U.N. told to see women as peacemakers, not victims

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- Raped, made homeless and forced across borders in wars around the world, women asked the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to make sure they have an equal role with men at peace negotiations.

Angela King, the U.N. special adviser on women, said the United Nations had to appoint more women as civilian or special envoys in charge of peacekeeping missions and make sure women's issues were part of each operation.

Noting that the United Nations did this in Namibia and South Africa, King, in her speech to the council on Tuesday, said this had little or no impact on its missions that followed in the early 1990s -- in Cambodia or Bosnia.

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"Women are more likely to confide in women peacekeepers about matter such as rape and other sexual violence," she told the council. "Women are frequently less hierarchical in dealing with local communities and listen more, thereby having better insights into the root causes of conflict."

The Security Council is considering a resolution, sponsored by Namibia and expected to be adopted at the end of the month, that would ask Secretary-General Kofi Annan to ensure U.N. peacekeepers are trained on the protection, rights and needs of women. It also urges equal representation of women at all decision-making levels in trying to settle conflicts.

Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women, told the council that of the 61 special envoys appointed for peace negotiations or peacekeeping operations "not a single one is a woman."

Special "gender advisers" have been appointed for Sierra Leone, Kosovo and East Timor. But she said "there is no acceptable rationale for protection of women in some countries and not others."

The handful of women ambassadors at the United Nations have been collecting names since 1996 of women available for decision-making positions, including those involved in war and peace situations, Ambassador Claudia Fritsche of Liechtenstein reported to the 15-member council, in charge of peacekeeping.

Singapore's ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, however, warned that not all women marched for peace. "It is true that women have often sought peace but it also true that women have on occasions displayed equal propensity to encourage human rights violation."

"Lady Macbeth was certainly no solitary exception, he said without giving examples. "Some (women) have marched for war. We see this on our CNN screens daily."

On Monday, representatives of grass roots groups, spoke to council members privately about the women and peace.

"We must be at the table, at every table, in equal numbers," Cora Weiss, a veteran U.S. peace activist, told a news conference. "We must not be ignored in preventing war or in resolving violent conflicts."

In a statement to the council, the women, representing some 100 groups, said violence against girls and women was not an accident of war but a "strategic weapon" used to spread terror, destabilize society, break resistance, reward soldiers and extract information.

The object, women from human rights and peace groups said, was to view women as negotiating partners, not just victims.

Isha Dyfan, a lawyer and activist in Sierra Leone now in exile in the United States, said thousands of babies in her homeland were "manifestation of a lack of discipline among peacekeeping troops," mainly from West African nations who returned the country's elected government to power. They have been replaced by a 13,000-member U.N. force.

"There must be a standard means of holding peacekeepers to account when they commit violations of codes of conduct and international law against the women they are there to protect," she said.

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