Early warning systems have long been used for predicting natural disasters. They aim to warn the agencies responsible for assisting victims, giving them time to plan for contingencies and to provide the appropriate resources.
Conflict Early Warning is about forecasting potential crises with the aim of preventing eruption, escalation or the recurrence of conflict by formulating appropriate response options and alerting policy-makers, humanitarian organisations and others in an effort to ensure the implementation of these responses.
A gender perspective simply means a more inclusive approach to analysis, which includes the differing experiences and responses of women and men in conflict situations.
By understanding the differential impact of war on women and men, a gender analysis can highlight changes within communities and families that may foreshadow potential and more insidious conflict at the societal level. The integration of gender into early warning systems would therefore contribute to more inclusive and in turn more effective institutional responses, from state level structures that are more willing to seek compromise through non-violent methods, to humanitarian agencies that play key operational roles in conflict and post-conflict situations.
Mutual inclusiveness of both men and women into early warning and response, in addition to raising awareness among men about the specific experiences, perspectives and needs of women in conflict situations, is key. Peacebuilding activities such as training and education, establishing early warning structures, developing strategies or methodologies for peace reconstruction and reconciliation and conflict prevention, should involve and encourage women and men alike. Women can and should play a role at all levels of early warning, including information collection, analysis and the formulation of response options.
Early Warning is a crucial area not covered by United Nations Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and our Gender and Early Warning work aims to provide a substantial grounding on which to base further policy recommendations.
In May 2001 in Nairobi, International Alert, the Swiss Peace Foundation, and the Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER), held an Expert Consultative Meeting on Integrating Gender into Early Warning Systems. The consultation is one of several aimed to gather the perspectives and experiences of women from conflict regions, civil society groups, government bodies and UN agencies, to inform the development of gender-sensitive early warning indicators in order to ensure that gender is integrated into systems for early warning and early response in humanitarian crises. Another consultation took place in Switzerland in June and the final one will be taking place in London in February 2002.
Recommendations from the First Consultation
- Develop indicators that are most commonly present prior to the outbreak of armed conflict.
- Develop training modules for gender-sensitive early warning for policy-makers, governments and local, national and international civil society organisations.
- Provide concrete suggestions on how to build gender-sensitive early warning systems through institutional efforts, including how to build effective partnerships.
- Consider the biases that are contributing to and affecting the quality and accuracy of information transmitted and ensure that gender-bias does not cloud the indicators or response options.
- Develop concrete suggestions on improving the security for information providers and collectors of politically-sensitive information.
- Discuss in consultation and collaboration with communities how to mobilise and harness the energy of civil society for effective early warning i.e. training; establishing early warning structures; sharing and collecting information etc.
- Discuss solutions to the problem of extracting information from the community and how structures of early warning and information feedback to the community can be created in areas where they do not currently exist.
Please click
here for the full report of the first consultation.
Policy Papers
Please click here for
our policy paper: Gender and Conflict Early Warning: A Framework
for Action
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