The Security Council has agreed that we need to focus more attention on the l...

The Security Council has agreed that we need to focus more attention on the linkages between peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Ensuring the engagement of the local female population is one obvious such link: empowered women both make peace and build it. And incidentally, this is not a new insight — very far from it. The playwright Aristophanes dramatized it for war-weary Athenians in his comic play Lysistrata nearly 2,500 years ago. Women have a pivotal role to play. Although often survivors of some of the worst effects of conflict, women are usually relied upon to form the foundation of a post-conflict society. They frequently perform this role with neither say over the peace process nor voice in any post-conflict planning.