The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building
by Elisabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
As Executive Director of UNIFEM I have witnessed the impact of conflict on women in many countries. In the “Valley of Widows” in Colombia, I met women who had lost their husbands and their land – everyone and everything important to them had been destroyed by civil war and drug lords. I have been to Bosnia where women described abduction, rape camps and forced impregnation, and to Rwanda where women had been gang raped and purposely infected with HIV/AIDS. Stories like these were repeated again and again, in different languages, in different surroundings: East Timor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala. Only the horror and the pain were the same. Clearly the nature of war has changed. It is being fought in homes and communities – and on women’s bodies in a battle for resources and in the name of religion and ethnicity. Violence against women is used to break and humiliate women, men, families, communities, no matter which side they are on. Women have become the worst victims of war – and the biggest stakeholders of peace. I was prepared to find bitterness and hatred among the women who had experienced such horrific violence and loss, and pervasive trauma, but in many places I found strength. I met women who had transcended their sorrow and discovered in themselves the courage and will to rebuild their lives and communities. Many believed the only way to stop the cycle of violence was to make security and justice key issues on the agenda for a new, more equitable society. A few years ago in South Africa I lit UNIFEM’s peace torch with African women; it was sent to other conflict areas and then to Beijing to open the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. The women wanted peace, but they also wanted to be shapers of the peace process in their countries, to use their own suffering and transform it into a force that would build a more secure future for humanity. That is the deeper story I want the world to know: that despite what they have experienced, many of the women I met have been able to rise to the challenge of building a sustainable peace, recognizing that the security and satisfaction of one side can never be based on the frustration or humiliation of the other. They were women like those in East Timor who created collectives to provide each other with emotional support as well as employment schemes to keep their families and villages going. They have instituted literacy classes – at the end of the war, 90 per cent of rural women were illiterate – and demanded a role in political elections. In Sudan women from the North and the South took the initiative to come together across ethnic and religious divides to talk about building peace. In Ghana women refugees from Liberia learned construction skills through a UNIFEM-supported programme and built a safer camp for themselves and their families. In Afghanistan women met in secret to organize while the Taliban was in power. They developed maps of streets and neighbourhoods where underground homeschools for girls or medical help or jobs could be found, and shared them at weddings and birthdays. We cannot expect women to do all this alone. Their efforts must be recognized, valued and supported. To build peace and contribute to the rebuilding of their countries, women need resources, skills, authority. Despite the work they have done on the ground, they are not at the peace table when warring factions sit down to negotiate. No one is held accountable for the enormous crimes committed against women. vi Although women are feeding their families and have taken in orphans, there are countries where they cannot inherit property or own land to farm. Their needs and their work are not systematically supported in the programmes developed by international agencies. Their rights are not enshrined in constitutions or protected by legislation. All this must change. Women’s peace-building and reconstruction efforts must be supported, not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because most nations consumed by conflict need the strength of their women. The women are the ones who held their families and communities together during the worst of the fighting, even while on the run from armies. They keep a measure of stability during times of chaos and during displacement. Now, as peace accords are negotiated and countries are rebuilt, those contributions must be recognized. I appointed Elisabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to conduct an independent assessment of women, war and peace so that people throughout the world will know and understand not only what women have suffered but what they have contributed. Many who read this report will already know what has happened to women in Bosnia, East Timor or Afghanistan, but I believe we have not recognized how pervasive violence against women is during conflict and how great the need for protection and assistance. We know a little about women building peace, but we have not yet recognized women as a force for reconstruction. New responses are vital if we want this century to banish the worst brutalities of the previous one. We must invest in the progress of women from waraffected countries. This assessment could only take place because of the support of several people: Louise Fréchette, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations; Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP); Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General, Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO); Kieran Prendergast, Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA); Kenzo Oshima, Emergency Relief Coordinator of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA); Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA); and Carolyn McAskie, Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator of OCHA. Throughout this project the UN system cooperated as one to support the visits of the independent experts and to ensure that the voices of women would be heard. I firmly believe that the authoritative analysis presented here will help create the political will to move forward, to promote the skills, strengths and leadership of women as they work for peace. Noeleen Heyzer Executive Director UNIFEM
