While interstate wars have declined significantly in recent decades, a considerable number of nations have been dealing with intrastate conflicts of various intensity and duration, demonstrating the relevance of both peacekeeping and peacebuilding processes. Gender intersections with conflict, peace, and global security have become more underrepresented from peacebuilding discourse. Despite the UN’s Resolution 1325 mandating the inclusion of women in peacebuilding processes, a ‘inclusive’ peacebuilding process is still a long way off, particularly in South Asia. Women’s lived experiences in this region sharply differ with female experiences in the rest of the globe.
South Asia is riddled with racial, sectarian, religious, and community strife, as well as identity disputes and military confrontations. There is a conspicuous lack of constructive peace among conflicts such as militancy in the North-Eastern region of India, the Naxal movement in several districts of India, political turbulence in Nepal and Sri Lanka despite the completion of the armed wars, and peace disruption in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that both India and Pakistan have a shared geographical and cultural background, the area has never been stable and peaceful.
The concept of equating women as naturally peaceful is contested because it provides a predetermined account of human nature, places women in fixed positions, and lessens our knowledge of global security; thus, the argument for involving women in peace building is based on their historical exclusion from conflict and peace decisions. Some feminists emphasized that women’s role in peacebuilding is due to knowledge of subjugation rather than nurturing ability. It is also believed that because women are subjected to abuse on a regular basis at home and in public, they become more empathetic to the plight of victims and, as a result, utilize their agency for justice.
Analyzing widely the conflict and post-conflict regions of South Asia witnessing the consequences of peace-building processes, a recurring aspect is how governments and other institutions have frequently neglected the gendered dimension of warfare. When analysed further, women are not only tools utilized to secure victory by working as nurses and caregivers, but they are also victims since a big number of women are left behind to care for their families while men are out fighting the war.
South Asian civilizations are less liberal, conservative, and patriarchal, and phrases such as brotherhood denote the exclusion of women, and nation is referred to asdhartimatta (motherland) that requires male guardianship, are widely employed in nationalist speech and disputes. Disputes have numerous and distinct repercussions on women. Women’s bodies become battlegrounds during wars and warring situations because they are seen as symbols/carriers of national honour. Women are subjected to intentional violence, coercion, sexual assaults, rape, mutilation, kidnappings, and a variety of other types of physical abuse.
Apart from sexually motivated violence against women during wartime circumstances, such as Partition violence in 1947, civil war between East and West Pakistan in 1971, domestic war in Sri Lanka, and Maoist uprising in Nepal, dislocation from homes imposed multiple responsibilities on women, such as caring for children, dying soldiers, and elderly and sick family members. Women are left behind with their children because war is both a concept and a practice that has been constructed and catered to the masculine population of a place for ages. With the maintenance of their children and family members becoming a worry, women who originally belonged to the domestic domain are sometimes obliged to leave their homes and work in historically male-dominated occupations like as farming, care giving, and, in some cases, intelligence.
Women’s viewpoints are rarely considered in peace talks. Many instances may be taken from Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India to illustrate this. Women are called upon at times of crisis and engage in national conflicts; nevertheless, after the crisis has passed, women are urged to take a back seat and return to their kitchens and children, resuming their constrained duties.
Thousands of women were involved in politics and were visible at every level during the 20-year history of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency for the restoration of democracy against the dictatorial reign of the King. However, after the political agreements for a cease-fire and peacekeeping in Nepal, women were driven back into their domestic sphere.
Analyzing the consequences of militarization on women during the Afghan conflict in 1992, including economic hardship, displacements, and heightened feelings of insecurity women’s mobility, freedom, and the right to work were badly impacted, and since male honour was threatened in a war scenario, males exerted more control over their women, providing them with a sense of manhood and manliness. The Taliban took away Afghan women’s independence, and women’s problems are rarely mentioned in discussions with the Taliban.
In India’s Kashmir, women’s narratives and contributions to peacebuilding are frequently ignored, despite the fact that women have a greater stake in the conflict and are victims of both security forces and terrorists. Women in Sri Lanka, who were hailed as liberation birds in LTTE soldiers but glorified as sacrifice traditional type, and their bodies became a focus of contestation in ethnic conflicts.
Women have historically been marginalised and excluded from peacebuilding attempts; nonetheless, women continue to find places inside or outside religious and state organisations and actively promote peace. Despite the explanations offered for women’s absence from the peace process, women’s organisations used innovative methods to get their opinions known. In Nagaland, India’s conflict-torn North East area, the Naga Mother Association initiated a peace campaign in 1984 with the motto “Shed no more blood” and conducted peace discussions, while Tamil Hindu women of the LTTE in Sri Lanka organised themselves in numerous peace campaigns.
South Asian Women for Peace was founded in 1996 with the goal of creating a teaching environment on peace and conflict issues in the area in order to develop intellectual and political knowledge of concerns. This Women’s Network of Peace has held Women Peace Conferences throughout South Asia and has offered several study courses on peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Its membership includes Nepal, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. A coalition of civil society groups from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka founded Women for Peace in South Asia in 1998. Promoting people-to-people contact and developing cordial ties in South Asia was their goal; this network had arranged several good will trips of South Asian women and played an essential part in downplaying the conflict-ridden environment that was forming between India and Pakistan post the Kargil war.
Despite demonstrating to the rest of the world their amazing persistence in the most chaotic times via the development of such collectivities, women are constantly excluded from peacebuilding efforts. While mandates and international agreements exist today, the preceding idea contradicts the particular circumstance of South Asia, where peacebuilding is performed by women through politicising ordinary lived experiences rather than diplomatic talks or written decisions. As a result of being regarded unsuited to participate in the arena of international security and politics, which has been characterised as a male-dominated sector for decades, many women are once again ostracised and rendered invisible from high-level table talks and negotiations.
