Making the Case for Systematic, Gender‐Based Analysis in Sustainable Peace Building

• Author: Dennis J. D. Sandole,Ingrid Staroste
• Date: 01 December 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21147
• Published date: 01 December 2015

C R Q, vol. 33, no. 2, Winter 2015 119

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21147

ARTICLES

Making the Case for Systematic, Gender-Based

Analysis in Sustainable Peace Building

Dennis J. D. Sandole

Ingrid Staroste

In this article, we address protracted, often recurring violent confl ict,

arguing that the failure to solve entrenched confl icts and build sustain-

able peace is due in part to the absence of women from peace-building

processes. To change this negative status quo, we put forward three

essential instruments: gender mainstreaming to make gender rela-

tions the foundation of any analysis and decision making, the three-

pillar framework of confl ict mapping, and the New European Peace

and Security System model of confl ict intervention. When these tools

are employed together, they can establish conceptual and operational

coherence and positive systemic change by empowering women to work

with men as equal partners to build and maintain sustainable peace in

fragile, postconfl ict environments.

According to the Failed States Index 2014, which ranked 178 countries

on twelve indicators of state stress, sixty countries worldwide—nearly

a third of the members of the United Nations—qualify as “failed states”

(Fund for Peace 2014). Variously labeled as “fragile,” “weak,” “failing,” and

other expressions of state “distress,” failed states tend to encompass the

“bottom billion” of impoverished peoples worldwide who live on less than

one dollar a day (Collier 2007). Over half of the failed states are in Africa,

where 72 percent of countries with either high or the highest risk of insta-

bility are also located (Backer, Wilkenfeld, and Huth 2014, Ch. 2).

We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments made by two anonymous reviewers on an

earlier draft of this article.

120 SANDOLE, STAROSTE

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Many of the intrastate “new” wars (Kaldor 2012) that play out in failed

states recur for at least three reasons: (1) the failure of the international

community to deal with the deep-rooted, underlying causes and condi-

tions of the original confl icts (Autesserre 2010, 2014; Hewitt, Wilkenfeld,

and Gurr 2010, 3–4; Hewitt, Wilkenfeld, and Gurr 2012); (2) the absence

of the private sector in eff orts undertaken by the international community

to address confl ict origins such as poverty and unemployment (Sandole

and Staroste 2014; United Nations Women 2015b; Wenger and Möckli

2003); and (3) the absence of women and gender from the confl ict analysis

and design and implementation of peace-building interventions into those

confl icts (United Nations Women 2012).

 e protracted confl icts in failed states are not only incubators of local,

regional, and global terrorism, but are also embedded in a complex matrix

of global stresses that themselves pose many challenges. Comprising the

global problematique, these are interconnected, interdependent issues that

nations and international governmental organizations can adequately

address only in collaboration with others (e.g., climate change, environ-

mental degradation, pandemics, proliferation of weapons of mass destruc-

tion).  ese transnational issues simultaneously drive and are exacerbated

by violent confl ict systems (Sandole 2010).

What, if anything, can be done about this complex state of aff airs? In

this article, we focus on one of the three sets of factors that account for

the persistence of deadly confl icts. We argue that the absence of women—

more than half of the aff ected population—from peace-building processes

explains in part why sustainable peace has remained beyond reach, and we

introduce the three sets of tools that facilitate the inclusion of gender and

women—their experiences, knowledge, and skills—in confl ict analysis and

peace-building design and implementation.  is eff ort is a recognition of

women’s social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986), which can be lever-

aged by policymakers and others interested in solving complex confl icts

and brokering sustainable peace.

The Concepts of Women and Gender

Before proceeding, we clarify how we understand and use the concepts of

women and gender. Although these terms are related, neither is synony-

mous with the other, as both women and men have a gender.  e category

“women” is in itself complex.1 When we refer to “women,” we mean indi-

viduals who are female. However, knowing that an individual is female