Conflict Prevention & Resolution

Lasting peace requires comprehensive conflict prevention, which ensures all actors have the capacity to participate in and access formal processes that address root drivers and causes of conflict and provide cooperation across political and/or other sectarian boundaries. The Security Council has, has discussed conflict prevention and resolution, including mediation, calling for gender experts in mediation teams in Security Council Resolution 2122 (2013) and issues of sexual and gender-based violence in mediation efforts in Security Council Resolution 2106 (2013). Security Council Resolution 2242 (2015) further reaffirmed that women and girls’ empowerment and gender equality are critical to conflict prevention.

The NGO Working Group works advocates for gender-sensitive approaches to both short and long-term conflict prevention efforts with a particular emphasis on addressing the root causes of conflict and systematic and structural drivers of gender inequality, gender discrimination and gender violence. Effective conflict prevention demands recognition of gendered dynamics and impacts of armed conflict, with policy analysis and monitoring that clearly identifies the masculine and feminine social roles that contribute to violence and subordination. In mainstreaming gender across conflict prevention, the Security Council is requested to support an increase in women’s participation in all efforts to prevent and resolve conflict; including by supporting women’s civil society organizations’ participation in the planning, design and implementation of preventative policies and programs for violence.