Women are still rarely present where the end of wars is negotiated, even though their participation makes peace more durable. President Macky Sall has made their place in peace processes one of the priorities of his candidacy for UN Secretary-General.
Absent from the tables where peace is decided. In the peace negotiations of recent decades, women have made up only a small share of mediators and signatories. In families and villages, those whom war strikes most directly weigh least on the agreements meant to end it.
A peace that holds better. United Nations work shows that a peace agreement negotiated with the participation of women has markedly greater chances of lasting. Their presence widens the subjects covered to schools as well as combatants and anchors the agreement in society rather than in the balance of force alone.
Resolution 1325. Adopted in 2000 by the Security Council, it calls both for protecting women from the violence of war and for bringing them into the decisions that end it. Twenty-five years later, that commitment still awaits its application.
A power of appointment. The Secretary-General appoints the mediators and representatives who lead peace processes. He can therefore require that women be among them and take a seat in every negotiation they lead, where the fate of whole populations is settled.
Opening the negotiating tables. To bring women into those negotiations, President Macky Sall draws on twelve years as head of state and on the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. The vision statement filed with the United Nations bears the mark of that experience: its proposals, development conceived together with peace and security, a renewed multilateralism, a better-governed Organization, are written there as obligations.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
Security Council Resolution 1325 and the United Nations' work on women, peace and security are public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net