Peacemaking in Asia and the Pacific: Women's Perspectives

Leaving women on the margins of peace processes amounts to excluding the voices of half the population and ultimately greatly diminishes the sustainability of peace agreements. Yet, ensuring their fair representation and diverse contributions to peacemaking remains a major challenge.

In its latest publication,  Peacemaking in Asia and the Pacific: Women’s Participation, Perspectives and Priorities, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (the HD Centre) explores the reasons for women’s under-representation in peace processes, both in terms of their participation and the substantive gender content of agreements. Through a series of articles, the publication provides concrete examples of where and how women have been involved, the differences such involvement has made, and what the peacemaking community can do to build on these experiences.

With  a focus on the Asia and Pacific region, this publication puts forward the experiences of women peacemakers from different countries – the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Timor Leste, India, the Solomon Islands, and Nepal - to highlight the impact of, and obstacles to, their participation in peace processes.

“This publication shows how beneficial to sustainable peace the contribution of women is”, said Cate Buchanan, Project Manager at the HD Centre. “It seeks to remind those involved in peacemaking of the value and necessity of women’s participation in peacemaking” she added.

The publication provides practical recommendations on how to make the existing framework of international norms a reality in peacemaking and strengthen women’s participation in, and contribution to, peace processes and agreements. It also offers a set of pointers for mediation teams on how to include gender in their work.

Peacemaking in Asia and the Pacific: Women’s Participation, Perspectives and Priorities is available for download at http://www.hdcentre.org/files/Exploring%20ways%20to%20empower%20women%20in%20peacemaking.pdf