Gender and Peace Building in Africa: A Reader

This reader includes scholarly articles on issues of gender and peacebuilding in Africa. Its purpose is to provide a platform for debating current issues of gender in conflict situations, their destabilising consequences on the economic development of Africa, and the efforts being made to build bridges of peace with a gender-sensitive lens.

Gender and Peace Building in Africa is a product of two Faculty and Staff Development Seminars in Zambia involving the University for Peace (UPEACE) Department for Gender and Peace Studies. Participants in these seminars were motivated by observations of the differential impact that conflict often has on women and girls, including contracting and living with HIV/AIDS - impacts which several of the contributors to this reader explore. The publication involves contributions from 10 countries; 11 of the 13 contributors are African.

As one contributor explains, women have engaged in direct peacebuilding actions, such as organising a non-violent protest against the might of oil companies in the Niger Delta. Contributors highlight the fact that women have made such efforts not only to foster peace efforts but also during war times. However, their efforts have typically been made "invisible", which has resulted in making the practice of their exclusion from peace processes easier to impose. In short, formal peace negotiations and traditional institutions tend to exclude women from participation in leadership and decision-making positions. One explanation offered here is that the description of women in all these narratives only as victims - rather than as agents - negates women's participation and reinforces stereotypes about their capabilities.

This volume also explores the nature of gender equity and offers suggestions about how to strengthen this central principle in organising for a different world. That is, attention to gender equity (which is intrinsically connected to human rights, in the view of one contributor) is described here as a possible tool for building peace; suggestions are provided about how to draw on this principle in organising for a different world - in Africa and beyond. The importance of education for women is underscored as a path towards greater political stability and democratic rights and as a starting point for empowering women.