Alice WWairimu Nderitu
It is very difficult for a woman mediator to lead communities to the point of signing a peace agreement. It is even more difficult to implement it. Being a woman mediator of armed conflict is one of the loneliest jobs in the world. As Jacqueline O’Neill cites in the Foreword of this book, women comprise only 2% of mediators of armed conflict in the world. Therefore, women mediators of such conflicts can rarely benefit from sounding boards and peers with whom to share their day-to-day experiences. This Companion is primarily for women, but it is relevant across genders. The spoken and written word is a powerful medium for conveying the messages women use in peace processes, and it is important that positive images are conveyed to all genders. This Companion is designed to help people of all genders who are participating in a peace process. If women mediators of armed conflict can learn to detect gender and other forms of discrimination in the dialogues that they lead or are engaged in, they will then be in a position to transfer that knowledge to all genders in their communities, and ultimately apply it into their everyday lives. Likewise, The Companion provides the language to use in discussing gender discrimination within a peace process, and also a way to interact among the dialogue participants when issues of gender discrimination occur.
