Women and the transition from conflict in Northern Ireland : lessons for peace-building in Israel/Palestine

When we take the experiences of women seriously, the lessons that we can draw from the Northern Ireland peace process for future peace tracks in the Middle East
are not necessarily the same lessons that are highlighted in popular comparisons of the conflicts in the press, by politicians and in the conflict resolution literature.
Some of the challenges that Northern Ireland, in general, and feminist peace activists, more specifically, have faced in the post-conflict period may also surface in a
future post-conflict period for Israel and in a new Palestinian state, given the similar actors involved and elite model of conflict resolution that is preferred there, as
elsewhere. In this paper, I argue that the successful inclusion of women in the Northern Ireland
peace process and the world class commitments to human rights and equality enshrined in the final peace deal have all been important (but often ignored) elements
of the peace in Northern Ireland. As well, the conservatism in the post-Agreement period in Northern Ireland, which has thwarted some of the efforts to advance important social policy issues, along with the poor representation of women in Northern
Ireland’s new political institutions more than a decade after the peace agreement was signed are similarly unlikely to inform prescriptions for Middle East
peace. In my view, the experiences of women, who are located largely within the informal sector, can offer important insight into how we come to understand and define security and also how we come to assess the kinds of changes that will improve security for “ordinary citizens” in a post-conflict period.