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by Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Women experience wars differently to men, yet they are often left out when peace agreements are being drawn up, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The interview came on the eve of an open UN Security Council meeting Tuesday to mark the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the council's resolution 1325, which recognized the role of women in peace-building processes.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said that the impact of crimes against women during war and conflict, such as rape and abduction have only recently been recognized and understood.
"Right now, there just isn't enough prosecution of such crimes," she said. "We are yet to see sustained effective and adequate prosecution that is in a way proportional to the number of crimes that are being committed."
Violent extremists used women as part of their doctrine of war, abducting them and even buying and selling them as commodities to help fund conflicts, she said.
"Violent extremism which is on the rise is the biggest new way of torturing and tormenting women," she said.
She said that the trauma of sexual violence, trafficking and abduction was extremely difficult for women to overcome, because the harm it caused was more complex than physical trauma.
"This kind of trauma is not like the physical trauma that can heal easily, it is an internal trauma, it is sustained, and the way of healing that is required for women is much more complex," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
Women often experience the additional trauma of stigma -- being shunned or shamed by their communities -- because of what happened to them at the hands of violent extremists.
Women can also be unfairly affected when they flee war, because they cannot pass their nationality to their children, said Mlambo-Ngcuka.
"In many countries there's also a law that forbids women also to confer nationality to their children -- so if they are in a transit country or they have to run away or they are displaced in a secondary country, there's a crisis about what nationality will their children be," said Mlambo-Ngcuka.
WOMEN CONTRIBUTE TO LASTING PEACE
Fifteen years ago, the 15-nation Security Council adopted a resolution calling for women's increased participation in peace talks.
Since then there have remained only a handful of peace agreements that have truly involved women -- by including them as participants in the peace process and considering how the agreement will affect women differently. These outliers include Colombia, Liberia, and the Philippines, according to Mlambo-Ngcuka.
A new global study meant to mark the anniversary of the resolution was published this week. It found that when women were invited to participate in negotiations, the resulting peace was much more likely to last.
The report noted that according to one study, between 1990 and 2011 only 9 percent of peace negotiators were women. The report also found that only 27 percent of peace agreements since the year 2000 included any reference to women, an improvement on the previous figure of 11 percent between 1990 and 2000.
In other countries, women have helped prevent local conflicts spurring more widespread conflict, or have been active participants in the post-conflict recovery of their country, said Mlambo-Ngcuka.
For example, in Rwanda, women's participation in politics has helped the country achieve post-conflict development and stability.
"Rwanda is ... one of the countries with the worst conflict that we've ever thought of, but now it has also emerged as a country that has got the highest representation of women in the world, surprising some people," she said.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said one of the reasons women help improve the peace process is because they are less likely to represent the interests of the people who are fighting each other, and more likely to represent the broader interests of the communities effected by conflict.
"In most, if not all cases, women would not come in as representing the two sides that have been fighting -- in many cases women come as the people that come for reconciliation, without any grudges with one side," she said. "Even if (women) come in for the different sides as delegates of those delegations they are much more focused on ending the conflict, on the delivery of humanitarian services and on issues of reconstruction, on sending children back to school and getting a normal life again."
"So (women) tend to have that as the biggest agenda -- rather than who's going to win and who's going to lose in the peace negotiations -- they want an agreement to be a win-win," said Mlambo-Ngcuka.
GENDER EQUALITY PREVENTS VIOLENCE
Ensuring women and girls get equal access to development opportunities during peace time helps prevent the spread of war and violence.
"In many cases when women's quality of life is enhanced when women are more economically sustainable, whole families benefit -- so you have a reduced number for instance of young people that can be easily recruited as armed combatants," Mlambo-Ngcuka said. "Women basically put a protective ring around society around families and around their children and families."
