Women, Peace and Security E-News May 2017

From Wallpaper to Centre Stage: Women’s Meaningful Participation as a Key to Reclaiming the UN as a Peace Organisation

By WILPF Women, Peace and Security Programme Director Abigail Ruane

Participants of the WILPF’s Geneva Convening. (Photo: Irina Popa)

A few weeks ago, a fierce advocate for women rape survivors with an unshakable commitment to peace and justice made a call to action at the UN in Geneva.  “At the Security Council, I have spoken, and everybody clapped,” she reflected. “But then it doesn’t go anywhere. We are not there to be a wallpaper! We are there to be listened to, and to find common solutions.”

This was just one of the comments that stood out at WILPF’s 26-28 April convening aimed at reclaiming the UN as a peace organisation through ensuring women’s meaningful participation. At this three-day meeting, over 150 leading women’s rights and peace activists from around the world – including Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo – came together to build a vision and strategy for what women’s meaningful participation at the UN looks like. We developed a shared vision and built strategies on how to work together to put local women’s voices at the forefront in sustaining feminist peace.

Discussions were timely, incisive and brutally honest. Together, we affirmed that meaningful participation requires more than an access. Instead, it requires a power shift to re-centre work on equality, development, security and peace around the voices and rights of women and those most marginalised. It requires that local women speak for themselves (rather than being spoken for) in a way that addresses root causes of violence for justice and human rights, including women’s rights, with impact.

Our exchange of experiences showed that the UN has done its best when it facilitates more and does less, as recommended by the 2015 HIPPO report. For example, in Colombia, UN Women has prioritised strengthening existing women human rights defenders and peace activist work. Women’s meaningful participation has contributed to Colombia reaching a peace agreement, and will continue to be critical for long term success.

We also learned from environmental advocates about how to build spaces and mechanisms to advance meaningful participation. The Major Group system that facilitated civil society engagement with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) process is rooted in principles of procedural justice from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (Principle 10) and provides one good practice mechanism. Today in Asia and elsewhere, civil society is translating this at regional and national levels to combat shrinking spaces and retain platforms for democratic engagement, sustainable development and peace.

All of us have a role to play in re-centring work around local women’s voices for peace. INGOs should evaluate our facilitation role with partners, and should take action to ensure partner engagement at the UN works for them, whether through donor meetings, media visibility or otherwise. Governments should evaluate their role of respecting, protecting, and fulfilling human rights, and should take action to prevent harm of women human rights defenders by counter-terrorism financing or other “security” measures, while also strengthening core, on-going, sustained support for women human rights defenders, and investing in social institutions to support women’s social and economic rights rather than war. Donors should fund women’s political and movement building work and ensure women are at donor conferences. The UN should direct and build accountability for country teams to strengthen women civil society movements and work for local change.

As the new UN Secretary General António Guterres re-examines the relevance of the UN in today’s climate of rising nationalism and xenophobia and fears of being left behind, he should look to feminist peace and disarmament activists. Realising the UN’s mandate to prevent war requires moving from treating local women peace-builders and rights defenders as wallpaper to putting them centre stage.

We can no longer be risk averse: we must be bold.

As, Madeleine Rees, Secretary-General of WILPF, stated: “All of us have an interest in making the UN a peace organisation.”