Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

On March 14th, IPI together with the International Center for the Research on Women, the Feminist U.N Campaign and Save The Children cohosted a policy forum to discuss Feminist Leadership at the UN.

Secretary-General António Guterres took office in January 2017 amid unprecedented public and member state demand for feminist leadership of the United Nations. Member states coalesced in platforms advocating for such shifts in leadership, and the Feminist UN Campaign emerged from that political moment. Now, two years into the SG’s term, the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) presents an ideal background for member states, civil society and the Executive Office of the Secretary-General to be in conversation about the current state of feminist leadership and progress advancing gender equality at the UN.

The Women, Peace and Security lens provides a useful case study for measuring progress in this regard. Despite two decades of women, peace and security policy development and commitments, women’s participation at “all levels of decision-making” lags due to structural barriers, lack of access to political arenas, and even threats to women who attempt to participate in these processes. In efforts to build and sustain peace, there remains widespread neglect of local-level women peace builders’ expertise, and formal peacemaking efforts continue to be resistant to women’s meaningful participation and rights implementation. However, member states and the UN have taken steps to address barriers to women’s leadership, such as in highlighting national-level feminist policies and launching a UN-wide gender parity strategy. The election of a new Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2016 provided an important opportunity to ensure that the United Nations implements an agenda that puts gender equality and women’s rights at the heart of everything it does.

This event amplified perspectives on progress as well as remaining challenges to removing barriers to gender equality and feminist leadership at national, regional and global levels, including discussion with experts from member states, UN leadership, and civil society.

Opening remarks:
Dr. Adam Lupel, Vice President, International Peace Institute
Ms. Katja Pehrman, Senior Advisor, UN Women

Speakers:
Ms. Ulrika Grandin, Senior Advisor, Feminist Foreign Policy, Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Ms. Nahla Valji, Senior Gender Adviser, Executive Office of the Secretary-General
Ms. Lyric Thompson, Director of Policy and Advocacy, ICRW, and author of Feminist UN Campaign report card
Ms. Nora O’Connell, Associate Vice President, Public Policy and Advocacy, Save The Children

Moderator:
Dr. Sarah Taylor, Senior Fellow, International Peace Institute

Die Ukraine steckt mitten drin im Reformprozess. Finanzverfassung, lokale Selbstverwaltung, der Bildungs- und Gesundheitsbereich: bis zu den Kommunalwahlen 2020 sollen die wichtigsten Maßnahmen umgesetzt sein.

Contrairement à la Grande-Bretagne ou à l’Allemagne, la France n’a pas connu de creusement des inégalités de revenus depuis dix ans. Les écarts entre les revenus bruts existent, voire s’accroissent, mais l’État Providence continue de lisser fortement ces inégalités en redistribuant une partie des richesses entre les actifs et les inactifs, entre les bas et les hauts revenus, et de ce fait, entre les territoires grâce aux impôts et aux prestations…

Stefan Stahlberg 2019-03-14T14:09:00Z

Le Grand Débat National, initié en réponse au mouvement des gilets jaunes, touche à sa fin. Son objectif : recueillir les propositions des citoyens dans quatre champs de politiques publiques, parmi lesquels "la fiscalité et les dépenses publiques". François Ecalle, ancien rapporteur général sur les finances publiques à la Cour des comptes, président de Fipeco, présente huit mesures de réduction des dépenses sociales qui permettraient des économies de l'ordre d'…

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On March 13th, IPI and Peace is Loud co-hosted a policy forum on women’s participation in peace negotiations and peacekeeping, featuring a screening of two scenes from the new PBS documentary film series Women, War and Peace II. Filmmakers and prominent women peacemakers took part in a discussion on the two films.

In welcoming remarks, Madeleine Rees, Secretary General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, credited the filmmakers for “surfacing the reality of women’s lives in relation to the very narrow vision we get shown.” She spoke of how in her own work she had seen women “doing things so great with no recognition. These films, she said, recast historical narratives of war and peace to include women and helped to eliminate the notion that all men are violent. “Men and women can build peace together against forces of violence,” she said, and argued that this message could help inform a future of sustained peace.

The first film was on the Northern Ireland peace process and called Wave Goodbye to Dinosaurs. Monica McWilliams, Co-Founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and a negotiator of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, told the story of the group’s formation. In the decision, early on, as to whether to push forward and enter peace talks as women, a voice shouted out, “It’s time to wave goodbye to dinosaurs,” and with that, they launched a political party under this name. “We were ordinary women who fell into extraordinary times,” she said of the group. “Men felt that they were going to be shot. Women often felt, ‘We will reach out because what’s happening to our children is incredibly dangerous.’”

