Introduction: Women, War Voice & Agency

Summary

In October 2010 the United Nations celebrated the tenth anniversary of the landmark Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security. This resolution finally acknowledged the impact of war on women across the world and set out the political imperative to protect women from targeted acts of violence and ensure the greater participation of women in all aspects of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The global agenda for international peace and security had at last accepted the importance of gender in understanding violence and transforming the prospects for peace and security, or so it seemed. This framework of commitments was added to in 2008 with the adoption of UNSCR 1820, which focused on specific actions to combat sexual violence in conflict, including better prevention and protection strategies during war as well as ending impunity for perpetrators. This was driven by the brutal facts on the ground coming from over a decade of war and violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and compounding generations of such atrocities of rape in war that in some measure had been acknowledged by the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. There is much to reflect upon from the decade of the 2000s and the progress made, particularly in Africa, where the most pernicious wars of the post-Cold War period have continued to wreak trauma and havoc on the prospects for peace and development, and where civilians, especially women and children, have paid a very heavy price.