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"Women's Participation in Peace Negotiations: Discourse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Abstract
Background Women play a critical role in peace processes. Yet from Dayton to Colombia, and from East Timor to Pretoria, women have either been absent or grossly underrepre- sented in diplomatic peace negotiations at which peace accords have been signed and the future of countries decided. Formal peace negotiations generally bring together the male leaders of the warring parties who engage in a series of facilitated talks to end conflict and to lay the foundation for the reconstruction of political, legal, economic and social structures. However, the process of reconstructing the nation following an armed conflict requires the equal involvement of men and women. Ensuring women's equal participation in formal negotiations enhances the legitimacy of the process by making it more democratic and responsive to the concerns and perspectives of those segments of society involved in, and affected by, the fighting. This paper concentrates on advocacy by women for gender-balanced representation in diplomatic peace negotiations. The peace processes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) serve as a case study. The DRC - formerly Zaire - covers 2,345,410 square kilometres of central Africa and has a population of 56.6 million (UN estimates, July 2003), 55 percent of which is female. Since gaining independence from Belgium in 1960, the country has been dominated by dictators. President Mobutu Sese Seko took power in 1965 and ruled the then Zaire for 32 years, until Laurent Kabila toppled him in 1997. Opportunities for women have generally been limited. Congolese women have borne the brunt of the economic decline. They are underrepresented in the formal workforce, especially in higher-level posi- tions, and generally earn less than their male counter- parts in the same jobs. The war in Congo broke out in 1998 when neigh- bouring Rwanda and Uganda backed Congolese rebels trying to overthrow Kabila, accusing him of harbouring armed militias that threatened their own security. Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe stepped in on the side of the government. Despite continued fighting in some regions of the country, the war officially ended with the signature of the December 2002 Pretoria Agreement. The DRC conflict was characterized by internal and external actors fighting for control of territory, especial- ly areas rich in natural resources, including cobalt, coltan, diamonds and gold. An estimated three million people have died because of the war, most of them from war-induced famine and disease.
... This is despite the fact that the number of Congolese who have died as a result of the war in was estimated in 2007 at over 5 million: if the monthly death toll is extrapolated to the present, that number would be over 7 million. 10 A large proportion of those dead are not combatants, but civilians who were unable to access food, water, or basic healthcare on account of the conflict, so it is difficult to gauge the precise number of those deaths that would not have happened had there been no conflict. Nonetheless, these estimates put the number of causalities resulting from the conflict in the DRC at more than ten times the total number of casualties in the American Civil War. ...
... When intervention escalates to a military capacity, we also have to weigh the possible human cost of the interventionist troops. In view of these questions, it is the position of this thesis that the 10 Benjamin Coghlan et al., Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis, International Rescue Committee, no. 2007, 3. extended conflict in the DRC is a crisis of epic proportions, and that the world bears a social obligation to contribute to the peace process there. ...
... It is estimated that as many as 10 million Congolese died while the country was under the control of Leopold and in the decade following. 10 It is a testament to the complete brutality and inhumanity of Leopold's rule that one could suggest that the Congolese people were better off under colonial rule. Not surprisingly though, the legacy which Congo was to inherit from Belgium's rule was also grim. ...
... Congolese women, drawing on the international gender related instruments, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Platform of Action and UN Security Council Resolution 1325, had from 1998 actively campaigned to be part of peace processes. In February 2002 they developed the Nairobi Declaration calling for women and gender related issues to be included in the peace process and for a 30 per cent quota for women in any new political dispensation (Mpoumou 2004). Women had been excluded from the Lusaka talks and only 40 of the 340 delegates (11 per cent) at Sun City 1 negotiations were women, and similarly only 10 of the delegates at Sun City 2 were women (Mpoumou 2004). ...
... In February 2002 they developed the Nairobi Declaration calling for women and gender related issues to be included in the peace process and for a 30 per cent quota for women in any new political dispensation (Mpoumou 2004). Women had been excluded from the Lusaka talks and only 40 of the 340 delegates (11 per cent) at Sun City 1 negotiations were women, and similarly only 10 of the delegates at Sun City 2 were women (Mpoumou 2004). UNIFEM had sponsored another 40 women to act as independent 'experts' at Sun City 1 and the ANC Women's League and South African Women in Dialogue (SAWID) played a key role in exchanging their experiences with women from the DRC, as they had done in Burundi, and in providing them with logistical support and in assisting them to get their concerns read at the dialogue. ...
