This document discusses gender considerations for civic engagement in peace and security efforts, using Darfur as a case study. It provides recommendations to enhance women's participation and leadership in peace processes. The recommendations include training and mentoring programs for women leaders in Darfur, addressing HIV/AIDS and protecting women in IDP camps, promoting women's citizenship and participation in conflict resolution, and developing gender-focused alternative conflict management strategies. The document also outlines program objectives and outputs to enhance women's decision-making at the national level through improved policy analysis and advocacy.

1. GENDER CONSIDERATIONS
TO STEM THE CHALLENGES TO
PEACE AND SECURITY:
A DARFUR CASE STUDY
African Civil Society forum 2007
DEMOCRATISING GOVERNANCE AT REGIONAL AND
GLOBAL LEVEL TO ACHIEVE THE MDGs
March 22-24, 2007, Addis Abeba, Ethiopia.
BT Costantinos, PhD
Africa Humanitarian Action
africahumanitarian.org
doncosty@gmail.com

2. Civic engagement in Peace and Security
Civic engagement in Peace and Security is a multifaceted
initiative with a complex web of public and private sector
programmes and projects addressing human, social,
physical, environmental, and political capital development
in a sustainable form, pursuant to the RBA
1.
African Union Declaration: From Solemn declaration to solemn action; The Maputo
Protocol; UN Commission on Human Security; Fourth World Conference on
Women; International Conference on Population and Development; Convention on
the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women …
2. UN Security Council Resolution No. 1325 and paragraphs 6, 13 and 16 of Security
Council resolution 1556 (2004) of 30 July 2004, paragraph 15 of Council resolution
1564 (2004) of 18 September 2004, paragraph 17 of Council 1574 (2004) of 19
November 2004 and paragraph 12 of Council resolution 1590 (2005) of 24 March
2005; the UN Security Council must continue to monitor the human condition in
Darfur and provide recommendations for actions on human security and human
development to binding in its resolution both to the Sudanese government and the
combatants.
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3. Crises in Darfur and Somalia
1. Rape as a savage instrument of humiliation
2. The rise of vigilante gangs in the IDP camps
3. Death toll of non-combatants
4. The use of bigoted language
5. New cultural configurations and anthropological
considerations
6. Systematic Destruction Villages
7. IDP camps turned into IDP Prisons
8. Blasphemy of spiritual and cultural idols
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6. Agency for civic engagement :
Agency refers to the full range of participants and their activities
to P&S policy formulation and management. Participants include :
state actors, non-state actors, the international community,
businesses and individuals. Stakeholders in Government
constantly create undercurrents that determine the scope and
nature of agency with their specific needs, imperatives, and
causes for interaction in a P&S exercise
1. Does the growing number and diversity of NGOs mean that
they have very uneven political and professional capabilities,
and differing levels of commitment to society.
2. Is the proliferation of NGOs today an outcome of funding by
external donors or an indigenous "grassroots" phenomenon.
3. NGOs may be problematic in that far from contributing to the
strengthening of civil society vis-à-vis the state, they can
function as instruments of the technocratic elite
People's organisations face many limitations. Various
recommendations and declarations aimed at addressing
institutional problems have been made in recent years. Mobilising
the action required has, however, remained a daunting challenge,
as many practical and structural constraints militate against it
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7. Unanswered questions on
Community Engagement in P&S
1. Does P&S process enter local processes as an external ideology,
constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from
the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs, and values?
2. Does the P&S construct add value to traditional “development”
projects and programmes and how does the P&S construct base its
assumptions on historically rooted P&S community knowledge and
experience? More specifically, it has tools to record P&S
community responses on what has been the impact of ecosystem,
socio-economic and political changes on livelihoods?
•
Demographic, socio-economic, and political responses (adaptive strategies)
•
Differential responses between men and women - what informs these responses
Have these responses led to lead to sustainable livelihoods. What kinds of
interventions are needed to enhance P&S community responses so that they
lead to sustainable outcomes?
•
Process by which communities and external change agents integrate knowledge
•
Economic, social, cultural, political indicators used to measure progress
3. Two intellectual traditions provide the theoretical framework within which
the discussion is going on: Marxist perspective (class relations) and a
political interactive framework (state society)
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8. P&S Operative
Ideology in civic engagement in P&S
1. Ideological elements and constructs might be seen as the
very constitutive structure of process openness and closure
2. These are concepts and rules of governance, national and
cultural values, traditions of political discourse and
arguments, and modes of representation of specific
interests and needs
3. These elements, or complexes of elements, will tend to
assume varying forms and to enter into shifting relations of
competition, co-operation, and hegemony during political
reform to P&S.
4. A determinate order of institutions, powers, interests and
activities operate through complexes of transition ideas and
values, filling out, specifying, anchoring and, often shortcutting their formal content or meaning.
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9. Recommendations and Strategic
Approaches to Civic Engagement in P&S
1. Developing mechanisms, institution building processes and support
instruments for achieving peace and security via civic engagement
2. Improving capacity for, and coordination of, early action including
the development of peace support operations capabilities for civic
engagement;
3. Improving early warning capacity through strategic analysis and
support;
4. Prioritising strategic security issues as follows: Promoting an
African definition and action on DDRR efforts in post-conflict
situations
5. Ensuring efficient and consolidated action for the prevention,
combating and eradicating the problem of the illicit proliferation,
circulation and trafficking of small arms and light weapons;
6. Improving the security sector and the capacity for good governance
as related to peace and security;
7. Generating minimum standards for application in the exploitation
and management of Africa's resources in areas affected by conflict
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10. Strategic framework for civic
engagement in P&S
