Absent or Invisible? Women Mediators and the United Nations
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12532 |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Author | Catherine Turner |
Absent or Invisible? Women Mediators and the
United Nations
Catherine Turner
Durham University
Abstract
Since the adoption in 2000 of the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 a significant body of research has emerged ana-
lysing the importance of women’s participation in peace negotiations. ‘Participation’represents one of the core pillars of the
Women Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) adopted by the Security Council to redress the exclusion of women from the realm
of peace and security. This work has highlighted the benefits of including women and has highlighted the different roles that
women play within peacebuilding. However it has largely overlooked the specific category of women in the role of mediator.
This is despite clear policy commitments throughout WPS resolutions adopted by the Security Council that call for greater rep-
resentation of women within high-level UN mediation teams. This article seeks to address this gap by focusing specifically on
the role of mediator, and the relative invisibility of women in that particular role within UN mediation efforts. The article takes
as its starting point existing legal and policy frameworks that call for the inclusion of greater number of women in mediation
roles, and seeks to understand why these goals are not being achieved.
Policy Implications
•Greater transparency is needed in the high-level appointments process to ensure greater diversity.
•There needs to be more strategic co-ordination between UN departments to ensure coherence between initiatives to
advance women mediators.
•States have a key role to play in ensuring gender equality in the nomination process for high level appointments.
•The definition of mediation should include Track II and Track III activity to give a fuller picture of mediation activity.
In his December 2016 inauguration speech, the newly
elected Secretary-General of the United Nations, former Por-
tuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, indicated that one
of the priorities of his term in office would be conflict pre-
vention.
1
He emphasised the need to take more creative
approaches to prevent the escalation of conflict, including
notably a much stronger emphasis on the use of mediation
and creative diplomacy. Prevention, it is said, is better than
cure, particularly when conflicts such as Syria, Yemen, South
Sudan and Israel/Palestine are proving so difficult to ‘cure’.
The emphasis on mediation marks the culmination of a
longer process of review within the UN of the ways it
responds to violent conflict. A series of reports evaluating
the UN’s peacebuilding architecture led to the 2016 adoption
of the ‘Sustaining Peace Agenda’, marking a commitment to
increased coherence across the organisation in co-ordinating
peacebuilding activities (United Nations, 2005, 2012, 2015a;
United Nations, 2015b; UN Women, 2015). Security Council
Resolution 2282 (United Nations, 2016) emphasises ‘the
importance of a comprehensive approach to sustaining
peace, particularly through the prevention of conflict and
addressing its root causes, [ ... ] and promoting [ ... ] inclu-
sive dialogue and mediation’(Preamble). This priority is also
accompanied by a commitment by the new Secretary Gen-
eral to address a persistent problem within the UN –the
need to ensure gender parity (UN Women, 2012a). Resolu-
tion 2242 (2015) reaffirms the importance of women’s partic-
ipation in peace and security, as well as stressing the
importance of increasing women’s leadership and decision-
making in relation to conflict prevention. The bringing
together of these two priorities, namely an increased role for
mediation in international peace and security and a commit-
ment to increasing the participation of women in leadership
roles within the UN, presents a good opportunity to consider
the role of women in conflict mediation.
Since the adoption in 2000 of the landmark Security
Council Resolution 1325, in which the Security Council
recognised for the first time the need to include women in
its peace and security work, a significant body of research
has emerged analysing the importance of women’s partici-
pation in peace negotiations. This work has highlighted the
benefits of including women and emphasised the different
roles that women play within peacebuilding (Anderlini and
Tinman, 2010; Paffenholz, 2015; United Nations, 2010a).
However it has largely overlooked the specific category of
women in the role of mediator. This is despite clear policy
commitments throughout WPS resolutions adopted by the
Security Council that call for greater representation of
women within high-level UN mediation teams (SCR 1325
(2000); SCR 1889 (2009); SCR 2122 (2013); UN Strategic
©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2018) 9:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12532
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 2 . May 2018
244
Research Article
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