Recommendations
Rethink!
Agneta Söderberg Jacobson. Repensar en femení!: manual per a una pau sostenible. Barcelona: Institut Català Internacional per la Pau; Icària, 2010
The ICIP has decided to begin its collection of tools for peace, security and justice with two useful books: Transformació de conflictes, by John Paul Lederach and Repensar en femení! by Agneta Söderberg Jacobson. Both books are short and clear manuals that provide the reader with specific resources. The first should be compulsory reading for everyone who works in this field. The second also includes the gender perspective, which is becoming increasingly influential in conflict resolution theory and in practice.
Agneta Söderberg explains it and gives many examples from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Liberia, Israel-Palestine, Macedonia, Guatemala, Serbia and Montenegro, Rwanda, East Timor, Somalia and the International Criminal Court. In all these cases, the participation of women in peace processes has had a positive influence on the evolution of these conflicts. This is true to such an extent that she concludes that it is a requirement for sustainable development. At this point, the book makes a qualitative leap in terms of theory, by suggesting a holistic model for the construction of peace in which gender equality plays a key role in all phases: during the war and conflict, during the peace negotiations and during the post-war reconstruction process.
As well as the recommendations based on this proposal, which form the core of the book, readers also have the opportunity to learn from the examples of good cooperation practices between civil society in the South and North (often in Scandinavian countries) which are always focused on strengthening the organisations in the South so that they can play an active role in development and conflict transformation. The links between civil national and international society are therefore present in this book, which ends with a positive and optimistic thought: if we succeed in including women in all stages of the peace process, the ideal of a just and egalitarian world will no longer only be a dream.
J.A.