She reflected on what she had learned in this process and what she would have done differently, and pointed out how men in the peace talks were deeply influenced by their tradition of never talking to their opponents. “Reaching an accommodation is a strength and not a weakness,” she said. “Talking to your enemies is a strength and not a weakness. We were asked, ‘where did these women come from?’ We had been around for 25 years.”

Ms. McWilliams emphasized the need for civil society to be involved before, during, and after peace talks, because “what’s promised needs to get enforced.” After being told to go home once the peace treaty was signed, she noted instead the necessity of long-term persistence that ensures women’s participation in future negotiations. Her advice to negotiators was to “always think of the day after.”

Ms. McWilliam’s story inspired Eimhear O’Neill to direct the film Wave Goodbye to Dinosaurs. She referenced the famous quote by the Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin, that “it’s not that women get written out of history; it’s that they never get written in.” Ms. O’Neill said that her aim in creating the documentary was to reverse that. “In order to affect change, you have to expose your identity…You have to say no and you have to ask and demand that change can happen. I think wherever you are in the world, where you can wave goodbye to dinosaurs, you should, and where you haven’t been able to just yet, start waving.

Geeta Gandbhir, director of the second film, A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, said she had been troubled by the simplistic portrayal of Muslim women in the media. She wanted to show a new vision, rather than the one-dimensional image of them as victims, voiceless, or as aiding and abetting extremist groups and terrorists.

The documentary centers on the all-women Bangladeshi Formed Police Unit that was sent to Haiti during the cholera epidemic. Not only did she note the effect that women in peacekeeping had on the host community, but also the personal growth that peacekeeping afforded the women themselves, emboldening them to combat patriarchy, not least by giving them financial stability.

“We understood that having women in peacekeeping forces and participating in the process could empower women in the host community…They could help make the peacekeeping force more approachable to the women in the community. They were able to assist and aid survivors of gender-based violence, they were also able to interact in societies where women were prevented from speaking to men. They provided role models, a greater sense of security to local populations, including women and children.” When met with pushback by the local community, they responded differently than male peacekeepers had, said Ms. Gandbhir. They “realized the basis of anger and frustration was often about systemic poverty and corruption that was implicit. In some ways their response to protests and people being hostile towards them was met with understanding.”

In addition, she said, they cultivated trust of the United Nations within the community. “When male peacekeepers patrolled camps, women and children would go inside and not come out. And when the women patrolled the camps, the women and children would come out and follow them and walk through the camps with them, and want to hold their hands, and want to talk to them. And after a while the women would sometimes bring little treats for the children, they would try to interact with them. They would play games with them. It was…inspiring for us to see,” Ms. Gandbhir said.

The women peacekeepers also derived benefits for themselves. “Women themselves were able to broaden their skills and capacity and bring some of what they learned home,” she said. “They also experienced a freedom that they did not have at home: they were able to bond with each other, work together, they were given responsibilities that they didn’t have at home. Some were happy to be free of the burden of childcare and cooking. For them that was a joyful thing even though they missed their families terribly. Financially, the money they made from mission was three times what they made at home. So they were effectively the breadwinners, they were able to support their families and became role models for their own children.”

Witnessing these clear examples of emboldened women showcased the positive impact of women’s involvement, said Nahla Valji, Senior Gender Advisor in the Executive Office in the Secretary-General of the UN. “The power of these movies [is that] …until you see relationships being built in front of you, I don’t think we fully understand the impact that we can have through women’s participation.” The ways in which we view women in action alters our definition of effective leadership, she said. “It role models a different way of being. It also brings 50 percent of the world’s population and their diverse perspectives to the table.”

Ms. O’Neill said she was “delighted” that the media was now capturing the voices of the young women. “The more examples we have of other women who’ve done it, the more confident we feel. I often feel like we need permission to step forward. Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission internally. It’s about feeling confident, it’s about feeling safe, that you can step forward. Increasingly younger women are starting to talk about that.”

IPI Vice President Adam Lupel gave opening remarks, and Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor moderated.

The connection between the policy fields of energy and health may be hard to grasp at first glance. Nevertheless, the negative externalities resulting from the consumption of fossil fuels are clearly identified. In January 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) named climate change and air pollution as two of the greatest challenges to human health. A differentiated look at infrastructure, availability and quality of energy supply and healthcare as well as at access to both shows how closely intertwined these policy fields are. No modern hospital can operate without secure elec­tricity supply and efficient cold chains are essential for storing vaccines. In line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the two policy fields must be designed and interlinked in such a way that they contribute to human security beyond national borders and take planetary boundaries into account. It is necessary to bring health and energy together and to create synergies between them. This would be an important step towards a swifter implementation of the SDGs.

