Women must be involved in peace building

THE Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC), Ms Akua Sena Dansua, has said that it is important for women to be involved in peace building and maintenance to ensure protection and security for women and children in conflict situations.
She indicated that women and children tended to be routinely subjected to rape and other terrible forms of violence whilst orphans of victims of conflict were left in difficult situations.
The minister said this at a workshop on Mainstreaming Gender in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations in West Africa in Accra last Tuesday.
The workshop was a collaboration between the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Centre (KAIPTC), the ECOWAS and the German Technical Co-operation (GTZ).
Ms Dansua said peace was essential for development and it was therefore important for stakeholders to be involved to discuss the various dimensions of the subject.
She said in respect of peace and security obligations, Ghana had in place a national architecture for peace, led by the National Peace Council.
She said a gap in that infrastructure was the aspect which addressed the involvement of women in peace and security matters because women and children were the most vulnerable victims.
She explained that in local conflict situations, women could be valuable sources of information in the marketplace, festivals and other places to give hints to brooding problems.
According to her, the involvement of women in discussion in the family and community and at funeral would widen the consultation networks and provide a softer negotiation stance on disputes.
She observed that a feminine touch in a military, diplomatic, civilian or political situation would calm matters than the brazen approach usually adopted by their male counterparts.
Ms Dansua encouraged women to be more assertive at various levels of discussions.
She believed that gender sensitivity in public plans and programmes would facilitate development in the country.
The GTZ Technical Advisor at the KAIPTC, Mr David Nii Addy, said it was clear to most actors in the field of peace and security that the country needed to do much more to recognise the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts.
He noted that effective peace support throughout the world required more expertise and institutional capacity to promote gender equality.
Mr Addy was optimistic that the workshop would be a necessary precondition in the political quest for the restoration of civil authority, the ending of impunity, the promotion of rule of law and democratic development, without which peace would not be sustainable.