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11. A generalised rendition of the framework
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12. Mainstreaming Gender in Civic
Engagement through RBA and themes
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13. Framework for gender equality
1.Gender equality in the capabilities domain,
such as in health, education and nutrition and
other basic human abilities
2.Gender equality in access to resources and
opportunity domain refers to equality in
opportunity to use or apply basic capabilities
through control over economic assets (such as
land and property) and resources (such as income,
credit and employment) as well as participation in
decision-making.
3.Gender equality in the security domain is
defined as reduced vulnerability to violence and
conflict.
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14. RECOMMENDATIONS I & II
LEADERSHIP TRAINING AND MENTORING
/APPRENTICESHIP IN DARFUR
Leadership gives agency for women: the capacity to
effect change. But leadership is constrained by structures,
including the wider economic and political environment in
which the leader operates, and the nature of his or her
constituency and organisation. An understanding of both
leader's agency and structure is necessary: each determines
the other.
Movement for social progress or emancipation. This
concept encompasses Darfuri women grassroots
organisations, CSOs, and other forms of social organisation
that involve the voluntary association of individuals. This is,
self-evidently, a movement to remedy the GBV and bring
about social change for the better. It is the practical
manifestation of the impulse for social change or
emancipation, the popular counterpart man of leadership.
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15. RECOMMENDATIONS III
HIV/AIDS and IDPs
Sexual abuse and violence—much, but not all of it
directed against females—are serious problems that
transcend economic, social, ethnic and geographical lines in
the IDP and refugee camps. Women IDPs and refugees – and
in particular young women – are especially vulnerable to HIV
infection; being unable to avoid coercive sexual relations.
Darfuri communities in particular are also vulnerable because
of lower levels of literacy and less access to information and
services. Hence urgent social policy specifically tailored to
Darfuris is essential to provide a framework for vulnerability
reduction and to develop strategic responses:
empowerment of women to negotiate safe sex,
programmes for high risk and non-high risk youth
care and support for PLWHA and PABA and treatment
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16. RECOMMENDATIONS IV
Women’s participation in peace and conceptions of
citizenship in the 21 Century
Women’s participation in peace making and peace building as
citizens of a political society is an important concept in the
late twentieth century. Hence we recommend that the GoS,
AU, UN, bilaterals and multilaterals, NNGOS, INGOs and
foundations and trusts to undertake women’s citizenship
sensitisation, awareness and education: It is the
fundamental recommendation of this report that
CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION - learning about and
appreciating one's rights, duties, obligations and
responsibilities as a citizen and the immediate rules, laws
and governance structures within which women exercise
citizenship is the first and fundamental step in peace
building.
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17. RECOMMENDATIONS V
Recommendations on Gender Focussed Alternative
Conflict Management (GFACM).
GFACM is a multi-disciplinary field of research and action
that portends and seeks to address the question of how
women and men can make better decisions together,
particularly on difficult, contentious issues. GFACM refers to
a variety of collaborative approached that seek to reach a
mutually acceptable resolution of issues in a conflict through
a voluntary processes. Such approaches were developed as
alternatives to adversarial or non-consensual strategies, such
as judicial or legal recourse, unilaterally initiated public
information campaigns, or partisan political action.
A three day consultative workshop can be held with Darfuri
IDP women, sheiks, GoS, CFC and the international
community to enable the return of IDPs to their villages with
all human security conditions fulfilled.
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18. Programme Objective I
Enhance women's decision-making at the national level
To enhance capacity for wise decision-making at the national level that
responds to actual conditions throughout the country and the concerns
expressed by the people through improved analysis, formulation and advocacy
of policies and programmes in support of sustainable livelihoods.
Output 1: Methods and indicators identified for policy analysis for sustainable
livelihoods, which disaggregate policy effects on different stakeholder groups
such as women, children, elderly, etc.
Output 2: Homegrown policies for sustainable livelihoods leading to increased
ownership of policies, enhanced self-confidence and commitment to
implement the policies and increased independence from donor-driven policy
initiatives.
Output 3: Strengthened capacity for policy advocacy and communication
(dialogue)
Output 4: A curriculum for an issue-based modular training course developed
on policy analysis for sustainable livelihoods for government officials focusing
on key macro, sectoral and -sectoral issues identified in the Sustainable
Livelihoods Policy Review.
Output 5: Improved policy, strategy, process and structural environment for
women to attain decision-making positions including possibilities for
affirmative action
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19. Outputs, activities & stakeholders
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20. Documenting Good Practices



exchange of experience, including sharing between
individual experts and technical networks
pilot testing, operations research, and other projects
and programmes documentation (however, it is
important to remember that best practice is not limited
to documentation)
Identifying best practice that provides useful
lessons learned means making judgements. To
arrive at such judgements, two approaches may be
used, each reflecting a different level of analysis.


One based on simple description of the practice's accomplishments.
From this point of view, best practice can be anything that works, in full
or in part, and that can be useful in providing lessons learned.
to carry out a thorough analysis using specific, established criteria that
look at strengths and weaknesses as well as successes and failures. We
can use a set of five criteria as a guide: effectiveness, efficiency,
relevance, ethical soundness, sustainability.
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21. CIVIC ENGAGEMENT TO STEM THE TIDE
OF DISTRESS IN POST-CONFLICT ENVIRONMENT:
PRIMING STRATEGIC APPROACHES
Thank You
BT Costantinos, PhD
Africa Humanitarian Action
africahumanitarian.org
doncosty@gmail.com
January 16, 2014
BT Costantinos, PhD - AHA
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