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Expert Workshop - 12 May, 2006 |
"Gender Relations and Conflict: Causes, Course, and Strategies"
Organizer: The Feminist Institute, Project Group "Promoting Democracy under Conditions of State Fragility" (Heinrich Boell Foundation)
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The Challenge
To find effective approaches for easing crises and violent conflicts, careful analysis of the respective causes and backgrounds, as well as precise knowledge of the local conditions are essential. The same is also true for developing sustainable |
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| strategies for the construction, or rather, the reordering, of post-conflict societies. We know from numerous academic studies that war and all forms of violent conflict – from state fragility to state failure – have economic, political and historico-cultural causes. As a result, such conflicts often escalate ethno-regionally. |
 | Less familiar are studies that point out how gender relations, and especially shifts in gender relationships within societies, play an important role in conflict dynamics. Thus, it is imperative to include gender relations in conflict and actor analysis. Only then can appropriate and sustainable strategies for conflict prevention and management be developed and implemented.
The Expert Talk
In its political work in conflict and crisis regions, the Heinrich Boell Foundation is concerned with the question of how democratization processes can be promoted and supported by external actors in post-war regions or in fragile states. The project group “Promoting Democracy under Conditions of State Fragility” takes up important debates on this issue.
Together with this project group, the Feminist Institute in the Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted an expert talk around the following question: What role do gender relations play in the progression of crises and violent conflicts, as well as in conflict management? The aims were on one hand, to give incentives to fill the many blind spots in academic discourse. On the other, to develop and discuss strategies for the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s political work in promoting democracy.
Key Questions
- How are gender relationships intertwined with other conflict factors?
- How can shifts in gender relationships and the destruction of gender identities influence the readiness towards violence and the susceptibility to conflict of societies and communities?
- What does the interrelation between community-building, identity and gender influence the emergence, manifestation and management of violent conflicts?
- How is the influence of globalization processes on the creation of (new) conceptions of gender related to violent conflicts?
- What conclusions and strategies can be drawn from practical experience in different conflict regions?
- What consequences does this have for conflict prevention and management, as well as for the concepts of cooperation and support through external actors in crisis regions?
At the expert talk on 12 May, 2006, six national and international experts presented their theoretical and practical insights. These were then discussed among approximately 35 specialists working in civil conflict management, development cooperation and academia. Below you can find the expert input and the results of intense debate.
Program
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9.30 am
Welcome and Introduction
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Dr. Antonie Nord
Head of the Project Group "Promoting Democracy under Conditions
of State Fragility", Heinrich Boell Foundation Berlin |
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Gitti Hentschel
Executive Director, Feminist Institute in the Heinrich Boell Foundation |
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| 10.00 am |
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| Part I |
Causes and Courses of Violent Conflicts |
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Prof. Dr. Ruth Seifert (Germany)
Focus: Causes and Gender Dynamics
Region: Southeastern Europe |
Contribution >> Download PDF |
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Dr. Simona Sharoni (Israel/USA)
Focus: Causes and Courses from a Gender Perspective
Region: Middle East-, Northern Ireland, Comparison |
Contribution >> Download PDF |
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Dr. Dubravka Zarkov (Netherlands)
Focus: Relationship between Gender, Identities,
Ethnicities and Armed Conflict in the Context of Globalization |
Contribution >> Download PDF |
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Discussion with all participants |
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Facilitator: Gitti Hentschel, Feminist Institute,
Heinrich Boell Foundation |
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| 1.45 pm |
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| Part II |
Strategies for Conflict Prevention and Conflict
Transformation |
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Rachel Wareham (GB)
Urgent Action Fund for Women's Rights, Afghanistan |
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Iulia Kharashvili (Georgia)
Training for Peace Building, Georgia |
Contribution >> Download PDF |
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Ndeye Sow (Senegal)
International Alert, Conflict Prevention and Transformation |
Contribution >> Download PDF |
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Discussion with all participants |
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Facilitator: Julia Scherf, Heinrich Boell Foundation Berlin |
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| 4.15 pm |
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| Final Panel |
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Conclusions for the Work of Heinrich Boell Foundation in Supporting Democracy |
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Dr. Simona Sharoni (Israel/USA)
Feminist Scholar |
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Rachel Wareham (GB)
Urgent Action Fund for Women's Rights |
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Marion Müller (Pakistan/Afghanistan) (unable to attend)
Regional Office of hbs |
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Comments by the Participants |
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Facilitator: Dr. Antonie Nord, Heinrich Boell Foundation Berlin |
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5.30 pm
End of Expert Session, Reception
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Speakers and Facilitators
 Gitti Hentschel, Feminist Institute in the Heinrich Boell Foundation
She studied Communications and Social Education (M.A.); Since April, 2004, director of the Feminist Institute in the Heinrich Boell Foundation; free-lance journalist, lecturer at the Technical and Humboldt Universities in Berlin, co-editor of the weekly newspaper, Freitag; executive board member of a women’s refugee organization in Berlin. Member of the steering committee of the German Women’s Security Council. In 1979, co-founder of the daily independent newspaper, taz; editor at the taz for six years; afterwards, free-lance journalist, women’s representative at the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, and speaker for women’s university representatives in Germany.
