Greater integration with CEDAW can bring accountability to women, peace & security
Speaking today in Cairo, Karama’s founder and CEO Hibaaq Osman has emphasised the vital importance of accountability in the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda, noting that greater integration with the CEDAW processes offers potential to hold governments accountable.
The remarks came at the Regional Consultation for Arab States on the elaboration of CEDAW General Recommendation No. 40 on the equal and inclusive representation of women in decision-making systems.
The draft recommendation includes reference to the importance of women’s participation in prevention and resolving conflict, but this can and should be strengthened in order to better integrate the women, peace and security - for which there is no formal accountability mechanism - with the work of the CEDAW Committee, which holds regular sessions with governments to assess progress on the elimination of discrimination against women.
Previous CEDAW General Recommendations have linked the women, peace and security agenda, as does draft recommendation 40, but Hibaaq stated that further integration can be a means of stemming the ongoing securitization of the women, peace and security agenda, and reorientate the agenda back to its feminist roots, refocusing it on preventing conflict.
Read Hibaaq’s full comments below
Hibaaq Osman remarks to the Regional Consultation for Arab States on the elaboration of CEDAW General Recommendation No. 40, 16 April 2023.
CEDAW is the lodestar of the women’s movement, the many steps forward that we have made since flow from it, from Beijing, to 1325, to the Istanbul Convention, to the Maputo Protocol.
But 45 years on from the adoption of CEDAW, we do not find ourselves in a world where all forms of discrimination against women have been eliminated.
So the system of General Recommendations are vital for ensuring that CEDAW continues to be relevant to the needs of women and girls.
Agreed 10 years ago, General Recommendation no. 30 on women in conflict prevention, conflict, and post-conflict situations includes recommendations regarding the implementation of women, peace and security. This is extremely important because 1325 and its related resolutions are commitments made by governments, but there is no proper mechanism to hold governments to account for the implementation of this vital agenda.
It is extremely important that the CEDAW Committee uses its power to hold the feet of governments to the fire for implementation of the WPS agenda.
We have very few accountability mechanisms, so we need the Committee to flex its muscle on implementation of women, peace and security.
The draft recommendation 40 recognises the importance of women’s participation in conflict resolution, and that women continue to be excluded from these processes.
It is significant that the recommendation emphasises women’s role in conflict prevention, but we need it to go further by truly underscoring the transformative potential of women’s participation in prevention of conflict.
As we see the WPS agenda increasingly being used to make war safer for women - the securitization of the WPS agenda - we need this recommendation to be centred around why women’s political participation and representation is so important.
As my colleague Zahra’ Langhi put it in relation to the women who blew the whistle on vote -buying in the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum: women do not want to participate simply to get their own slice of the cake, we want to change the recipe.
When we talk about women, peace and security now, prevention is the overlooked element of the agenda, but in many ways it is the most vital pillar because we do not want to find ourselves in conflict in the first place.
This is particularly important for us here in the Arab region as we are currently seeing:
in Gaza the deadliest conflict for children in modern times
In Sudan, a conflict that has led to the largest internal displacement crisis in the world
And that in the four months of this year alone, 15 of the 22 members of the League of Arab states have experienced deaths caused by armed conflict
In order to do something about this, we need to address the causes of conflict, issues like militarism, imperialism, exploitation. Women’s participation is absolutely vital for doing that.
This is why we want to see Equal and Inclusive Representation of Women in Decision-Making Systems. We want the systems to change so that the outcomes are changed. We want inclusive, representative politics so that the escalation of conflict is not a normalised outcome of failed politics.
It is important that 1325 be a touchstone within General Recommendation 40, that it is not simply left to General Recommendation 30, because 1325 is not simply a concern for states experiencing or emerging from conflict.
This agenda is women, PEACE and security. For too long, states who are not directly experiencing conflict have not prioritised implementation of the WPS agenda.
We need to do more to ensure that all states recognise their responsibility to put 1325 into action, including the pillar on women’s participation in conflict prevention and resolution.
Because women’s participation is so central to the maintenance and promotion of peace, the implementation of the WPS agenda needs to be a greater part of recommendation 40.