UN: After 20 years, no equality for women in peace talks

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality told the 20th anniversary commemoration of a resolution demanding equal participation for women in peace negotiations that its implementation has failed, declaring Thursday that women still remain “systematically excluded” from talks to end conflicts where men make decisions affecting their lives.

Despite some good initiatives, UN Women’s Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the Security Council that in peace negotiations from 1992 to 2019 only 13 percent of negotiators, 6 percent of mediators, and 6 percent of signatories to peace agreements were women.

She said negotiations elevated and empowered “the actors that have fueled the violence,” instead of empowering women and others who are peace-builders — and women were either confined to “informal processes or relegated to the role of spectators.”

Germany’s Foreign Office Minister of State Michelle Muntefering called the U.N. resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000 “a little revolution” because a united Security Council made clear for the first time that women’s equal participation “is required to maintain world peace and security.” It also affirmed that gender equality is also about security and conflict prevention, and that sexual and gender-based violence in war is a crime that must be punished and abolished, she said.

But Muntefering said: “20 years and nine hardwon Security Council resolutions later... women are still excluded from peace processes, their rights and interests continue to be ignored when building post-conflict societies.”

She was blunt in pointing at who Is responsible: “As a global community, we have not lived up to our commitment.”

Too often, the German minister said, sexual and gender-based violence in conflicts remains unpunished and “even worse, in the past years we have seen a global push-back on women’s rights.” And she expressed doubt that the principles in the resolution on women, peace and security adopted in 2000 would be approved today.