The Alliance for Peacebuilding just released the third issue of their free semi-annual online publication, Building Peace: A Forum for Peace and Security in the 21^st Century. This last issue, Women, Men, and Peace, explores questions of gender and peace through the first-hand realities of peacebuilders across the world. The first legal framework of its kind, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 marked a meaningful step toward gender inclusion in the peacebuilding world and its implementation is significant. Evidenced continually, inclusive peace processes are overwhelmingly more effective in gaining and sustaining peace. Inside are the stories of men and women working towards achieving this ideal, in their words.

Women, Men, and Peace is dedicated to gender equality and a world where women and men collaborate to achieve lasting peace in conflict contexts and features a series of compelling articles, including:

• Azra Jafari, Afghanistan’s only female mayor, shares her experience with gender and peace;
• Don Steinberg of World Learning and previous deputy administrator of USAID discusses of the reality of men in peacebuilding from his experience on the ground;
• Kristen Gresh, Assistant Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, tells us the story behind the exhibit She Who Tells a Story that introduced the pioneering work of twelve leading contemporary Arab and Iranian women photographers; and
• Valerie M. Hudson, a professor of political science, offers an intriguing piece, Secure Women, Secure States, that explores the connection between the status of women and peace. In a series of empirical analyses over 140 nation-states, she found with her colleagues that “the overall level of violence against women was a better predictor of state peacefulness, compliance with international treaty obligations, and relations with neighboring countries than indicators measuring the level of democracy, level of wealth, and civilizational identity of the state:”

“A policy implication of the research findings regarding the link between gender equity and state security is the empowerment of women and girls. If society rejects impunity for violence against women and champions equal voice and equal representation for women in all important decision making, from the home to the state, these old, dysfunctional templates will crumble. The security of women influences the security of states in a way that we, as a world, must finally recognize and act upon. Just as former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted that the subjugation of women is a direct threat to the security of the United States, so the world must develop its own Hillary Doctrine, or pay the price in national and international insecurity.” Valerie M. Hudson, Secure Women, Secure States

Mother, Daughter, Doll series | Boushra Almutawakel (Yemeni, born in 1969) 2010 | Photograph, chromogenic print (archival C-print) © Boushra Almutawakel | Courtesy of the artist and East Wing Contemporary Gallery Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Source: Alliance for Peacebuilding