The Role of the EU in Including Women in Peace Processes

Room: P61 (Préfecture building, 119 rue du marais, 6th floor)

In collaboration with EUGENDERING

Speaker: Julia Vassileva (Tallinn University)

Discussants: Charlotte Dahin (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles) & Maria Martin de Almagro (UGent)

Julia Vassileva is a PhD researcher and lecturer in International law and Security studies at the School of Governance, Law and Society at Tallinn University, Estonia. She previously worked in Brussels for the EU Commission’s DG NEAR and the EEAS; and holds degrees in Law and IR from the University of Oxford, the College of Europe, and Vienna University. She has been a visiting lecturer at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs in Tbilisi and at Bilkent University in Ankara; and a researcher at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and the UN-ILC in Geneva.

The seminar discusses the role of the EU in including women in peace processes in its neighbourhood region and beyond. It addresses the question why the number of women in such processes often remains low. Generally, the need to include women in peace processes is recognised in international and EU policy documents; but verbal normative commitments often do not translate into actual presence of more women. The key argument is that there are several explanations for such lack of inclusion in peace processes: (1) elite-dominated hard power negotiation structures, (2) cultural factors, (3) need for empowerment and linking the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agendas, and (4) insufficient implementation of commitments made to include women under the existing policy and legal framework. The seminar also stresses the need to be aware of those reasons and address them, in order to give a voice to women in peace processes (to ‘unmute’ them).