Role of Women in Peace Building

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Theme: Education and Social Development Sub-Theme: Education, Gender and Social Development Title: Women in Peace building and reconciliation for social development By Mary, Daniel and Joyce Abstract A lot of efforts have been put on gender sensitive programmes and affirmative action to ensure increased participation of women in all spheres. Despite these efforts, women still face the challenge of contributing meaningfully to the social development process and are still often marginalized by community development processes that tend to be male-dominated. The exclusion of women is detrimental to development programming: the involvement of women lends itself to the establishment of representative and responsive programs at the local level and to increased democratization of community structures and programming. As half of the population, women deserve to participate in all processes that affect their lives and well-being. 0ne such programmes is peace building and reconciliation. Women’s involvement in peacebuilding is as old as their experience of violence (Schirch and Sewak, 2005). However the role of women in the peace and reconciliation efforts has never been acknowledged. The discussion in this paper is guided by conflict transformation theory proposed by John Paul Lederach in 1997. This paper therefore is a discussion on women participation in peace building and reconciliation as a fundamental aspect for social development. The paper discusses the role played by women in different countries in peace building for sustainable social development. It also makes recommendations for greater women inclusion in social development. Introduction African Governments, with support from development partners (including donors), have developed policies and programmes for social and

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