The role of women in building peace: Q&A with Mary Robinson

The Honorable Mary Robinson is the founder and president of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and serves as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change. She served as the first female President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002, and is a global leader on issues of women’s empowerment and human rights. In July 2013, I sat down with her to discuss climate justice and the role of women in the fight for peace.

Rebecca Turkington: The DRC conflict so often becomes synonymous with sexual and gender-based violence, and we very rarely hear the stories of women who are working as agents for peace process. Could you talk a little bit about the roles women are playing in peacebuilding and the ways you are engaging women and women’s organizations in the peace process, particularly your recent conference in Burundi.

MR: I’ve benefited from the experience over the years of seeing what women are doing on the ground. In peacebuilding and peacemaking, and of course in Northern Ireland, in my own country, it was women who came out from the housing estates and met each other and said, “We have to stop this killing and knee-capping and destroying the future for our young people.” So I was aware of a lot of work being done on preparing women through the Security Council Resolution 1325: that women should be at the table, women should be in decision-making, et cetera. So when I got this responsibility, I wanted, as the first woman Special Envoy appointed by the UN (they made that point to me), I said, "Well, that means I’m going to do it differently. And I’m not going to just talk with leaders, heads of state, ministers, negotiators; I’m also going to have a bottom-up approach."

To read the rest of this article, please click over to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.