Global Policy Forum

Angela King is the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women. In an interview with IRIN, King discussed the role of women in conflict, peace and security. While acknowledging that women are frequently the victims of conflict, King argued that women are playing an increasingly important part in its resolution in their roles as peace negotiators and peacekeepers.

QUESTION: How does the impact of armed conflict on women differ from its impact on men ?

ANSWER: With the changing nature of warfare we have found that the victims now are not just other soldiers or military targets but that the majority tend to be women and children. For example, during ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and the Balkans, women were targeted as a means of humiliating a particular ethnic group through rape, forced marriages and genocide. HIV/AIDS is also a big problem because there is usually no condom use or anything like that when you are raped. In the overall population more women are now getting HIV/AIDS than men.

Q: Does your office focus on the role of women as combatants ?

A: We do, but there's not always a whole lot of information. We do know that women are combatants in a number of countries in Africa. But what we are finding is that in many of the cases where there is resettlement and training the women combatants get left out so part of what UN Security Resolution 1325 [on women, peace and security] is saying is that we have to look at all of these areas as they regard women. Don't just create reintegration programmes for the men. So to a certain extent this had been neglected but it is now being addressed.

Q: Is the UN system taking special needs of displaced and refugee women into account in its programming?

A: No, it is not happening in a perfect way but I would say that the UN system is very much aware that women's needs are different to those of men. I went to an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar in Pakistan and found that the same traditions that were carried out in Afghanistan were translated to the camp. Women had to wear burkas and other traditional attitudes were maintained. UNHCR has become much more aware and they now have a gender policy because they do know that particularly younger women and girls can suffer rape in the camps as well as other violations. In one instance there was a case of Rwandan refugee women who had not been raped and in a single night some of the older women performed female genital mutilation on over one hundred of these girls thinking that if they were raped they would at least have had the culturally designed ritual. So the UN is becoming more aware that it has to safeguard against such occurrences and a set of guidelines has been put out by an inter-agency committee which has been quite successful in setting policy.

Q: What about role of women as peacemakers ?

A: Women have traditionally been looked at as victims but the new thinking is the role that women can play as peacekeepers, in peace accords and the rebuilding of society. There is more and more empirical evidence to show that women do have a role to play. So far none of the literature I have read or even my own personal experience has said that women are better peacemakers than men but there have been certain instances where they have been very effective...women tend to listen more so they tend to be more open to the other side's point of view. They also seem to be better at transmitting messages of peace. If a peace accord has been signed, women seem to be good at convincing their spouses and the community that it should be carried out. They also seem to be better at traditional means of negotiation that might work in a community. They are less hierarchical than men. If there is an attempt at a meeting which doesn't come off they tend to go for a second time whereas men tend to be more offended.

In Somalia it was the women who brought the clan leaders together for the first time. They were sort of left out of the peace accord so they formed themselves into what they called the womens' clan or the sisters' clan. And they were able to influence the peace accords. More recently there has been a very interesting initiative called the Mano River Union project whereby women from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia actually persuaded the presidents of Guinea and Liberia to meet. And [Guinean] President Conte acknowledged this publicly. In the case of Liberia, and to a certain extent Sierra Leone, it was the mothers who got together and went to the bush to persuade the young child soldiers to lay down their arms. During the negotiation of the Burundi peace accord a group of women went to see Mr Mandela [chief mediator of the talks] and said you need to have certain issues included and they got at least half of their demands into the final version.

Q: What does the UN do to support these groups ?

A: Many of these groups would happen anyway because women are good at groups and most of them have been involved in civil society. Very often what happens is that there is a ceasefire and the women are forgotten or pushed out of these active decision-making roles. What has happened in a number of cases, partly because of the UN presence and the philosophy of democracy and so on, is that there has been a transformation where the women do continue to have a say. In South Africa more than a third of the cabinet is now women. During the UN Observer Mission in South Africa [ headed by Angela King ] the UN pushed for women to be part of the peace committees and fostered this feeling among women of all parties to get together. They certainly used this very effectively to get at least three women on the constitutional negotiating committee.

Q: In October 2000 the UN Security Council adopted a landmark resolution on women, peace and security. How has this helped to promote the role of women in such situations ?

A: This was the first time in 55 years that the Security Council had introduced a debate about women and, of course, they made the point of talking about women as victims and the need for better humanitarian law and so on, but the main thrust was that women and civil society organisations should be fully involved in the peacekeeping process. Part of our role is to enhance the capacity of women who are already on the ground working. In June we had a workshop in [Ethiopian capital] Addis Ababa in collaboration with the Economic Commission of Africa and the OAU [Organisation of African Unity] to determine how to enhance the existing roles of women and see how they could be supportive to peacekeeping missions. For example, it would be very useful to have some of these women as resource people for initial assessment missions. Recently the Security Council has started to meet women's groups. They did so in Kosovo and they did so when they went to the [Democratic Republic of] Congo and this will become routine.

I have also been asked by the Secretary-General to coordinate the preparation of a study on the impact of armed conflict on women and children and also to look at the role of women in peace processes and peace-building. So it is really a very comprehensive study and we are hoping that out of this there will be a report to the Security Council which will not just give the facts as they are but act as a blueprint and give some guidance to the Council.

UNIFEM [the UN Development Fund for Women] is also looking at its the effectiveness of its own activities around peacekeeping missions. Their findings will provide valuable input on the operational aspects of the report to be submitted to the Security Council. DPKO [UN peacekeeping department] is also trying to develop manuals for codes of conduct for peacekeepers and we are also trying to develop these networks so that if, for example, the Security Council is going somewhere we can tap into them on their behalf.

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