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February 10, 2005
New Research on Women’s Contribution to the Peace Process
On February 9, 2005, the Fletcher School along with the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights hosted Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini who discussed “New Research on Women’s Contribution to the Peace Process.” Stemming from Security Council Resolution 1325, which mandates the urgent need to mainstream gender perspectives into the peacekeeping debate, Naraghi-Anderlini was selected to lead the charge in assessing and collecting data on the effect of women and their tacit contributions to forging peace processes.
The mandate, however, proved stubbornly challenging as the critical mass necessary for solid quantitative analysis was very eluding. How does one exactly qualify or measure the efforts of millions of women as they prepare meals, clean sleeping quarters or provide the family network structure for returning soldiers of war? How does one view the issue of women’s agency, whether through the lens of victim or survivor? Without such grounding, the many contributions of women throughout the peace making process are left unnoticed and remain outside the ambit of policy analysis, and more importantly, outside the arena of policy prescription.
Naraghi-Anderlini proposed three challenges in assessing the contributions of women to the peace process. Firstly, the historical view of women in war as victims was impeding the proper policy considerations. While acknowledging the tragedy of loss suffered by the woman of war and peace, these very women were not passive in the aftermath of violence, but rather, they served as active participants in their community’s restoration. Thus, the incorrect moniker hindered a proper restoration of dignity and their actual potential for positive change. Secondly, as women are active participants in the forging of peace, the exact location of such contributions needed to be located and quantified. Through the utilization of case studies, Naraghi-Anderlini has created a “toolkit” which documents and addresses the practical implementation of monitoring women’s contributions and their effects. Lastly, the main challenge rested in the appropriate ability to categorize or name the contributions in order to arrange the information in such a way as to be analyzed and utilized by policy makers. The difficulty in attempting to harness the exact contributions of women called for Naraghi-Anderlini to follow the rubric of normative peace processes, thereby highlighting the contributions of women to the implementation of such normative processes. The work remains beneath the radar of the normative peace process, whereby Naraghi-Anderlini‘s work attempts to shine light on the much needed preparation that is vital for such peace processes to follow.
Naraghi -Anderlini‘s findings prove that women’s agency, while silent, exist in every facet of peace building and peace making. Naraghi-Anderlini states “Because of the way the international community thinks of ‘combatant,’” women are not included in the very definition of the term soldier of war. “[We need to] make sure women are thought of in the process.” How can women be excluded from the very definition of “combatant” when, “Women were the sex slaves, cooks, [and doing the] cleaning?” Naraghi-Anderlini states, “A thirteen year old year was abducted and raped, and in that condition, is still talking about how I ran the camp. ‘This is what I did. I did such and such.’ They wanted to talk about what they wanted to do. . . The focus on the men is not the right approach, because men are being fed and looked after by the women in the camp. So if you go after the girls, then you are pulling the carpet out from under the camp.”
When asked by a student as to the next step in the gender mainstreaming process, Naraghi-Anderlini responded that there needs to be more critical mass in information pertaining to women’s efforts to peace building, along with a more thematic or regional taxonomy of the data in order to better metamorphize the data for policy use. Furthermore, the term “gender studies” needs to truly encompass its full meaning and also include the study of men’s efforts to the peace process and their affects in relation to women. In other words, there needs to be critical study as to the role of men on issues of violence. As stated by Naraghi-Anderlini, “We’re not talking gender, we’re talking [only] women.”
Naraghi-Anderlini holds a Masters degree in social anthropology from Cambridge University. Born in Iran, Naraghi-Anderlini is the director of the policy commission of the non-profit Women Waging Peace.
Article by Susan Shin
Posted by jessica at February 10, 2005 12:39 PM
