This report on the proceedings of the global conference “Gender-inclusive peace processes: Strengthening women’s meaningful participation through constituency building” explores current challenges, best practices, and recommendations on how best to leverage the practice of constituency building to further gender-inclusive peace.

This background paper was prepared ahead of the high level seminar, organized by UN Women in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, on “Strengthening women’s participation in peace processes: What roles and responsibilities for States?” in Rome, Italy, on 3 and 4 December 2019. The paper analyzes policies and strategies adopted by Member States and other international actors to foster women’s meaningful participation, particularly related to mediating peace.

This report reflects the main arguments presented during the the high-level seminar, organized by UN Women in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, on “Strengthening women’s participation in peace processes: What roles and responsibilities for states?” in Rome, Italy, on 3 and 4 December 2019, including the persistent barriers to women’s meaningful participation in peace and mediation processes and the opportunities that exist to remove them.

This research stems from the development of Regional Women Mediator Networks and the increased value these networks have acquired in recent years. With a focus on the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network, the paper aims to analyze the significant contribution this initiative can offer to the global agenda of Mediation for the 21st century and its unique added value for the next 20 years of the women, peace, and security agenda.

This research explores the causes of the under-investment in gender-inclusive peace in conflict and post-conflict settings and the significant gaps in financing that make the implementation of Women, Peace and security commitments more difficult. This paper focuses on the three case studies of Colombia, Iraq, and the Philippines.

This report on the proceedings of the 2018 conference “Women’s meaningful participation in peace processes: Modalities and strategies across tracks”, explores innovations, trends, and challenges in the interplay between official, high-level processes and unofficial processes in which civil society plays a leadership role.

This guidance tool aims to explain the practical steps towards enhancing the quality of women’s land rights data and statistics for data producers, analysts, and researchers. In doing so, it addresses critical gaps in the quality of the design, collection, analysis, management, and dissemination of data and statistics on women’s land rights. This tool is for use by data producers and data users alike.

This brief series recognizes that, despite advancements, we have to build a stronger bridge between empirical scholarly work, new policy directions, and actual practice on the ground. The series seeks to address that gap and contribute to the realization of the women, peace and security agenda through the promotion of evidence-based policy and practice.

This second edition, co-published by UN Women and OHCHR, aims to provide guidance to lawmakers and policymakers, as well as civil society organizations and other stakeholders, on supporting the adoption and effective implementation of laws, policies, and programmes to respect, protect, and fulfil women’s rights to land and other productive resources. The publication also provides recommendations for realizing women’s rights to land and other productive resources.

Confidence building is an area that is receiving significant attention in mediation processes around the world. Meanwhile, feminist analysis of the theories and practices of confidence building is nascent. Based on conference discussions, this report summarizes perspectives and early analysis on confidence building from a women, peace, and security perspective. It also offers preliminary recommendations for further research and action.

This brief addresses the importance of women’s full, equal, and meaningful participation to an effective pandemic response and to peacemaking efforts, and how the women, peace and security agenda can provide a critical framework for inclusive decision-making and sustainable solutions. It also provides preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on women’s participation in ceasefires and peace processes and offers a series of recommendations, including on “building back better”.

This rapid assessment examines how the impacts of COVID-19 are threatening women’s ability to access justice. The assessment reflects challenges faced by women and girls of diverse backgrounds and socio-economic groups, including those experiencing overlapping disadvantages and those facing amplified challenges in humanitarian settings. Cross-regional and local experiences are highlighted, and quantitative data is utilized where available.

Access to justice is critical for the effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. “A practitioner’s toolkit on women’s access to justice programming” was developed by UN Women, UNDP, UNODC and OHCHR to stimulate bolder gender-responsive justice interventions. It harnesses experiences, lessons learned, and promising practices for creating non-discriminatory and inclusive justice systems, empowering women and girls to claim and fully realize their rights.

Around the world, young women are working to prevent violent conflict, recover from crises, and build peaceful, tolerant communities, yet most peace and security interventions are blind to the needs and contributions of young women. This paper examines the diverse roles that young women play in these contexts and offers recommendations for ensuring their meaningful inclusion and participation in building and sustaining peace.

This paper traces the restructuring of rural families’ agricultural production, the intra-household division of labour, and land usage in the interim between the global oil price rise of 1979 and its precipitous fall by 2015. It was produced for UN Women’s flagship report, “Progress of the world’s women 2018”, and has been released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series.

More than one third of the Earth’s land is currently degraded, affecting 2.6 billion people. Land degradation impacts men and women differently, making it imperative to address the persistent gender inequalities that fuel women’s extreme poverty. This paper analyses land degradation with a gender perspective and concludes with recommendations for the gender-responsive implementation of the Convention to Combat Desertification.

This paper looks to our understanding of the gendered implications of rural land dispossession through a comparative analysis of five cases that were driven by different economic purposes in diverse agrarian contexts. It identifies some of the common gendered effects of land dispossession, and demonstrates ways in which the gendered consequences of land dispossession vary qualitatively across cases. It was produced for UN Women’s flagship report, World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2014: Gender and Sustainable Development. It is now also released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series.

This publication provides guidance for lawmakers and policymakers, as well as civil society organizations and other stakeholders, to support the adoption and effective implementation of laws, policies and programmes to respect, protect and fulfil women’s rights to land and other productive resources. It is based on the results of an expert group meeting held in June 2012 in Geneva, Switzerland.

As primary managers and users of natural resources in many conflict-affected contexts, women have a key role to play in peacebuilding but are often excluded from decision-making over natural resource management. This report analyses how women's empowerment and the sustainable use of natural resources can be pursued together to help build lasting peace.