{"id":9761,"date":"2018-09-03T15:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=9761"},"modified":"2018-09-03T15:00:06","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T13:00:06","slug":"women-make-peace-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2018\/09\/women-make-peace-stick\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Make Peace Stick"},"content":{"rendered":"

FP<\/a>: As the mothers\u2019 van headed deep into Tamil Tiger territory, it was suddenly encircled by young boys in sarongs with automatic weapons. But the five women inside it had sent missives ahead through the Catholic Church, using carefully crafted language to signal their neutrality. Unlike the representatives of the Sri Lankan state, they weren\u2019t perceived as having blood on their hands. The child soldiers escorted them deeper into the jungle, without harming them.<\/p>\n

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Sri Lankan women gather to demand peace talks between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels in Colombo on Dec. 10, 2004. (Sena Vidanagama\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

That was how Visaka Dharmadasa, the mother of a Sri Lankan Army soldier declared missing in action, found herself sitting opposite a local Tamil Tiger commander on the dirt floor of a Christian shrine in northwestern Sri Lanka in December 2000. Together with four other mothers of missing soldiers, Dharmadasa had dared to cross the heavily mined no man\u2019s land between Sri Lankan government-held territory and Tamil Tiger-held territory to search for news of their sons and demand an end to the conflict.<\/p>\n

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Leaning on their identities as mothers to build trust with the hardened commander, himself a young father, the women persuaded him to carry a folder of letters to Suppayya Paramu Thamilselvan, the head of the Tigers\u2019 political wing. The letters were from families who had lost loved ones, and each pleaded for an end to the conflict. By the time the women crossed back into government-held territory five days later, they carried with them a new message\u2014this time from the Tigers to the Sri Lankan government: The Tigers would declare a unilateral cease-fire beginning Dec. 24.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In recent decades, a\u00a0growing body of research\u00a0has shown that when women\u2019s groups are able to meaningfully influence peace processes, the resulting agreements are stronger and more likely to last.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, inclusive peace processes have gained traction internationally. Women made up\u00a0over 30 percent of the negotiators<\/a>\u00a0of the 2016 Colombian peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which was also the first peace process to include a Gender Subcommission. They participated at\u00a0similar rates<\/a>\u00a0in the negotiation of the 2014 peace agreement between the Philippines government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, where they helped push for the inclusion of women\u2019s civil society groups and gender provisions.<\/p>\n

Cease-fires, however, remain the stubborn exception. They are often seen as standalone elements that deal mostly with military technicalities, so mediators may not find the inclusion of women\u2019s groups particularly relevant at this early stage of a peace process. But\u00a0new research<\/a><\/u>\u00a0from Inclusive Security\u00a0reveals<\/a>\u00a0that from\u00a0bringing warring parties to the peace table to defining the terms of the cease-fire and monitoring its implementation,\u00a0women\u2019s groups can help transform these fragile, tenuous agreements into more comprehensive, lasting peace processes.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0of 40 peace processes since the Cold War,\u00a0researchers noted four reoccurring actions, the first being the frequency with which women mobilized to pressure warring parties into reaching a cease-fire. The second was the tendency of women\u2019s groups to pressure parties to remain at the peace table until they reached an agreement. In none of the 40 cases did women\u2019s groups organize against peace; in fact, they mobilized in favor of it more than any other group.<\/p>\n

Women have also expanded the lists of hostilities covered by cease-fires. In\u00a0Burundi<\/a>, mediators consulted a group of civil society representatives\u2014many of whom were women\u2014in parallel to the formal cease-fire talks. The group brought to light violent acts the armed parties had kept silent about, helping the mediators advance a more comprehensive ban on hostilities. In addition to\u00a0troop movements and supplies of ammunitions<\/a><\/u>, the final agreement forbade \u201call acts of violence against the civilian population \u2013 summary executions, torture, harassment, detention and persecution of civilians \u2026 incitement of ethnic hatred, arming of civilians, use of child soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is significant. Cease-fire monitoring and verification missions base their mandates on such lists, meaning they heavily influence what will be counted as a cease-fire violation and what types of dispute mechanisms will be needed to prevent re-escalation. The more holistically cease-fire agreements reflect the realities of citizens, not just those the combatants wish to acknowledge, the harder it becomes for the latter to claim adherence to the agreement as they continue to\u00a0attack, torture, and rape<\/a><\/u>\u00a0members of one another\u2019s communities.<\/p>\n

Most cease-fire agreements also require monitors to consult with local populations. As 21st-century warfare decentralizes, moving away from battlefields and into cities and villages, the truth on the ground locally takes on new urgency. Yet widespread instability makes it difficult for international monitors to access such areas. That\u2019s why in Mindanao, the Philippines, Mary Ann Arnado formed an entirely volunteer civilian monitoring group called Bantay Ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Arnado\u00a0realized<\/a><\/u>\u00a0early on that all-female units would increase the organization\u2019s ability to engage with women and sensitize male counterparts to the different impacts of war on men, women, boys, and girls. Their establishment not only led to a significant increase in reporting, but Gen. Ariel Bernardo, the former chair of the Government Cease-fire Committee, reflected that \u201cour soldiers are now more afraid to commit any violation against civilians because of the women monitors who are constantly watching.\u201d The group\u2019s domestic legitimacy and reliable reporting of violations on all sides quickly won it an invitation to join the official International Monitoring Team.<\/p>\n

But in places like\u00a0South Sudan<\/a>, entirely male, international, military monitoring and verification teams struggled to recruit South Sudanese community liaisons from their perch in Juba. In part because it was particularly dangerous and taboo for South Sudanese women to deploy with a foreign, male force, the teams were left with an entirely military and male perspective that resulted in a heavy focus on military action and a lack of attention to civilian protection and humanitarian concerns. The teams were better equipped to engage with armed actors than with conflict-affected civilians, particularly women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FP: As the mothers\u2019 van headed deep into Tamil Tiger territory, it was suddenly encircled by young boys in sarongs with automatic weapons. But the five women inside it had sent missives ahead through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":9762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,85,43,52,88,12,48,49],"tags":[970,598],"class_list":["post-9761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor-selection","category-human-rights","category-human-rights-online-library","category-international-justice-human-rights-online-library","category-slider","category-transitional-justice-and-peace","category-war-and-peace","category-womens-rights","tag-peace-talks","tag-women","country-world","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9765,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9761\/revisions\/9765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}