Tatjana Sikoska’s scientific contributions

The focus on threats to individuals compels us to also change our focus of the analysis of conflicts and the measures we use to prevent their violent eruptions. The changing conceptual and practical understanding of conflict - to include a variety of causes such as environmental degradation, violation of human rights, and bad governance - and consequently that of conflict prevention, management, and peacekeeping requires a change in perception of actor s and instances of action. As the key issue in conflict becomes how to avoid and/or minimize its violent expression, many have suggested that new partnerships between traditional conflict prevention actors i.e., governments, and new conflict prevention actors i.e., civil society, would provide a more comprehensive and multi-layered framework for handling conflicts in their early stages. Within this new approach to origins of conflict and conflict prevention, the importance of integrating women and gender in conflict and peace themes has risen, particularly after the Fourth World Conference n Women (Beijing, 1995), which called for increased access of women to conflict prevention and resolution2 and raised the consciousness of the international academic and policy-making community about women's role in peace activism and in creating conditions of trust and confidence among conflicting parties.3 Resolution 1325 (2000) of the United Nations Security Council reaffirmed that a gender perspective in conflict and conflict prevention and resolution would include measures that supported women's peace initiatives and indigenous processes for conflict resolution. It also stated that gender-sensitive initiatives should involve women in all the implementation mechanisms of peace agreements, and ensure the human rights of women and girls, particularly those related to constitutions , electoral systems, police and judiciaries. As can be seen from the above, there has been both a shift and an interchangeable use of the terms "women" and "gender" theoretically and in practice in the analysis of conflicts and in prescriptions for their management and resolution. However, the implications of the distinction between "women" and "gender" are more than semantic ones; an analytical framework based on socially-assigned roles and identities to women and men is more useful in its application to given societal problems than the framework based on women alone. Hence, whenever gender is mainly relegated to women and to areas traditionally associated with women such as the household, children and community, the gender difference argument is neglected. As a result gender roles