Peace Analytics Series launched with new analytical insights from PeaceFem app

A new research paper using the PeaceFem mediation app as a unique dataset offers new insights on women’s inclusion in peace processes. 

In ‘From Protests to Paper: Using PeaceFem to Analyse Women’s Inclusion in Peace Processes’, PeaceRep researcher Laura Wise explores the peace process data included in the PeaceFem app.

The paper is the first in PeaceRep’s Peace Analytics Series, which presents the methodologies behind our leading PeaceTech innovations and contributes to a new research digital infrastructure in the field of peace and conflict studies.

A subsequent report on geocoding for peace and conflict studies will be released in early November, followed by papers on topics including semantic analysis for peace analytics, understanding PeaceTech, and named entity recognition. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest reports as they are released.

Findings from PeaceFem as a dataset

PeaceFem is a mobile app that illustrates women’s inclusion in peace processes around the world. A contribution to the growing field of PeaceTech, which uses technology to support peacebuilding and peace mediation, the app brings together data on women and peacemaking in one easy to-use app in English, Arabic, French, and Indonesian. It is intended for use as an information tool by women’s rights advocates, mediation and negotiation teams, as well as other actors working in peace and security, and to act as inspiration for anyone interested in inclusive peace mediation. PeaceFem provides information about strategies and modalities that women have used to influence peace agreements, the enabling and constraining factors that shaped the space for influence, and the gender provisions in the peace agreements that resulted, with some information on how well they were implemented. 

The paper uses the app to review common modalities of women’s inclusion in 24 peace processes across a global context, gender provisions in the resultant peace agreements, and important factors that enable and constraining women’s full and meaningful participation in conflict transitions. The app matches data from the PA-X Gender Peace Agreement Database (Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform: PeaceRep), the Women in Peace and Transition Processes case study collection (Inclusive Peace), and the Towards Inclusive Peace: Mapping Gender Provisions in Peace Agreements case study collection (Monash Centre for Gender, Peace, & Security). The resultant dataset covers 39 peace agreements across 24 peace processes in 22 countries, from 1993 to 2016, with a focus on framework agreements (peace agreements that deal with substantive issues as an attempt to resolve the conflict). 

The paper finds that: 

  • Of the 24 peace processes featured on the PeaceFem app, direct representation and consultations were the most common modalities of including women in those processes between 1993 and 2016.  
  • Peace agreement provisions for women’s participation and gender equality were more prevalent than references to women’s roles in implementation and women’s protection in the same peace processes. 
  • Enabling factors for women’s inclusion are varied and contextual, but there are some common threads across peace processes – such as having an active civil society and a pre-existing presence of women in public life.  
  • Constraining factors preventing women’s inclusion are also contextual, but there are still some commonalities across processes – such as insecurity, violence against women, and negative societal attitudes towards women’s political participation. 
  • As peace processes become increasingly fragmented and new technologies create both threats and opportunities for women’s inclusion, PeaceFem provides insight into women, peace and security practices at a time when challenges to gender justice and peace seem greater than ever. 

 

The PeaceFem app
PeaceFem is a mobile phone app that tracks women’s inclusion in peace processes around the world.

 

PeaceFem is a collaboration between UN Women, Inclusive Peace, the Monash University Centre for Gender, Peace & Security, and PeaceRep: Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform at the University of Edinburgh. It is free and available to download via Google Play and Apple Store.  

Explore PeaceRep’s research on gender perspectives and women’s inclusion in peace processes.

Access PeaceRep data on gender perspectives in peace agreements from 1990-2023.

Peace Analytics Series

PeaceRep’s Peace Analytics Series features the research methodology underlying the PeaceTech innovations of the PeaceRep programme.

The series includes: data scoping research; ‘how to’ discussions relating to particular challenges in the field of visualisations and geocoding; and other proof-of-concept tech-based innovations, such as the use of natural language processing. It is intended to present the methodologies and decisions behind our PeaceTech digital research, to make it transparent, and to contribute to establishing a new research digital infrastructure in the field of peace and conflict studies, by supporting others to reuse and repurpose our methodologies and findings.