(This article is a focused expansion of my essay on global mediation in the 2nd edition of the Routledge Handbook for Peacebuilding)
Although the post-war period is often associated with hope and opportunity, in reality, fear and insecurity frequently become the norm as women and girls continue to experience ongoing violence, economic exploitation and discrimination.
Maria O’Reilly
Introduction
Conflict negotiation and mediation in international wars have again grabbed the global spotlight, with the Ukrainian and Iranian wars (strange how we always name these wars after the attacked country) showing the world glimpses of the inner workings of conflict negotiation, mediation and peacekeeping. While there are small technical differences in those terms (mediation, peacekeeping, peace or conflict negotiation), I will use those terms interchangeably here for our purposes.
It is striking how these high-profile negotiations have very little or no female participation at the actual tables. Why is this so? What reasons are given, and what does it cost us if female representation remains where it is?
I want to take a cold, scientific look at this anomaly. I want to test the case for female peace negotiation representation stripped of all legal or emotional arguments, of all political correctness or fairness arguments. All reliance on legal obligations, must for the moment be left aside, as valid as those arguments are. Can a case be made for increased female participation in peace negotiations, and a significant increase at that, based purely on conflict science, on objective considerations that are valid in the heat of the battles that they try to resolve?
Before we can have a clear look at this question, we need to clear the undergrowth around the question, with a very brief look at some of the nuances and obstacles that can be encountered.
Peace negotiations as focus
Our discussion is limited solely to the peace negotiations during or after global war or regional military conflicts, and women mediators and negotiators in the corporate, private and governmental environments are specifically excluded. In those spheres women have proved themselves long ago, their qualification and the value of their contributions beyond any doubt or debate.
A survey of the main arguments against female representation While I set out to prove the case for such increased female representation, there is a surprising lack of good arguments against such representation. We can mention a few of the more prevalent ones in practice. Given the dispassionate nature of our assessment, we need not even pronounce on the moral weight of such arguments, other than being aware of them. Let us accept these arguments on their face value.
The biggest, and most prevalent argument against such representation is, again in practice, a combination of patriarchal prejudices and religious / theological objections. These objections are very often extremely local in their interpretation, and arguably fall well outside the parameters of the foundational religious doctrine being relied upon. In regional conflicts in Africa, for instance, societies where the right of women to be educated beyond a certain level is denied, female negotiators in complex peace negotiations are either banned outright, or complexities and identity group barriers are created.
These categories of barriers create very real obstacles to increased representation, and it is often not feasible or strategic to add such debates to already urgent and volatile war dynamics brought to the negotiation table. Away from such urgencies, these arguments will simply remain, unexamined and untested. This is one of the main reasons why I believe that a scientific argument for such increased representation is necessary. Only on that basis, on an actual strategic advantage, will such arguments and hindrances be reconsidered and amended in actual practice.
The level of female representation
A popular deflection to these debates is to allow certain levels of representation for women, but in carefully curated roles where they can be visible, but have limited persuasive or decision-making power.
To neutralise this, our discussion here is aimed at meaningful representation at all levels of participation of a specific conflict with no exclusions. Here again, my purpose in focusing on a scientific, results-based argument, hopefully becomes clear. Cosmetic appointments and female fronting must not make sense for the decision-makers themselves, with full, sincere representation making sound strategic sense. Policing such matters make any form of legislative or other control exercises in futility.
Women must be at the table because they add a strategic advantage, in this part of the assessment, as only that will, at this early stage, get them that place. The level of women negotiators in serious global conflicts is incredibly low. Studies show that between 1992 and 2019, women constituted only 13% of negotiators, 6% of mediators and 6% of signatories in peace processes worldwide.
(Council on Foreign Relations, 2023)
These paltry figures are further diminished when we recognize that even those figures are bolstered by nominal appointments and compliance exercises. With those introductory points made, we can assess the arguments, and reach our conclusions.
Exclusion –the consequences and arising challenges
In recent years, much of the previously assumed liberal Western top-down diplomatic solutions to global wars have been either rejected or is under tremendous strain. The marked swing towards conflict realism in geopolitics has hastened this change of focus and inspiration.
The so-called Global South and other groups have led the way in these debates and policy shifts, so much so that the entire academic and practical conflict and peacebuilding field now generally, and with few exceptions, accept the wisdom and practical efficiency of local involvement and local solutions in particular conflicts, with outside technical guidance or assistance, where necessary.