This article is a critical reflection of South Africa's approach to conflictmanagement in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.These are countries in which South Africa has been extensively involved and which now serve as models for conflict management across the continent. The article highlights that though these interventions are often viewed as success stories South Africa's approach falls short of its intended objective of promoting human security. The article contends that South Africa's narrow focus on the state and war elites leaves key conflict generating issues unresolved and reinforces militarised authoritarian state structures. It has therefore paid lip service to creating more inclusive conflict management processes. South Africa has largely failed.to pioneer new ways of managing conflict that could lead to safer, resilient and prosperous societies.
... Female delegates relied on this expert group for advice and consultation, and women from both groups formed a women's caucus as an informal mechanism to ensure that gender equality issues were addressed at the Inter Congolese Dialogue (Wijeyaratne 2009). The peace agreement text reflected some of the priorities of the Congolese women active in the peace process, and the transitional constitution recognized the need for women's political participation (Mpoumou 2004). ...
There is an emerging consensus that women’s participation in peace negotiations contributes to the quality and durability of peace after civil war. However, to date, this proposition has remained empirically untested. Moreover, how women’s participation may contribute to durable peace has not been systematically explored. This article uses a mixed method design to examine this proposition. Our statistical analysis demonstrates a robust correlation between peace agreements signed by female delegates and durable peace. We further find that agreements signed by women show a significantly higher number of peace agreement provisions aimed at political reform, and higher implementation rates for provisions. We argue that linkages between women signatories and women civil society groups explain the observed positive impact of women’s direct participation in peace negotiations. Collaboration and knowledge building among diverse women groups contributes to better content of peace agreements and higher implementation rates of agreement provisions. We substantiate this argument with qualitative case study evidence and demonstrate how collaboration between female delegates and women civil society groups positively impacts peace processes. Our findings support the assumption that women’s participation in peace negotiations increases the durability and the quality of peace.
... UN Women (and formerly its predecessor UNIFEM) also advocates a strong role for women in conflict prevention and conflict resolution strategies and programs. 130 Research indicates that women's experiences and insight are of particular value in early-warning monitoring. 131 A gender-sensitive approach to early warning and conflict monitoring has the potential to further aid watch lists and monitoring programs to prevent mass atrocities. ...
There has been a significant rise in the share of women legislators in Africa. What makes this fact puzzling is that it cannot be attributed to an African electorate that values gender equality and having women in political leadership positions. In stark contrast to this, gender equality and women’s empowerment have successively moved up in the priority list of the international donor community over the last two decades. This raises the question of whether there is a relationship between women legislators in Africa and foreign-aid allocations. This study finds a strong and statistically robust relationship: an increase in the share of women legislators from 15 to 20 percent is associated with an increase of about 4 percent in aid conditional on current levels of aid. Additionally, the study finds that democratic countries receive more aid but does not find an interaction effect between democracy and the share of women legislators, which suggests that donors do not tailor their gender-selective aid towards more democratic countries. The results provide evidence in support of aid selectivity for policies that improve gender equality in aid-recipient countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
United Nations Resolution 1325 asks all participants of peace talks to take on a gender perspective during negotiations. Consequently, the overall proportion of women participating in peace negotiations has increased; with this increase, more gender-specific topics are placed on the agenda of peace talks. However, because women are often invited to the negotiation table for window-dressing purposes only, the question arises: how do women at the negotiation table influence the scope and specificity of peace agreements regarding gender provisions? We argue that to influence peace agreements regarding gender provisions, delegates need to have the willingness and the opportunity to push for their inclusion. In our theoretical argument, we identify different factors through which female delegates have the opportunity to do so. Analyzing the peace processes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Philippines, South Sudan, and Nepal we find that a combination of factors at and aside the negotiation table allows women to influence peace talks regarding the inclusion and specificity of gender provisions in peace agreements. Our findings imply that women need to have the opportunity to influence the talks; their sole presence does not suffice for the implementation of Resolution 1325.
This article examines why the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has been so challenging to implement and argues that the political economy of war and peace, driven by a complex network of power, is a deterrent to sustainable and gender-just peace. However, peace initiatives are not a zero-sum game. They are dialectical, offering possibilities for both regressive and transformative change. Although inclusion of women and gender concerns in current peace processes lags behind expectations, the WPS agenda has been instrumental in changing the negotiation landscape and empowering women beyond the peace table. It has also exposed the need for a paradigm shift in the understanding of peace and security that effectively responds to power asymmetries and the neo-liberal environment that shapes policy and practice. Given their marginalised positioning vis-à-vis hegemonic power structures, women stand to contribute towards this end.
