WOMEN IN PEACENEGOTIATIONS AND AGREEMENTS: A Women’s Consultation Workshop

How do we make sure that women’s issues will be discussed in peace negotiations? How do we guarantee that peace agreements will be gender-responsive? These are only few of the questions that Jasmin Nario-Galace of the Women Engaged in Action on 1325 floated before the panel discussion began at a Women’s Consultation that happened at Richmonde Hotel Eastwood City last June 21, 2011. Aptly entitled “Women in Peace Negotiations and Agreements: A Consultation Workshop”, the event gathered 56 women and like-minded men to discuss women’s issues in conflict and the potential strategies to ensure their inclusion in on-going peace talks.
A panel of women participating in both GPH-MILF and GPH-NDF negotiations shed light to the current status of the peace dialogues. Atty. Johaira Wahab of OPAPP explained the gender-responsive framework the Philippine government is using in the peace process with the MILF and has cited women members in past and present panels of the government. Similarly, Atty. Raissa Jajurie shared that there is no mandate that prohibits women from being involved in the negotiations
For the GPH-NDF update, Ms. Jurgette Honculada, the women’s rights advocate in the Philippine government panel, clarified that women’s issues are not ignored in the current negotiations. She explained that there are main technical matters that need to be addressed first before proceeding to the detailed discussion of stakeholder issues. This was supported by GPH-Monitoring Committee’s independent observer Dr. Jennifer Santiago Oreta (The GPH-Monitoring Committee, together with the NDF-Monitoring Committee, form the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC), a body created based on the first agreement between the GPH and the NDF, i.e. the agreement on CARHRIHL.). According to Dr. Oreta, there are spaces for women to participate in the negotiations, but one has to understand the dynamics of the talks in order to meaningfully engage in the process.
Irene Santiago of Mindanao 1325 and Karen Tanada of GZO Peace Institute, both members of WE Act 1325, shared results of women consultations on the peace process earlier organized in Davao and Zamboanga, respectively.
A workshop session was conducted during the afternoon enabling participants to identify challenges and offer recommendations on the issue of women’s participation and the advancement of the women’s agenda in the peace process. Ms. Grace Saguinsin, Ms. Mardi Suplido, Ms. Irene Santiago, and Ms. Karen Tanada were the facilitators of the workshop groups.
Spearheaded by the Center for Peace Education Miriam College, Sulong CARHRIHL, and WE ACT 1325, the successful Women’s Consultation is one of the few initiatives to strengthen women’s participation in peace processes and to campaign for gender-responsive peace agreements – a major call of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security and one of the commitments made by the Philippines in its National Action Plan to implement the UN Security Council Resolution. These significant collaborations mirror these organizations’ commitment to encourage dialogues and to make women count in building peace – to no longer see women as perennial victims but agents of change contributing to a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.