Civil War Peace Agreements and Gender Inclusion

In 2000, The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 actively promoted the inclusion of women and their perspectives in peace processes, as well as promoted a gender perspective in post-conflict recovery and institution building. The number of gender provisions in civil war peace agreements has increased since 2001 as a result, but not all such provisions serve the same purpose. In this study, we present a provision typology that divides gender provisions into those that seek to empower women and compare them to those that address conflict victimization. We suggest that the context under which the peace agreement takes place, and conditions of the conflict itself, should influence where empowerment and victimization provisions are employed if they are to have the type of impact sought by the UNSC and improve post-conflict outcomes. We test our propositions on all civil war peace agreements occurring between 1990-2018. Findings indicate that gender provisions designed to empower women are unlikely to emerge in societies where they are perhaps most needed. Comparatively, it appears there is less resistance to gender provisions aimed at addressing conflict-related victimization.