Read her introduction to the workshop >> Download PDF
Iulia Kharashvili, Georgia
She graduated from Tbilisi State University, department of physics. After her displacement from Abkhazia in 1993 she started to work with IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). Since 1997 she works for UNDP on peacebuilding and refugee issues. In 2004 she was awarded by Voices of Courage award by the IRC Women’s Commission for Refugee Children and Women, New York, “for work for children and adolescents in conflict zones, as well as research into the economic, psychological and medical effects of migration.”
Read her contribution to the workshop >> Download PDF
 Dr. Antonie Nord, Heinrich Boell Foundation Germany
She is Head of the Africa Department at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin. Antonie studied political science and economic geography in Hamburg. She holds a masters degree in political science and a PhD degree from Hamburg University. After working as scientific assistant and lecturer at Hamburg University, she was a senior research assistant at the German Overseas Institute in Hamburg. Her research was focused on democratization processes in the Third World, development politics and violent conflicts/conflict prevention. For research and study purposes, she spent one year in Ethiopia and one year in Namibia.
Julia Scherf, Heinrich Boell Foundation Germany
She is Head of Desk Asia, Heinrich Boell Foundation Berlin. She holds a Masters of Arts, Political Science, University of Madison WI, USA and a Diplom in Political Science/Economy/American Studies from Goethe University Frankfurt/ M, Germany. She has been working for Heinrich Boell Foundation since 1995, including five years as Office Director Israel in Tel Aviv.
 Ruth Seifert, University of Applied Sciences Regensburg
Prof. of Sociology at the University of Applied Sciences in Regensburg, Germany. Studied Social Sciences and American Studies in Munich and Philadelphia. Current interests: the sociology of ethno-nationalist conflicts, gender and armed conflict, gender and the military. Most recent publications: "Nationalism and Beyond: Memory and Identity in Post-War Kosovo/a" in: Lynne Christine Alice (ed.), Ethnocentrism, Minority Rights and Civil Society in the Balkans, Peter Lang forthcoming; "Discourses on Female Nature Revisited: Soldiers and Mothers in the German Army", in: Women´s Military Studies Group (ed.), Women in the Military. Where They Stand, Washington forthcoming.
Read her contribution to the workshop >> Download PDF
Simona Sharoni, USA
She is an internationally-known feminist scholar, researcher and activist. She holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and is the author of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women's Resistance, (Syracuse University Press, 1995).
Read her contribution to the workshop >> Download PDF
 Ndeye Sow, International Alert
She is working as Senior Adviser on the Africa/Great Lakes programme at International Alert. She has 18 years experience in developing, implementing, managing and evaluating programmes in the field of Gender and Development and Gender and Conflict Trans-formation. She has held positions at Abantu for Development,UK; the Africa Research and Information Bureau (ARIB),UK; the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) Senegal. She has been at International Alert since 1995.
Read her contribution to the workshop >> Download PDF
Rachel Wareham, Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Rights, Afghanistan
Board Member of UAF Global. She works as well in development issues in
Afghanistan. For several years she was a Women’s Rights Lobby Worker for Medica Mondiale in Kabul, Afghanistan. Prior to her assignment in Afghanistan, Rachel Wareham worked for five years with local women’s NGOs in rural Kosova and other projects in the region. Published widely on the status of women’s human rights in the Balkan region.
 Dubravka Zarkov, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
Dubravka Zarkov (Social Science) is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. She specialized in intersections of gender, sexuality, ethnicity/race, in the context of violent conflict. Her research focuses on war violence and its media representations. She edited with Cynthia Cockburn The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and International Peacekeeping (Lawrence & Wishart, 2002). Her book on the symbolic meanings of the female and male body in the war in former Yugoslavia is forthcoming by Duke University Press (USA), and a book on gender, violent conflict and development will be published by Zubaan (India).
Read her contribution to the workshop >> Download PDF
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The German version of this page also contains the German contributions (Gitti Hentschel, Ruth Seifert) in their original language >> [Gender in Konflikten]
Aktualisiert: 31.07.2007
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