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Areas of Leadership
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- Camp leadership, safety initiatives, conflict management, peace negotiations, and awareness-raising about women’s concerns. Not only must women be engaged in efforts to prevent VAWG directly and mitigate its damages by organizing around women’s security concerns, but they must also participate in overall efforts to build peace, as this in itself can prevent further VAWG.
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Key Strategies
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- Engage women in camp coordination and camp management. Ensure that women are included in camp or shelter committees. Employ equal numbers of women and men in food distribution programmes, to ensure women’s food needs are being addressed and decrease the likelihood that women will resort to risky behaviours to collect food (IASC, 2007).
- Hold meetings in places where women can easily attend, can travel to and from safely, and can bring their children (IASC, 2007)
- Capitalize on new opportunities for women. Conflict can present women with opportunities to engage in the public sector that they were previously excluded from, such as taking over roles traditionally held by men (Bouta & Frerks, 2002).
- Support women’s peace movements, peace networks, and innovative and informal women’s organizations working for peace. These groups can raise funds for women’s economic activities, bring public attention to overlooked aspects of conflict, and publicly advocate for peace. In some instances such women’s groups have been found to be more effective in gaining respect from local members of the community (Moser, 2007).
- Recruit more women into security forces (Steinberg, 2007) (see section on SSR)
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Tools
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For guidance on structuring participatory meetings, see the World Food Programme. 2001. ”Participatory Techniques and Tools: A WFP Guide.” Rome: World Food Programme.
The Institute for Inclusive Security includes the Women Waging Peace Network, a network of more than 1,000 women peacemakers in conflict areas around the world. The Network connects these women to each other and to policy makers to share expertise and perspectives and help mutually empower women around the world.
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Example: Women’s Peace Huts have been established in certain settings in which women in the community come together to meet and share information. In these spaces they are able to discuss problems and issues they have heard about or face in their community, and plan actions to further investigate, publicize, or resolve the issues. Women can invite local leaders to attend their meetings and hear their concerns on various issues, and community members can also come to the Peace Huts with problems to be solved, increasing women’s leadership in their communities. Established spaces such as these help increase women’s voices and presence in their communities.
See a video about the peace huts.
See more information about the peace huts.
Source: summarized from Moser, 2007, p. 6.
