“One of the problems is that we have this monolithic notion of women, it’s like we’re either all victims or we’re all political activists,” explained Sanam Anderlini [12], Co-Founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN [13]). It’s nearly impossible to comprehend all the ways that women matter to development during conflict. But recently, IREX hosted four experts who offer up much needed wisdom during the panel discussion, “More than Victims: Women’s Roles in the Syrian Conflict [14].” Here are six concrete recommendations they made for the international development community:
1. “It’s our problem, not their problem.” Victimhood shouldn’t be a label that steals away agency from women. Anderlini noted that women “have to have agency, they don’t have any choice but to have agency. And we are the ones who are silencing them, because we are basically saying, she doesn’t have a voice.” Development practitioners should stop telling women what they need and ask them what they want.
2. “Women must be at the table NOW,” explained Sarah Taylor [15], Executive Director of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security. If women are absent at the beginning, they may not get a seat at the table later. This has been unfortunately true concerning Syria, when the earliest Security Council briefings failed to address specific concerns for women.
3. Flexible funding is a must, not a wish. “Syrians have to build the new Syria with their hands, but we need the know-how and the help of the international community,” said Caroline Ayoub, a Board Member of the RO'YA Association for a Better Syria. But it’s often hard for small organizations to get money. Rafif Jouejati, Director of FREE-Syria Foundation [16], explained that funders are limiting their own ability to help when they “ask for receipts from people who are in bombed-out cities.”
4. “We should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” urged Anderlini, who sees men’s and women’s issues as closely related to each other. “Think about the needs of both men and women... Especially the young guys, because it is the young men who become the most vulnerable and then get recruited.”
5. “It’s not about culture, it’s about power.” Development practitioners would do well to discard what they think they know about “culture” for a moment and try to see the intersection of patriarchy, power, and women. “If anybody ever tells you the exclusion of women from the peace process is cultural... it happens in every single conflict around the world. It is universal,” said Anderlini. The panel stressed that this was true in nearly all conflict settings, not just Syria.
6. Walk the walk. The best practices exist, but too often they don’t get followed when it comes to women. Taylor explained, “We have guidelines about what an appropriate humanitarian response is that’s responsive to women’s needs and concerns... we just need to make sure that we’re actually doing it.”
IREX thanks the panelists for sharing their insights. These points are valuable as we all continue our work in conflict resolution [17] and gender [18] and with a hopeful view towards peace, justice and accountability in Syria [19]. The full event video is available online [14].
The guest blogger, Michael Hendrix, works with IREX to support the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) [19]. The SJAC is a Syrian-led organization documenting violations and coordinating justice and accountability efforts in Syria