Understanding the gendered legacies of armed conflict : women‘s rights and lives during armed conflict and transition periods and governance

The paper reviews existing literature on women in the immediate post-conflict transition period, identifying areas that scholars, activists, and policy-makers have defined as critically important topics pertaining to governance and women’s inclusion. These include: a) women‘s participation in formal peace processes; b) women‘s participation in drafting and ratifying constitutions; c) addressing the motivations and demands of women in revolutionary armed groups, and assessing possible links with women‘s rights movements in the transition periods; and d) women and transitional justice, particularly women‘s role, representation and experiences of justice, accountability and redress in truth-telling commissions, national and international tribunals, and reparation programs

Children and Reparation: Past lessons and new directions

This paper is among the first to analyse children's experiences of reparations programmes, taking into consideration programmes from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The violence, abuse and hardship that girls and boys suffer during armed conflict and political violence under authoritarian and dictatorial regimes continues to severely affect their development long after the end of war or demise of the violent regime. They experience violations of their civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, including the rights to life, freedom of movement and association, education, health and family, which embraces the right to knowing and being cared for by their parents. Their rights to development and to a safe and healthy environment are also violated. It is not possible to fully repair children who have experienced such harms. Nonetheless, girls and boys have a right to remedy and reparation under international law – to benefit from reparation in material, symbolic, individual and collective forms. This working paper draws from reparation as conceived in the United Nations Resolution on Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law (2005). It offers a concise overview of trends in reparation programmes set up to address situations of armed conflict and under authoritarian and dictatorial regimes where children are subjected to systematic forms of grave violence. The authors demonstrate the failure to name and address grave rights violations against children in www.unicef-irc.org.past reparations programmes and efforts, much to the detriment of surviving children. The authors argue that at the heart of much of the violence against children in situations of armed conflict is the terrible damage done to relationships and social fabric among individuals, communities, societies and cultures. Recognizing the need to address the healing of relationships and reweaving of social fabric, in part through reparation, the paper offers suggestions for reparation approaches that could lead to better informing and shaping reparation responses for child victims.children in armed conflicts; juvenile justice; right of self-expression; right to care and protection; transitional justice;

Gender and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration:reviewing and advancing the field

Processes of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) seek to improve the security and stability of post-conflict societies. This chapter explores a gender-focused approach to DDR that has three primary components: conducting gender analyses of standards of support for women in DDR programs; prioritizing parallel programs for women; and demilitarizing masculinity and femininity. Historical difficulties in establishing DDR programs that respond to the needs of women are explained by four challenges: exclusion of women due to restrictive definitions of “combatants”; programming that does not reflect the specific experiences of women; a reluctance to look beyond traditional DDR programs toward alternates; and a failure to address the militarized masculinities of male combatants. The chapter concludes by suggesting that DDR programs move toward a “portfolio view.” This would allow participants greater flexibility to choose the programming that best meets their needs by providing participants a menu of options