence are
significant barriers to achieving Resolution 1325’s goal of inclusivity.
The stereotype of “women as only victims” should not be
reinforced. An array of women’s organisations and women leaders are doing
remarkable work in each of the three countries, under difficult circumstances.
The daily struggle for survival greatly limits the numbers who have become peace
activists but their potential is significant. Because those who are courageous
and capable enough to involve themselves as catalysts in peacebuilding are an
endangered minority, they should be safeguarded and strengthened with funding,
training and inclusion in assessment missions and other decision-making
mechanisms that shape fundamental questions of security.
Properly supported, women’s peace movements can affect large
sectors of the population and be a powerful force for reducing violence and
building democratic and participatory public institutions, particularly in the
post-conflict period. Their organisations should be identified at the outset of
peacemaking processes and helped to work within broader peace initiatives and to
communicate their messages to both national leaders and the international
community.
The role of Sudanese women varies by region. Though women
contribute prominently to peacebuilding through civil society, they were largely
excluded from both the North-South and Darfur peace negotiations. Two pressing
issues for women peace activists are the return of refugees and the internally
displaced, and increasing women’s capacity to enter the democratisation
processes set in motion this past year. Neither the 2005 Comprehensive Peace
Agreement nor the May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement provide guarantees for women’s
participation in the implementation processes. Women are under-represented at
national and local levels, and even stated commitments to their participation in
formal government structures have not been fulfilled.
Congolese women have registered and voted in impressive numbers
and secured commitments on paper for greater roles in governance. However, in
practice they remain badly under-represented and violence against them, often
rape, is widespread and committed with impunity. Without greater political
representation and more robust efforts to deal with the flood of weapons and
militias that make the East highly unstable, women will continue to suffer
disproportionately from the impacts of this conflict, and their potential as
peacebuilders will not be fully achieved.
Though the situation is far from ideal, Uganda has by far the
most advanced, articulate and organised women’s peace movement of the three
countries – one whose basic principles can be replicated. The model that has
evolved there relies on autonomy, including to some extent in funding, which
makes its organisations both more independent and sustainable. It relies on
networking to share common experiences among disparate regions and offer
practical training for conflict resolution and trauma counselling both within
families and in wider community and inter-community disputes – an approach with
a proven success rate in reducing violence. With careful consultation, a
commitment to learn lessons and a strong budgetary mechanism, and if leadership
remains with the women who have created it, it could serve as the basis for a
women’s regional peace initiative.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Sudanese Government of National
Unity and the Government of South Sudan:
1. Fulfil stated commitments to women’s
participation in all formal government structures.
2. Ensure at least 25 per cent women’s
participation in implementation of all phases of the Darfur Peace Agreement,
including the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation, aiming for targets
similar to those set in Southern Sudan.
3. Extend land ownership to women and
include women in all resource-sharing discussions, including those governing
land and oil.
4. Establish a fund within the
Multi-Donor Trust Fund to train women to participate in the security sector and
government, and include women’s organisations in the Fund’s management and
disbursement of monies.
5. Develop and implement a comprehensive
strategy to prepare women for political roles as the country moves toward
elections.
6. Stop the support that still goes from
within the National Congress Party and the army to the Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA) in Uganda; act with the Ugandan government to protect female abductees who
escape the LRA and are detained by the Sudanese army and give them appropriate
protection as mandated by the Geneva Convention.
7. Amend the Voluntary and Humanitarian
Work Act (2006) to conform to international law, including the UN Declaration on
Human Rights Defenders (1998).
8. Educate police and medical personnel
to handle rape cases correctly and implement the Amended Circular (2005), which
allows women to seek medical care without first filing Criminal Form Eight.
9. Ensure that disarmament and
demobilisation programs cover women who will be left behind when the army
deploys north, and when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) deploys south
pursuant to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
To the Government of
Congo:
10. Establish commissions to apply and
monitor measures related to women in the new constitution, especially Article 15
on the elimination of sexual violence, and promote equal opportunities for
women.
