When the United Nations established the Peacebuilding Commission in 2005, it created more than just another advisory body. It built a platform with a specific mandate to ensure women’s voices are not sidelined in the complex work of rebuilding societies torn apart by conflict. The PBC’s gender mandate represents a critical shift in how the international community approaches peacebuilding, recognizing that sustainable peace requires addressing the structural inequalities that often fuel violence in the first place.
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Why gender matters in peacebuilding
The Peacebuilding Commission has a broad advisory mandate to consolidate UN peacebuilding efforts across conflict-affected countries. What sets it apart is its founding resolutions requiring it to integrate a gender perspective in all its work and consult with women’s organizations. This isn’t just about ticking boxes. Research consistently shows that peace agreements with women signatories have higher implementation rates and last longer, while women’s groups often serve as first responders and major drivers of grassroots peacebuilding.
In 2016, the Commission adopted a comprehensive gender strategy to systematically mainstream gender perspectives across its country-specific engagements, thematic discussions, and dialogues with other organizations. The strategy aims to ensure an inclusive approach that accounts for women’s perspectives and specific needs while promoting gender equality to make peacebuilding more effective.
Sierra Leone: transforming laws and lives
The PBC’s work in Sierra Leone demonstrates how high-level political support can translate into tangible legal reforms. In January 2007, the UN Development Fund for Women and the Peacebuilding Support Office convened a national consultation that informed women’s leaders and civil society organizations about the Commission and helped establish a national peacebuilding agenda for women.
The results were concrete. A visiting senior Peacebuilding Commission delegation successfully advocated for laws promoting gender equality, providing the political support needed to outlaw domestic violence and ensure women’s rights to inheritance and property ownership. These weren’t symbolic gestures. In a country where customary laws had long prevented widows from inheriting property, these legal reforms addressed fundamental economic security issues.
The Mano River Women’s Network for Peace became one of two civil society representatives on the Peacebuilding Fund National Steering Committee, demonstrating the Commission’s commitment to meaningful participation rather than token representation. By December 2007, the Sierra Leone Government and the PBC adopted a Peacebuilding Cooperation Framework that recognized gender equality as a cross-cutting issue, with specific commitments including support for Family Support Units of the Police and capacity-building of national gender institutions.
Beyond laws: addressing youth and infrastructure
The PBC’s framework in Sierra Leone went beyond legislative reform to address practical challenges facing young people, particularly girls and young women. The framework targeted youth aged 15-35 with gender-specific strategies, including dedicated support for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. This recognition that youth is not a monolithic category, and that boys and girls face different challenges in post-conflict settings, marked an important evolution in peacebuilding practice.
The Commission also highlighted a often-overlooked connection between infrastructure and women’s safety. The framework called for gender assessments in the energy sector to ensure women’s safety through better lighting and transportation. This practical approach recognized that darkness and inadequate public transport don’t just inconvenience women but can expose them to violence, limiting their ability to participate in economic and political life.
Burundi: quotas create political space
Burundi’s experience offers both inspiration and caution about what quotas can and cannot achieve. Women activists fought hard during the Arusha peace negotiations to include a quota system, initially pushing for 50 percent before settling on 30 percent representation in political institutions. This provision was incorporated into Burundi’s 2005 Constitution as a direct result of women’s advocacy.
The impact was immediate and measurable. Women gained 30 percent of parliamentary seats and seven ministerial posts, and were elected for the first time as chiefs of communes. For a country emerging from civil war where women had been almost entirely excluded from political decision-making, this represented a remarkable shift.
When quotas aren’t enough
However, representation doesn’t automatically translate into influence or substantive policy change. The Peacebuilding Commission’s Strategic Framework for Burundi lacked references to gender-sensitive judicial or security sector reform, two areas critical to addressing violence against women and ensuring their security. This gap revealed how women’s presence in government doesn’t guarantee that gender perspectives will be mainstreamed across all peacebuilding priorities.
Women’s organizations in Burundi also faced significant challenges accessing information and participating effectively in peacebuilding processes. They relied heavily on international NGOs for information about the Commission’s work, highlighting how formal representation can be undermined when civil society lacks the resources and access needed to engage meaningfully with policy processes.
Economic reforms and emerging risks
The Burundi framework demonstrated awareness of how economic policies affect different groups. It highlighted risks from security forces and noted the negative social impacts of economic privatization, particularly how increased sexual violence risks affected widows. This analysis reflected an understanding that post-conflict economic reforms can create new vulnerabilities even as they aim to rebuild prosperity.
On a positive note, Burundi’s Monitoring and Tracking Mechanism provided a model for gender-sensitive indicators in peacebuilding. The framework included systems for tracking gender-disaggregated data that could serve as a template for future monitoring. However, as observers noted, this mechanism needed expansion and consistent application to be truly effective.
Lessons from the field
Both Sierra Leone and Burundi illustrate that integrating gender into peacebuilding requires more than policy commitments. It demands dedicated resources, technical expertise, sustained political will, and genuine partnerships with women’s organizations. National capacity weaknesses remained major obstacles in both countries, with limited presence of gender advisers and resource constraints affecting organizations working on women’s rights.
The experiences also show that windows of opportunity exist in post-conflict settings to address structural inequalities, but these windows can close quickly if stakeholders default to pre-conflict patterns of exclusion. Effective gender integration requires coordinated action across legal reform, economic policy, security sector transformation, and political participation.
What do you think? How can international organizations better support local women’s organizations in post-conflict settings? What mechanisms might ensure that political quotas translate into substantive policy changes that improve women’s lives and security?
References
- https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/gender-strategy
- https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/gender-equality-in-peacekeeping-why-it-matters-for-global-security
- https://press.un.org/en/2008/wom1670.doc.htm
- https://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/burundian-women-outline-gender-aspects-arusha-peace-process
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