This of course is the moment that women’s representation in peace negotiations have been waiting for. These local solution approaches are built on grassroots participation, where local people-centered conflict strategies mean local ownership and responsibility. But is this what we see in practical application?
Irene Fellin and Catherine Turner give us some of the underlying data in assessing this question, using some of their own case studies that support our earlier findings:
It is a well-acknowledged fact that women are underrepresented in the ranks of high-level peace mediators. One recent study, conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations (2019), found that women accounted for only 2 per cent of all mediators appointed between 1992 and 2017. Further research by Aggestam and Svensson (2018) has also sought to map the presence of women mediators in Track I negotiations. According to their research, which adopted a slightly broader definition of mediator, only 8 per cent of these positions were filled by women.
(Turner 285)
An organization involved in peace negotiation and advocacy, the Crisis Management Initiative, sets the often forgotten or ignored background to these assessments:
Women play a key role in introducing a wider variety of viewpoints and narratives of the conflict to expand the scope of sustainable solutions. Without women, a substantial part of society may reject an agreement and refuse to participate in its implementation. Women’s inclusion can pave the way for democratization and more just societies.
(Turner 30)
While women and children suffer a disproportionate degree of harm in wars, they are in practice simply excluded when the time to construct peace deals arrives. Complex new agreements, often involving new limitations on everyday life, are simply discussed, debated and decided upon, even though those implications often affect women far more directly than it do the men involved. If we need any reasons why women should be at those negotiating tables, this is an inescapable validation of their presence.
Most legal systems, election processes and people’s innate sense of fairness would demand that everyone affected by sweeping decisions should have a say in such processes. Why would we exclude that principle from operating at the negotiating table? There are positive signs, at least at institutional level, of a global recognition of the need for this meaningful increase in representativity.
A good place to start any research for more comprehensive arguments can start with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325(2000) (UNSCR 1325), a positive and very detailed argument that made normative commitments to increase women’s participation in peace and security negotiations. This development is mirrored in a variety of extremely competent and effective mediation and negotiation networks globally that actively advance these developments.
This foundational document (Resolution 1325) served as the cornerstone for an inspiring movement to correct these deficiencies in women’s representation. Known by its acronym WPS in the trenches, the Women, Peace, and Security agenda recognizes the disproportionate effects of conflict on women and girls and their underrepresented role in peace negotiation.
The work emanating from the WPS agenda has been truly transformative, and in that process four pillars requiring focused study and progress were identified, being participation, protection, prevention, and relief and recovery. The grim representation figures we looked at earlier saw the benefit of the application of these focused studies and practical applications.
For example, 2021 produced a finding where 32% of the significant peace agreements reached that year contain gender-related provisions, up from the 26% in 2020, with local agreements containing even more detailed gender provisions (UN Women 2023). Here we should not be unduly satisfied with statistical improvements.
Provisions for women’s full representation do not always translate into full implementation in practice, as the well-known example of the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia shows. These backsliding results can best be countered by ongoing and sustained financial support and the effective monitoring of post-negotiation standards and assessments. More positively, over 100 countries have adopted National Action Plans on WPS (flowing from 1325 NAPs 2023), truly underscoring the value of WPS as guiding principle.
Maria O’Reilly, a Senior Lecturer at London’s Leeds Beckett University, raises another troubling result from these studies, a type of two-steps-forward, one-step-back problem:
Despite these developments, women continue to be marginalised from official peace processes (Council on Foreign Relations 2023). Only around half of all peace agreements concluded between 2000 and 2016 contain gender equality provisions and references to women's rights (True and Riveros-Morales 2019). There is also a significant gap between, on the one hand, international rhetoric highlighting the importance of advancing inclusive and gender-responsive peacebuilding, and, on the other hand, levels of donor funding available for supporting women's participation and gender inclusion in peacebuilding (Davies and True 2022). Worryingly, feminist peace activists have noted a ‘staggering pushback against women's rights’ in recent years (WILPF 2020: 9). Gender-responsive peacebuilding is therefore far from guaranteed. This situation points to the need to explore how (re)building peace may (re)construct gendered forms of injustice, and insecurity in post-conflict contexts, rather than empowering women (and other marginalised groups) to achieve political, economic and social transformation in the aftermath of war.
