Abstract
Women are largely absent from formal, Track I diplomatic processes, but far more involved in informal, Track II peace processes. This inventory of informal peace processes with women’s involvement —available as a PDF and Excel spreadsheet—covers the period from 1991-2017 for concluded peace agreements alongside several ongoing peace processes and is the first comprehensive attempt to map women’s informal efforts to secure the peace. A full discussion of the data, methods, and findings appears in Anjali Kaushlesh Dayal and Agathe Christien’s 2020 journal article, “Women’s Participation in Informal Peace Processes,” in Global Governance. A summary of their findings is available in this policy brief.
The categorization process began with a list of peace agreements from the Notre Dame Peace Accords Matrix, to which we added agreements identified by the Council on Foreign Relations, UN Women and Thania Paffenholz et. al’s 2016 research, alongside ongoing peace processes. We then worked backwards to identify the negotiation processes by which each agreement was reached, looking for evidence of Track II processes in analyses of the peace agreement, narratives and analyses of the conflict case, and policy reports on negotiation and mediation.
We adopted a broad definition of Track II diplomatic processes, defining them as diplomatic or consultative processes between or among groups who are not principal parties to the conflict, who may either be invited to consult in the formal peace process or be holding their consultations separately from the Track I process, and who are concerned with contributing to war-ending negotiations. We then looked for evidence of women’s involvement in the formal or informal processes in news reports, contemporaneous policy and UN reports, and scholarship; we also identified the formal parties to the agreement, the facilitator or mediator, and any other available information about the process and its timing.
This data-generation process captured 63 peace processes. Of these, 38 have an identifiable Track II peace process. Among these 38 cases, almost three-fourths (27) have clear evidence of involvement from identifiable women’s groups.