Women to take lead role in peacebuilding

Participants at a stakeholders meeting to discuss peace building, before, during and after the November 7 elections have lauded the introduction of an initiative dubbed: “Women Situation Room (WSR) in Ghana”.

The Women Situation Room is a concept first implemented under the Angie-Brooks International centre during the Liberian presidential and legislative elections.

The concept promotes the active participation of youth and women in peace and security effort and empower them to engage in peace processes and conflict prevention mechanism.

The participants maintained that women are not passive observers when it come to politics and conflicts but rather play critical roles in the background.

Ms Levinia Addae-Mensah, Programmes Director of the West Africa Network for PeaceBuilding (WANEP) said the WSR is an opportunity for women to be part of the peace building process since election situation rooms are powerful in helping to define the post-election status of a country.

She explained that due to its expensive work in elections and experience in running election situation rooms, WANEP has been approached by the Angie Brookes International centre, the initiators of the WSR to be the conveners of the room in Ghana.

WANEP’s own election situation room in various countries in the sub-region was anchored on its early warning system, based on country-specific indicators.

Ms Addae-Mensah said the WSR would be run concurrently with WANEP’s election situation room, which would be launched later.

She said WANEP would put its expertise and partnerships with key stakeholders at the disposal of the WSR.

Ms Hilary Gbedemah, Rector of the Law Institute and representative of Ghana on the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), said the process of the WSR, once internalised, “would be something we can used all the time, not only re-actively but proactively in issues of conflict”.

“When communities embrace this concept, it becomes part of them and they will be able to control the incidents that give cause for conflicts and can rise against it.

“Election season is a time everything comes together, the simmering conflicts and disagreements find their eruption in the process and so this is as good a time for anyone to begin such an initiative that would last throughout,” she said.

Ms Gbedemah said women are not laid back on issues of conflicts; they have opinions on conflicts, suffer its effects, and sometimes drawn into its various roles, but are left out during peace building efforts.

She said women are not usually found at the negotiating tables and formal processes for the same reasons that their participation in public decision making was low.

She said women once welcomed, play important roles in brokering peace, adding that WANEP could learn some lessons from the WSR to enhance it election situation room.

She lauded WANEP's role in bringing the WSR to Ghana, saying, it ensures that the partisanship and the perception of government involvement is completely taken out since conflicts do not affect people on partisan lines.

“When an initiative can be seen as involving everyone then 80 per cent of the battle has been won,” she said.

Janet Saney-Kumah, Director Capacity Development and Outreach at the National Peace Council said the idea is nouvelle one and in the right direction.

She said the stakes are quite high for of the major political parties in this year’s elections, which could lead to very tense situations thus the need for all peace building actors to work to maintain peace.

She said women are very strategic to peace building.