My own article in the Routledge volume highlights the following challenge in the fight for true representation:
Mediation processes tend to be gendered in the sense that women are usually given specific roles; their inclusion tends to be circumscribed and ghettoized. For the most part, women are given pink jobs and excluded from high powered political negotiations.
(Kwasi, 2021: 100)
These serious challenges will doubtlessly be exacerbated by certain of the second Trump administration’s clear pushbacks against the so-called “DEI hires” across government agencies in general, and the senior members of the administration’s decisions thus far in practice.
The case for a meaningful increase of female representation at negotiation
I would like to argue that even the arguments so far should remove any valid objection to meaningfully increased women’s negotiation representation at peace negotiations, but I can also anticipate objections that even these arguments are still based on fairness alone. I can hear a politician or a general sneer “This is an important negotiation, we must leave it to the professionals, we cannot afford any mistakes here.”
Of course I will concede, without any argument, that these high stakes environments cannot be expected to even consider politically correct or gender-based concessions for concessions’ sake only. The parties must, in these environments, be allowed to simply present their best representatives at these negotiating tables. And that is exactly what we have set out to prove: that a high-stakes conflict negotiation team that includes appropriately qualified and experienced women negotiators is the objective best option, as a strategic decision, not a concession.
Let us however, in a spirit of generosity, accept that our arguments thus far are not yet conclusive. Let’s look at the science, and accept that “we cannot afford any mistakes here”. Let’s look at what the hard conflict science tells us.
1. Dr Elena B. Stavrevska, a senior peace scholar, brings us the first volley of objective facts:
However, with the advent of the WPS agenda, there has been growing acknowledgement of the pivotal role that women play in these processes. One 2015 study found that peace agreements were more likely to last at least two years when women were involved in the peace negotiation process (O'Reilly, Súilleabháin & Paffenholz 2015). Specifically, the integration of women as negotiators, intermediaries, signatories, and observers enhances the stability of these accords, raising the prospects of the agreement enduring for a span of two years by 20% and extending its longevity to 15 years by 35% (Krause, Krause & Bränfors 2018). In recent years, there has been a discernible shift from merely quantifying women's involvement to emphasising their substantive engagement.
2. The above point speaks to the fact that women negotiators often approach resolution with a more practical mind-set, asking questions beyond the short-term. How will we raise the money necessary for that, what happens when someone breaches the agreement, and so on. But there is also hard data for not just the stability of the agreement, but the chances of concluding it in the first place. Stavrevska again:
An examination of 40 peace processes over a quarter-century illustrates that whenever women's groups held considerable sway over discussions, an agreement invariably materialised (Paffenholz et al. 2016). Furthermore, even with moderate influence from these groups, consensus typically emerged (ibid.). A conspicuous decline in successful agreements was noted in their absence (ibid.). Women's groups play a pivotal role in peace processes, influencing not just the probability of reaching consensus but also the depth and breadth of the issues addressed. Research (O'Neill & Vary 2011) indicates that peace endeavours with substantive participation of women tend to delve into crucial areas like land ownership, pivotal social services, sexual violence, and misconduct by both governmental and insurgent forces.
3. What about specific high-profile examples of such peace negotiations? Women negotiators and technical advisors in the Philippines, during the 2014 negotiations in the war between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front managed to build trust and effective communication between parties that other negotiators were not able to achieve. African regional and cross-border conflicts where women negotiators played a pivotal role in achieving peace make up a healthy percentage of the case studies and statistics we accessed earlier.
The 2023 UN Council on Foreign Relations reported that since the adoption and active pursuit of UNSCR 1325 “there has been a widespread understanding that peace processes benefit from women's participation, leading to more sustainable and effectively implemented agreements.
Other consequences of underrepresentation
The debate about increased representation is not just about acquiring some space at negotiating tables. The arguments, and the exclusion of women from such meaningful roles, has a much darker side than just that. Researchers Andreas T. Hirblinger and Dana M. Landau remind us that:
In fact, much of the women’s empowerment discourse has focused on vulnerabilities to sexual and gender-based violence. Women have been portrayed as victims of war in need of protection. The rationale of inclusion then is to counteract women’s vulnerability by increasing their role in peace processes (Väyrynen, 2010: 147). While the view of women as peaceful victims, often reproduced in arguments for their inclusion in peacemaking, has empowered women to mobilize politically, it also reaffirms traditional gender roles that marginalize women in political life (Väyrynen, 2010; Aharoni, 2017: 311–12), with possible disempowering effect.
