Towards gender-equal peace: Ensuring women's meaningful participation in peace processes

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos, the latest winner of the Oslo Forum's Peacewriter Prize, proposes solutions to close the gap on women’s meaningful participation in peace negotiations. Below is an extract from her award-winning paper. It is published by our content partner, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.Women’s meaningful participation in peace negotiations and implementing peace agreements is a key tenet of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2020. Beyond being a right – enshrined in the WPS agenda and other international laws – women’s participation has been shown to positively impact the likelihood of achieving a peace agreement between the parties, the durability of the agreement, and the quality of the provisions – in particular, the inclusion of gender-responsive provisions.