Southern Africa: Peace-building, protocols and policy: Women and conflict

This year’s 16 Days of Activism campaign focuses on women and conflict, a timely theme considering we are also reviewing 10 years since the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1325.

This resolution linked violence against women during conflict and their marginalisation during peace processes with the challenges of maintaining international peace and security.

In the Southern African Development Community (SADC), this review takes place when many countries in the region have recently emerged from conflict and are in the process of peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction.

The last few decades have seen important shifts in the discourse about women and conflict. Firstly, war and conflict are seen as expressions of deeply gendered long-term dynamics that precede the outbreak of conflict, escalate dramatically during conflict, and persist long after peace. This echoes feminist theory around gender-based violence as the expression of unequal gender dynamics that are far more pervasive than the specific instances of violence. It therefore seeks to address the differential experiences of conflict across groups and genders.

A second shift in the discourse has been about the role of women. We have moved from a situation where war was seen as ‘men’s business’, towards an acknowledgement that conflict has a huge impact on women. The struggles for gender mainstreaming resulted in the role of women increasingly being seen as complex, and that they in fact may be victims, perpetrators, survivors, leaders and participants. Thus, UN resolution 1325 calls for the participation of women in all peacemaking, conflict resolution and peace building as critical to international and national peace and human security.

The discourse has also been informed by struggles against gender-based violence, the acknowledgement that it is rooted in patriarchal relations and impacts at societal, community and individual level. Finally, the women’s movement throughout the twentieth century had a critical role in the peace and disarmament movement, and through their participation in these movements drew attention to gender-based violence.

These shifts in discourse make for a complex understanding of women and conflict, and for more nuanced policy approaches. The literature on women’s roles in conflict therefore lists not less than seven ‘roles’ of women in conflicts: as combatants; victims of (sexual) and other forms of violence; peace activists; participants in ‘formal peace politics’; coping and surviving actors; head of households; and as part of the labour force.

The Southern African region, given its history of colonialism, is no stranger to conflicts and wars. Virtually every country saw a protracted conflict, which intensified during the twentieth century with the growth of national liberation and anti-colonial movements. Whilst colonialism was characterised by systematic violence against indigenous populations, the oppressed populations resisted and in many instances embarked on armed struggles. Most SADC countries won formal independence during the 1960s, followed by Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe during the 70s and 80s and finally Namibia and South Africa in the early 1990s.

Mozambique and Angola shortly after their independence were afflicted by civil wars, which lasted into the 1990’s. In terms of more recent conflicts, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been engulfed in conflicts and war since the fall of Mobutu; Zimbabwe has experienced severe political instability since the early 1990s; so has Swaziland and more recently Madagascar following the disputed elections of 2002 and even more recent coup attempts. There are thus currently four countries experiencing some form of conflict, which means that the nature of challenges facing women differs across the region, with implications for policy.

The struggle for gender equality has been an integrated part of progressive struggles in the region. Following the conclusion of the independence process, the focus on gender equality gained prominence in SADC. After a protracted period of advocacy, SADC adopted the SADC Gender and Development Protocol in August 2008. It allows for concrete, time-bound and legally-binding actions that speed up efforts to achieve gender equality, including many of the issues affecting women in either conflict or post-conflict situations. The general policy approaches include the transformation of unequal gender relations, improving representation and participation of women in political life, transforming security forces and peacekeeping operations to include women and addressing gender-based violence in conflict and non-conflict situations.

Resolution 1325 also commits member states to involve women in all aspects of peace-building at national, regional and international levels and to the inclusion of women in peace-keeping operations and military structures.

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) calls wartime sexual violence ‘one of history’s great silences,’ noting that the focus on sexual violence coincided with the greater impact of armed conflicts on civilian populations during the 1990’s. In our region, it is believed that since 1998 more than 200,000 girls and women were raped during the conflicts in the DRC. There is now an acknowledgement by the UN Security Council that armed actors used sexual violence systematically as a tactic of warfare.

The shift in focus from silence to the recognition of the complexities of women in conflict situations is an important process to deal with the underlying gender dimensions of conflict and wars. The emerging policy approaches are therefore wide-ranging. Thus the regional and international protocols not only provide tools to hold public authorities accountable, and for mobilisation of broader society, but also for monitoring progress.

As we mobilise for the 2010 16 Days of Activism we must ensure reflection and action, but also celebration of the progress we’ve made in the region.

* Fébé Potgieter-Gqubule is member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC (South Africa) and a former South African ambassador to Poland. This article is part of a special series on the 16 Days of Activism for the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service that offers fresh views on everyday news. For more information on the 16 Days Campaign go to www.genderlinks.org.za