(Turner 119)
Women are victims in war, often wars started without their consent or approval. To continue to view them patronizingly as just that, however, has created and perpetuated generational cycles of excluding women from the consequences of these wars, as victims but also as co-creators of the peace that follows, or the structures that are put in place in order to prevent or mitigate further wars. Always the victim, always just watching from the sidelines.
Even this rather self-evident argument in favour of increased representation I do not want to offer as an emotion-based argument. Given these considerations, including women who are now given an active and real role to play in the futures of their families, at the very tables where these decisions are made, the dynamics of voting, of persuasion, of legitimacy, of sustainability of agreements all change for the better, and becomes a more manageable project.
Qualifications and experience of women peace negotiators
In the all too rare events where meaningful women’s representation is discussed at a senior level, their lack of qualifications or experience sometimes get mooted. This is easily disposed of. The level of knowledge, skill and technical know-how will depend on the complexities of the specific conflict being negotiated. A working level of conflict competency for basic negotiation can be transferred in a matter of hours or days. Time permitting, advanced and tailor-made courses can be designed and rolled out inexpensively and easily. Experience then follows on sincere and consistent application. Diplomatic or UN programs exist, and private initiatives should be encouraged.
Excursus: the application of the female peace negotiator for the South African conflict environment
I would love to see these arguments also find a practical footing in South Africa. You may choose to believe that our communities are not at war, but with the military called out to assist with rampant crime, obscene daily death statistics and other urban conflict causes, some may differ with you on that rejection. Here at least we have a strong tradition of female activists and women learning their conflict management skills in the streets where they live. Our women politicians play active and irreplaceable roles in the managing or resolution of some of our most complex cyclical conflicts.
Standard religious, patriarchal and legal stumbling blocks either do not exist here, or they are much less pronounced generally. But it can be so much better. The negotiation of peace, whether formal or informal, community incentives, law and order and security campaigns and initiatives still far too often get debated and decided for women, without meaningful representation at the highest levels. If we consider the fact that approximately half of the involved communities consist of women, that both war and peace affect their lives and the lives of their children so directly, if we acknowledge that the process to train willing participants to an effective level of conflict peace negotiating skills will take but a few hours or days, we start running out of reasons why this is not already done, as a matter of urgency.
As we can see from our earlier discussion, this is not a patronising or symbolic idea, no one is being asked to do any favours. Diversifying peace negotiating teams by the focused expansion of women’s representation is a skills upgrade for the group, for the community.
Conclusion
The argument for meaningfully increased women’s representation in peace negotiations is one that is not getting the attention it deserves in all the right places. High quality work is consistently produced at the academic level, corporate negotiating teams have simply reacted immediately and followed the benefits so apparent from the abovementioned studies, and yet, the actual praxis of this, where it matters, is a becalmed area where the topic hardly gets raised, much less discussed.
I believe that a very subtle, but crucial strategic mistake that is made in the existing efforts at increasing such representation, is the area of focus of these arguments. The legal, feminist, moral and equity arguments in favour of such representation are all, without exception, self-evidently correct and should speak for themselves. But they do not. They still require the gatekeepers to make concessions, to agree to “do the right thing”. Depending on such concessions limits any such campaign needlessly. Equality will not necessarily be given based on those arguments alone. I submit then that these arguments can, and should, continue to be used, but that the primary focus, the mainstay of the persuasive arguments, should be developed around the examples we considered here.
A persuasive, compelling argument can clearly be made for that urgent, meaningful expansion of women peace negotiators, and not as a favour, not as a gender equity argument, but as a cold, statistical strategic imperative.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. An essential read on modern peacemaking and related mediation: Rethinking Peace Mediation: Challenges of Contemporary Peacemaking Practice, by Catherine Turner et al, Bristol University Press (2021)
2. The Routledge Handbook of Intercultural Mediation, edited by Dominic Busch, Routledge (2023)
3. My article in the iconic second edition of Routledge’s Peacebuilding handbook, Routledge (2025) (Chapter 19, Mediation and Peacebuilding), edited by Roger Mac Ginty, and the chapter by Dr Elena B. Stavrevska (Chapter 3, Women, Peace and Security).
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.)
(c) Andre Vlok
April 2026