Women’s Peacebuilding Strategies Amidst Conflict: Lessons from Myanmar and Ukraine
Publisher: Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security
Author(s): Roslyn Warren, Anna Applebaum, Holly Fuhrman, and Briana Mawby
Date: 2018
Topics: Conflict Prevention, Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Gender, Governance, Humanitarian Assistance, Peace and Security Operations
Countries: Myanmar, Ukraine
Women play important roles in building peace and advancing security, yet they remain underrepresented in official peacemaking processes. This report offers a unique look into how women build peace amidst armed conflict. It builds on Institute research, Women Leading Peace, and investigates two cases – Myanmar and Ukraine – where conflict is ongoing and peace is currently being negotiated.
This study illuminates strategies to advance women’s rights in the context of conflict, with a focus on national plans. Based on a review of the literature and field research conducted in late 2016, the two case studies illustrate both the potential and barriers to utilizing national plans, and the other types of tools women’s groups use to promote the same goals. This allows lessons to be drawn more broadly for supporting women building peace in conflict settings.
The ongoing conflicts in Myanmar and Ukraine are both distinct and complex. The conflict in eastern Ukraine has generated a major humanitarian crisis and disrupted the functioning of the state; a foreign-occupied peninsula further threatens the country’s sovereignty. After decades of military rule, Myanmar’s government faces the challenge of unifying dozens of ethnic groups, 16 of which have associated armed organizations seeking varied levels of autonomy from the state. A confluence of actors – including the military, the government, ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), and the international community – has yielded a web of intersecting peace dialogues, while the conflict intensifies in the northern region.
Governments around the world have long committed to safeguarding and promoting women’s rights. Three international frameworks are especially relevant to this goal. In 1979 the United Nations General Assembly adopted CEDAW, which established a global bill of rights for women and an agenda to guarantee the exercise of those rights. In 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace, 189 states signed the Beijing Platform for Action and committed to empower women and address their needs across 12 critical areas of concern, including armed conflict.
In 2000, UNSCR 1325 and several subsequent resolutions on women, peace and security (WPS) articulated the importance of incorporating women and their experiences in prevention, participation, protection, and relief and recovery, and in all areas of decision-making, including local, state, regional, and international levels. Many states – 67 to date – have created 1,325 NAPs to articulate their commitment and to implement corresponding policy and programming at national and local levels.
Both Myanmar and Ukraine have national plans to advance women. Ukraine adopted its NAP in February 2016. Myanmar does not have a NAP; however, the NSPAW, adopted in 2013, is rooted in the 1995 Beijing Platform. These plans represent a national commitment to advance women, and each is grounded in international frameworks.
This study is structured as follows. Section 2 lays out the study’s approach and methods, followed by a review of key findings of literature in section 3. Sections 4 and 5 investigate the cases of Myanmar and Ukraine in detail, and the final section concludes.