Women and Peace building

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2009 im Fachbereich Politik - Internationale Politik - Thema: Frieden und Konflikte, Sicherheit, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg (Institute of Political sciences), Veranstaltung: Gender and Conflict, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: The period after the Second World War saw a decline in inter-state wars as compared to intrastate
wars. Many countries embarked in conflicts within their national borders, contrary to
conflicts between states evidenced prior to post world war two periods. These state conflicts
mostly centred on resources and poverty, translates to massive amounts of casualties,
majority of them being women and children.

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It is through women's active participation and involvement that an effective positive change
can be enhanced especially on issues of Peace, which is the basis for any developmental
activity. Pertaining peace matters, women contribute to Peace building in many ways although
their contribution has been overlooked in the past due to the fact that it takes unconventional
forms (cp: Strictland/ Duvuury 2003:). They constitute a large part of the society and therefore
time has come for their role no longer to be under-estimated. This paper is based on an
analysis of the contributions made by women as Peace builders in recent decades, especially
after the year 2000 when the Security Council Resolution 1325 was implemented. The exact
factor that has caused the remarkable positive change since the beginning of women's
involvement will be analysed. This paper argues that women can bring back remarkable
results in Peace building efforts if given the opportunity because in most cases they are the
most affected victims during and after violent conflicts. It should be noted however that men
have not been entirely secluded, but rather it tries to show how important the role of women
can be when they are involved in peace building. Therefore the question that will try to be answered is: Does training and empowerment make women better peace builders? An
analytical method will be utilised in which Non-Governmental Organisations reports and
projects will be used especially on West African countries like Liberia which is the case study
of this paper. The research will include random reports with a brief case study of Liberia
although towards the end of this paper, some comparisons will be done. An example of a
successful project will be looked at and the factors that has prompted its success.

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