ASIA: Power and Culture Bar Women Peace Negotiators in Asia

Patriarchal values in Asian politics and reluctance among mediators to include women have led to poor female representation in peacemaking, said the world's largest privately-owned mediation organization.

“Primarily it seems to be a matter of power and culture – the two being related,” Michael Vatikiotis, Singapore based Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD centre) told the Asian Tribune , on scanty presence of women at the negotiating table.

To remedy it, nearly 40 women who have played key roles related to conflicts in Asia gathered in Kathmandu, Nepal, last week to discuss a mechanism, in a meeting organized by the Geneva based HD Centre headquarters.

“There was discussion at our meeting about the obstacle to women joining the peace table posed by the prevalence of patriarchal values in Asia's political cultures,” Vatikiotis said, following the meeting.

“But there is as well reluctance among mediators to include women, in the belief that a peace process must focus on ending violence, and men the ones doing the fighting.”

However, according to Vatikiotis “this perception is slowly changing, especially when women are also combatants, as in the case of Nepal.”

“But it is changing too slowly and there is a need for mediators and facilitators to be compelled to include women,” he opined.

In 2009, UNIFEM, the UN agency charged with improving women's rights, found that a mere 2.4% of signatories to peace agreements globally since 1992 (21 major peace processes) were women.

And it has been ten years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 urging women to be better represented in peacemaking.

Yet women in Asia and the Pacific are still largely excluded from peace negotiations and the conclusion of peace agreements.

Vatikiotis said that “one practical suggestion” discussed during the meeting is to “have mediators and facilitators coached by external advisory groups and agencies that specialize in gender concerns.”

“Such a gender support unit would ensure that despite the tendency to exclude women, or not consider their involvement especially in early stages of peacemaking, there would be a stronger compulsion to consider the role of women.”

“It appears that something like this worked in the case of Sri Lanka, and more recently in Darfur.”

In 2002, the Subcommittee on Gender Issues (SGI) was set up, during peace negotiations between the Lankan government and the LTTE.

He believes that the HD Centre being “the largest private mediation organization in the world, engaged in more than a dozen conflicts globally can contribute greatly to the design and implementation of new mechanism to promote the role of women in peacemaking.”

“One of the important achievements of this meeting was to move beyond advocacy and the frustration of absence into the realm of practical suggestion and action-oriented thinking,” Vatikiotis said.

“The meeting generated a number of practical proposals to address the poor representation of women in peacemaking. Many of these focused on the importance of building and sustaining an active network to advocate, but also inform and advise those involved in peacemaking.”

He said “there was much discussion, drawing on the example of Nepal, about the importance of women developing greater decision-making power within political parties and not simply being represented.”

In addition to convening meetings like this, the HD Centre will also serve as a platform for implementing suggested ways to include women at the peace table, he added.