Women play a prominent role in bringing about peace in post-conflict societies. Several studies have found the systematic and representative inclusion of women in conflict resolution processes to significantly increase the chances of sustainable peace. However, women’s contribution to peace processes are often underemphasized or ignored in conflict management research and praxis. It was not until the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and seven other related resolutions that critical attention was given to women’s role in the peace process. This article provides an in-depth review of the literature on women’s contribution to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The overall aim is to provide researchers and actors in the global peace market with a distillation of the salient studies and findings from research on women’s involvement in the peace process. Such an effort is necessary to bring together the sparse literature on women’s contribution to peace and to reveal existing gaps in the literature for future research.
Hacia el año 2011, siete países de la región del África Subsahariana, superaron la representación femenina 1-3 en sus cámaras legislativas, a diferencia de las democracias que, exceptuando a Sudáfrica, no alcanzaron valores semejantes. Por el contrario, las dictaduras o semi-autoritarismos se encuentran ubicados en las primeras posiciones, registrando, en cortos periodos de tiempo, aumentos significativos de la representación femenina en sus legislativos. ¿Por qué, con la excepción de Sudáfrica, todos los países del África Subsahariana que tienen una presencia de mujeres en sus cámaras superior al 30% son países no-libres o parcialmente-libres? ¿Existe alguna relación entre el tipo de régimen político de estos países y la presencia de las mujeres en los legislativos y ejecutivos?Esta investigación forma parte de un capítulo de una tesis doctoral sobre administración pública, desarrollo y régimen político en países africanos que da cuenta del funcionamiento de las principales instituciones políticas de cada uno de estos países, considerando el control que ejercen ante el poder de la burocracia y su aporte al desarrollo político a partir del fortalecimiento institucional. El presente trabajo sobre representación política de las mujeres y régimen político se justifica por la presencia de discriminaciones por cuestiones de género en estas sociedades, que resultan en la exclusión de sectores de la población del poder político, afectando negativamente el proceso de consolidación democrática.
The subject of women and peacebuilding is arguably an area of research, which prior to the 21 st century remained undeveloped and unexplored in the field of conflict and peace and in the practice of peacebuilding. This development signaled a new attentiveness on the importance of women's roles as indispensable stakeholders in peacebuilding processes. However, pre-contemporary consciousness, women did leverage standard decision-making prowess that served diverse political, socioeconomic , and security goals. Through a review of relevant literature and purposive unstructured interviews in Liberia, this paper examines the changing landscape of women's peacebuilding roles using examples from cross-cultural African experiences. The paper asserts that before the internationalization of women's role in the affairs of peacebuilding, women were already subconsciously or consciously involved in such decision-making processes, especially under the aegis of women organizations. Likewise, it contends that patriarchy and marginalization of women was quite in existence and these challenges which are unquestionably in continuity in the contemporary impede women's peacebuilding efforts. From these, this paper contributes to the evolving literature on women and peacebuilding discourses.
This paper examines actions and narratives of war rape survivors of the Second Congo War. The Second Congo War, which officially began in 1998, is an enduring armed struggle that involves more than fighting for mineral resources. It also involves massive attacks against women (i.e. by engaging in the systematic rape of women). The theoretical framework used in this analysis is symbolic convergence theory (SCT). Coined by Bormann [19725.
Bormann, E. G. 1972. “Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (4): 396–407. doi: 10.1080/00335637209383138[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®]View all references. “Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 58: 396–407], SCT postulates that group consciousness is achieved when a group shares emotions, experiences, and stories. SCT regards group cohesion as a result of rhetorical visions by delivering a collective objective through fantasy themes, fantasy types, symbolic cues, and sagas. An important conclusion of this analysis is that, through various forms of symbolic convergence and fantasies, Congolese women are able to cope with the reality of war rape and ‘navigate’ (in the best way they can) in today's society. In other words, SCT helps to explain how rape survivors find ways to mitigate their own suffering.
In the last fifteen years peacebuilding and gender sensitive approaches have been promoted in order to restore some form of stability in places emerging from conflicts. Recent literature on armed conflicts, women and peacebuilding claims that the international community has still not given sufficient attention to the means by which women's participation could be enhanced, but the recent introduction of gender quotas system in many post-conflict countries, seems to succeed in elevating political representation of women. Saharawi refugee women, during the latest parliamentarian election in February 2008, increased their representation to over 30%. The introduction of women quotas at province level was the base for this success.
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