11. Include promotion of women’s rights in
the job description of all ministers, not only the ministry for women and the
family.
12. Strengthen the justice system by
promoting reforms to end impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence, give
legal aid to victims and establish special police and prosecutorial units to
investigate sexual crimes.
To the Government of
Uganda:
13. Immediately enact and provide funding
for laws related to domestic relations, sexual offences, succession and domestic
violence to protect the rights of women and children in the family and educate
the population about those laws.
14. Support Betty Bigombe’s efforts to
mediate the conflict with the LRA, work with Sudanese authorities to assist
abducted girls and women who escape the LRA in southern Sudan and develop a
strategy for cooperation with the Congolese government to eliminate LRA bases in
eastern Congo.
15. Support communities to implement
healing and reconciliation processes in conflict areas and build the capacity of
female and male leaders to manage traumatised returnees, as stated in Article 9
of the Amnesty Act (2000); complement that law by strengthening the
demobilisation and reintegration process, including by protecting returnees and
giving the full resettlement packages promised.
To the Governments of all Three
Countries and Other Members of the International Community:
On Human
Security
16. Consult with local women to design,
implement and monitor budgets, policies and programs to enhance the
effectiveness of state spending to promote women’s rights.
17. Make education and training accessible
to women and girls living in unstable environments and offer women training in
leadership, management, finance, land tenure, communication, peace and security
to promote their entry into state institutions, particularly those in charge of
security.
18. End impunity for sexual violence and
exploitation, whether by husbands, family members, officials, or military or
police personnel, and establish special police and prosecutor units that include
women, trained to investigate and help prosecute crimes of sexual and domestic
violence.
On Demobilisation, Disarmament and
Reintegration (DDR) and Small Arms
19. Ensure that DDR programs take into
account the different needs of female and male ex-combatants, combatant
associates and dependents by including women on demobilisation design
committees, and empower women to lobby and assist in reintegration efforts by
providing them with access to resources and training.
On Security Sector and Judicial
Reform and Justice
20. Implement laws to end impunity for
rape and sexual assault by punishing perpetrators and facilitating survivors’
access to timely and appropriate judicial support and redress, and encourage the
International Criminal Court, when investigating war crimes and crimes against
humanity in Sudan, Congo and Uganda, to prosecute gender-based violence, which
has been ruled a crime against humanity.
21. Open police and military recruitment
to women, ensure parity in all training, including weapons handling, and
institute recruitment and training programs and policies, including quota
systems, to promote women police and army officers into senior positions.
22. Establish cooperative forums for
police and women peacemakers, particularly in rural areas where police services
rarely exist, and in camps for internally displaced persons; train women peace
activists to record and report on crimes such as domestic violence, rape,
illicit weapons and other security-related issues; and protect women informants,
witnesses and survivors from harassment, intimidation and violence.
On Reproductive Health
Care
23. Support government health institutions
to provide healthcare for women in conflict and high-violence zones and to offer
free treatment in cases of sexual violence.
24. Combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, which
is exacerbated by armed conflict, by offering voluntary counselling, testing and
anti-retroviral treatment; prioritise health education and counselling on sexual
violence to help overcome the stigmatisation, exclusion and abandonment of rape
survivors, especially those who are HIV positive.
On Regional and Cross-Border
Security
25. Facilitate women’s participation in
regional and cross-border peacebuilding forums, such as the Amani Forum in the
Great Lakes region, especially with regard to LRA incursions; assist
community-based organisations working to return women abducted across borders
and coordinate these efforts with the UN peacekeeping missions in Sudan and
Congo and Betty Bigombe’s mediation efforts in Uganda.
On Legal Rights
26. Ensure the primacy of laws that honour
and protect women’s rights over customary law and other traditional practices
and guarantee the enforcement of those laws; include men in discussions on
promoting women’s rights.
Nairobi/Brussels, 28 June
2006
================================================================
To
leave the list, send your request by email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.
Categories: Releases