Making Women Count - Not Just Counting Women: Assessing Women's Inclusion and Influence on Peace Negotiations

"Fifteen years after the adoption of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325, women remain significantly underrepresented in peace and transitional processes. A central challenge is the lack of evidence-based knowledge on the precise role and impact of women's inclusion on peace processes."

This report presents an analysis of women's inclusion in peace negotations distilled from the "Broadening Participation in Political Negotiations and Implementation" project. This ongoing multi-year research project started in 2011 at the Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative, or IPTI (The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies). It is comprised of 40 in-depth qualitative case studies designed to examine the role and impact of all actors and groups - in addition to the main conflict parties - included in peace and political transition processes throughout all phases, including post-agreement implementation. The objective of this report is to provide UN Women (and other organisations studying women's inclusion) with direct comparative evidence on women's influence in previous cases of peace processes since the 1990s.

The report is structured in 7 chapters. After an introduction, the second chapter provides a brief overview of the project's methodology. The third chapter analyses why inclusion happened in the case studies and who initiated it. Subsequently, chapter 4 examines the impact of women's inclusion, highlighting the quantitative findings on reaching and sustaining agreements. Chapter 5 presents the qualitative findings on women's participation across tracks and phases of peace processes and analyses the inclusion of women in the 7 inclusion modalities identified (see below). Chapter 6 identifies and discusses the major process and context factors enabling and constraining the quality of women's participation. The conclusion outlines major findings. Throughout the report, several boxes extracted from the 40 case studies illustrate the findings; a list of these cases and the research framework for the project is provided in the annex.

In brief, the research found that the direct inclusion of women does not per se increase the likelihood that more peace agreements are signed and implemented. Rather, it is the level of influence that women can assert on the process that makes a difference. Six key findings reinforcing the general conclusion are delineated in the report's executive summary:

"First, women have made substantial contributions to peacemaking and constitution-making negotiations and to the implementation of final agreements - even if their inclusion is still challenged or met with indifference by many negotiation parties and mediators.

"Second, the strength of women's influence is positively correlated with agreements being reached and implemented. In cases where women's groups were able to exercise strong influence on a negotiation process, the chances of a final agreement being reached were much higher....The chances of peace agreements being implemented - i.e. that the resulting peace will be sustained - were also much higher when women's groups had a stronger influence on the process.

"Third, the involvement of women does not weaken peace processes. On the contrary, the presence of women strengthened the influence other additionally included actors (aside from the main conflict parties) had on the peace processes studied. This is because, in the cases analyzed, organized women's groups pressured for signing peace deals more often than any other group participating in a peace process...

Fourth, women's inclusion is not limited to direct participation at the negotiation table.....Seven modalities of inclusion were identified:

1. Direct representation at the negotiation table: Women's quotas...alone do not automatically lead to more women's influence....Women had much higher chances of exercising influence at the negotiation table when they had their own independent women-only delegation, and/or when they were able to strategically coordinate among women across delegations in order to advance common interests, such as by formulating joint positions on key issues and/or by forming unified women's coalitions across formal delegations.
2. Observer status: When women were granted observer status, they could rarely influence the process...
3. Consultations: [Whether formal or informal, these were]...found to be the most common modality of women's inclusion in peace and transition processes. However, for such consultations to be influential in practice, establishing clear and effective transfer strategies that systematically communicate results of the consultations to negotiators and mediators is necessary. Overall, women were most influential within consultations when able to formulate joint women's positions on key issues. Joint positions were then presented, often in concise documents, to explain women's demands to the main negotiating parties, which then were either formally obliged or informally pressured to consider this input in the drafting of a final peace agreement.
4. Inclusive commissions:...Particularly in post-agreement commissions, women's inclusion was mostly the result of gender-sensitive provisions already written into the peace agreement. Securing women's participation in all commissions across all phases of a peace process requires explicit gender equality provisions (such as specific quotas) to be introduced as early as possible, in order to be present in the language of a final peace agreement.
5. Problem-solving workshops: Women were found to be highly underrepresented in these processes. Exceptions to this general finding occurred when workshops were specifically designed for women, as a means of overcoming political tensions and grievances. Such cases often resulted in the formulation of joint positions, which then increased women's overall influence.
6. Public decision-making: In some cases, negotiated peace agreements or new constitutions are put to public vote (e.g. in the form of a national referendum). Reliable gender-disaggregated data on voting patterns are often lacking...
7. Mass action: More than any other group, women have organized mass action campaigns in favor of peace deals. They have pressured conflict parties to start negotiations and eventually sign peace agreements. Women have also undertaken mass action campaigns to push their way into official processes that exclude them.

"Fifth, a specific set of process and context factors work hand in hand to either enable or constrain the ability of women to participate and exercise influence. There are nine main process factors...:

1. ...Women were only able to exercise meaningful influence when gender-sensitive procedures were already in place for the selection of participants.
2. ...Decision-making procedures can make the crucial difference between nominal and meaningful participation, and are relevant across multiple modalities. In fact, women's opportunities to make an impact can be substantially limited - even if they are included in high numbers - without procedures explicitly enabling them to influence the decision-making process.
3. Coalition-building allows women, under a collective umbrella, to mobilize around common issues and negotiate as a unified, representative cluster, which increases the chance of being heard. Overcoming differences and sharing grievances was often a precondition for these coalitions to function.
4. Transfer strategies ensure that the inputs given from actors outside of the negotiation table find their way into the agreement and the peace process as a whole....For women, the creation of a joint position paper or common policy document proved especially useful in gaining influence.
5. Inclusion-friendly mediators...played a decisive role in supporting women during the peace process.
6. ...Early women's involvement - preferably in the pre-negotiation phase - has often paved the way for sustained women's inclusion throughout subsequent negotiations and agreement implementation processes...
7. Support structures prior to, during, and after negotiations allow women to make more effective and higher quality contributions to a process...
8. ...[W]omen's role in monitoring was generally found to be weak...
9. Funding...can particularly enhance the participation of women by providing for the basic preconditions of participation.

"The other set of relevant factors are context factors, which may not only enable and constrain women's inclusion, but also shape the trajectories of peace processes as such. These factors include: elite support or resistance; public buy-in; regional and international actor's influence on a peace process; presence of strong women's groups; preparedness of women; heterogeneity of women's identities; societal and political attitudes and expectations surrounding gender roles; regional and international women's networks and the existence of prior commitments to gender sensitivity and women's inclusion.

"[Sixth, w]hen women were found to be influential in a particular multi-stakeholder negotiation process, it was often because they pushed for more concrete and fundamental reforms..."