October 18-20, 2006 at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice in San Diego, CA. From the conference website:
International resolutions and agreements call for women to be at all policymaking tables. This is an international working conference on the shaping of peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding policies when women are more engaged. Experts will present signs of influence on policy direction as women and men work jointly on peace and human security issues. Challenges to women’s inclusion in, and within, decision-making bodies in multiple spheres of power will be exposed. Delegates and speakers will explore positive outcomes, as well as inherent roadblocks, in efforts to hold governments, political parties, peacekeepers, armed forces, corporations, religious institutions and civil society accountable for progress in incorporating women as essential partners and voices in peace negotiations, demobilization and disarmament, reconciliation, reconstruction and development, and creation of new constitutions.
Peacebuilding in the twenty-first century is a complex process. It is essential to understand how gender-inclusive decision making in four key sectors can affect and influence peace processes. Distinguished representatives from governments, corporations, peacekeeping and armed forces, and the religious sector who are charged with setting the priorities for conflict prevention, negotiations, or postconflict transitions and healing will update conference delegates. We will look at progress in implementation of the international policy frameworks calling for equal participation of men and women in decision making in their respective sectors.*
In addition panel presentations, a series of knowledge-building, working sessions will give delegates the opportunity to directly engage with and learn from one another and build cross-sector networks and alliances. Delegates will be able to gather and synthesize from the global reports on successes and challenges to gender equality in consultations and decision making on such topics as going to war, peace negotiations, peacekeeping, and postconflict activities including securing more equal roles in political, legislative, reconstruction, and constitutional framing bodies.
Additional information here. This will be the third Women PeaceMakers Conference at the IPJ. Information about the 2004 conference is available here, and information about the 2005 conference can be accessed here.
–Stephanie Farrior