Saskia Gamradt 2019-03-13T17:33:00Z

Nach der historischen Niederlage im Januar hat die britische Premierministerin am Dienstag Abend eine weitere politische Schlappe im Unterhaus erlitten. 391 Abgeordnete stimmten gegen das von ihr mit der EU verhandelte Austrittsabkommen, nur 242 dafür. Damit herrscht 16 Tage vor dem geplanten EU-Austritt Großbritanniens weiterhin große Unsicherheit und die politische Krise vertieft sich.

La santé a occupé une place centrale dans les élections de mi-mandat de novembre 2018 qui semblent avoir marqué la fin d’années de controverses autour de l’Obamacare. De nouveaux thèmes occupent aujourd’hui le devant de la scène dans les discussions aux États-Unis. Angèle Malâtre-Lansac, notre directrice déléguée à la santé…

Massenproteste, Korruption, zunehmende Verrohung des politischen Klimas: wo steht Serbien ein Jahr nach der Neuformulierung der EU-Westbalkanstrategie, in der es von der EU-Kommission als „Vorreiter“ der nächsten Erweiterungsrunde gelobt wurde? Befindet sich das westbalkanische Land, das seit Dezember 2015 EU-Beitrittsverhandlungen führt, noch konsequent auf EU-Kurs?

Challenges related to security, politics and the economy

En 2019, comme il y a soixante-dix ans à l'époque des pères fondateurs, l'Europe a pour mission de protéger l'essentiel : la paix et la liberté. Le président français peut être l'aiguillon d'un retour de l'Europe à ses fondamentaux.

Via un article publié simultanément dans vingt-huit journaux européens - qui a fait l'objet de nombreux…

Le débat fait rage autour du "bonus-malus" sur les cotisations patronales d'assurance-chômage souhaité par le gouvernement pour faire reculer l'excès de recours à des emplois courts, une forme d'exception française dont on se passerait volontiers. Malheureusement, il n'échappe pas à la caricature.

D'un côté, nous avons un patronat qui n'a pas de mots assez durs pour stigmatiser une "taxation des contrats courts" qui…

Presserende behov for at revurdere politiske prioriteter

Saskia Gamradt 2019-03-12T10:41:00Z

Societies that have experienced violent conflict face considerable challenges in building sustainable peace. One crucial question they need to address is how to deal with their violent past and atrocities that were committed – for example, whether perpetrators should be held accountable by judicial means, or whether the focus should be laid on truth telling and the compensation of victims. Transitional justice (TJ) offers a range of instruments that aim to help societies come to terms with their history of violent conflict. Systematic, empirical analyses of TJ instruments have been emerging over the last years. This Briefing Paper summarises the policy-relevant insights they provide regarding the main TJ instruments: trials; truth commissions; reparations for victims; and amnesties. Reviewing academic literature on the effects of transitional justice in post-conflict contexts, three main messages emerge:

• Initial evidence suggests that transitional justice can help to foster peace. Contrary to concerns that actively dealing with the past may deepen societal divisions and cause renewed conflict, most statistical studies find either positive effects or no effects of the various instruments on peace.
• Research indicates that amnesties can help to build peace, though not as a response to severe war crimes. Contrary to strong reservations against amnesties at the international level (especially on normative grounds), several academic studies find that amnesties can statistically significantly reduce the risk of conflict recurrence. However, the most extensive and recent study also shows that this effect varies depending on the context: amnesties can contribute to peace when they are included in peace agreements, but have no effect after episodes of very severe violence.
• To effectively foster peace, trials should target all perpetrators involved in the conflict, not only the defeated party. A likely explanation for this finding from a recent study is that otherwise domestic trials can be used by the victorious party to punish and repress the defeated side. More generally, donors should be aware that if a political regime is able to instrumentalise a transitional justice process, for instance after a one-sided victory or in an undemocratic environment, the process is often not conducive to peace.

Reviewing the literature also makes clear that important, open questions remain:

• Can transitional justice contribute to a deeper quality of peace that goes beyond the absence of violence? TJ should be able to foster reconciliation and mend broken societal relationships. However, if and how TJ can affect social cohesion after conflict needs to be better understood.
• How do various transitional justice instruments need to be combined? Both the academic literature and policy documents suggest that it is important to find the right mix of instruments, but more systematic analyses of successful combinations of TJ instruments are necessary.
• What role does donor support play in processes of transitional justice? Although transitional justice can be strongly domestically driven, such as in Colombia, donor funding often facilitates these processes. However, we still know too little about the effectiveness of such support.

Johanna Frank 2019-03-12T08:18:00Z

Félix Arteaga. Comentario Elcano 5/2019 - 12/3/2019

Seguimos asociando ciberseguridad con la seguridad del ciberespacio, pero cada día que pasa aparecen nuevas realidades que asociadas a la ciberseguridad pero que tienden a desbordarla.