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The article focuses on how feminist activist groups, specifically the Burundian women's peace organization Mouvement Inamahoro, responded to the misinformation and "fake news" regarding COVID-19 during a public health crisis. It highlights the gendered burden of disinformation on women, particularly in refugee communities, as they became key figures in combating false narratives.

Back-channel negotiations are commonplace in peace negotiations and can serve as crucial mechanisms for reaching agreements. While there has been a moderate increase in scholarship examining back-channel negotiations in the last two decades, none has explored the gendered nature of these spaces. This article analyzes how and why back-channel negotiations are highly gendered processes and why their gendered nature matters for sustainable peace. We begin with a review of the current literature on back-channel negotiations and discuss how and why they are critical mechanisms in peace negotiation and agreement processes. Next, we show how women's inclusion in peace negotiations and agreement practices matters for sustainable peace. Thereafter, we discuss how secret negotiation spaces are infused with gendered power and masculine logics of war and peace. We argue that three key features of back-channel negotiations—secrecy, uncertainty, and limited trust—come together to create an echo chamber of hypermasculinity ideas, values, styles, and norms that prevent women from achieving descriptive and substantive representation inside fundamental secret negotiation spaces. This article adds to the developing literature on back-channel negotiations and helps us better understand how and why women and their interests are regularly excluded from peace processes despite the global prominence of the United Nations' Women, Peace, and Security agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined the associations of 3 types of psychological coping (task-based, emotion-based, avoidance), 2 types of religious coping (positive, negative), and their interactions with grief of 57 mothers bereaved by the sudden death of a child. Results indicated that mothers who use emotion-based coping report significantly higher levels of grief, whereas mothers who use avoidance coping report lower levels of grief. The interaction of task coping and positive religious coping was also associated with lower self-reported grief. The findings support the differential utility of various coping styles on mothers' grief reactions to the sudden death of a child.

Women's legislative representation often increases following armed conflict. Although various studies suggest a relationship between gender-inclusive peace negotiations and better outcomes for women, we know little about the processes linking these phenomena. Using social network analysis and drawing on qualitative interviews, we examine women's participation in Burundi's peace negotiations (1998–2000) and their increased political participation in post-accord national politics (2000–2005). We find that women's civil society built social networks reliant on cross-ethnic collaboration and the support of international actors during the peace negotiations. With the aid of those networks, they successfully entered formal politics and passed pro-women legislation, where they developed cross-party alliances and maintained close relationships with civil society, increasing their effectiveness in parliament. This case suggests that evolving social networks are a crucial component of the explanation for women's increased participation in politics during times of transition from conflict to peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the global norm favoring women's participation in peace negotiations, women continue to face constraints in accessing, influencing, and benefitting from peace settlements. This special issue of International Negotiation lays the groundwork for a future research agenda, calling for attention to gender-based analysis; mixed-method research designs, comparative case studies, and attention to "negative" cases; more examination of the relationship between gender-inclusivity at peace talks and the subsequent conditions for women; and policy recommendations for international actors. This introduction to the issue provides a review of the literature on women and peace negotiations, offers an overview of the issue's six articles, and proposes a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role and influence of women’s groups and larger national women’s social movements during two different constitutional moments: the lead-up to the finalisation of the 1982 patriation of the Canadian Constitution and the lead-up to the 1998 Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland. We argue that while women were successful in ensuring women’s participation and consideration of women’s issues in these constitutional negotiations, those accomplishments did not lead to a significant increase of women’s representation in formal politics. In both the Canadian government-sponsored National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the political party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, women’s descriptive representation in formal politics did not improve dramatically as a result of women’s participation in either constitutional process which suggests the need for guarantees of greater representation, such as what women’s electoral quotas would constitute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high percentage of women in Rwanda's parliament is well known. At 64%, it scores far above the world average of about 22% (IPU 2013). Rather than an anomaly, Rwanda is representative of many postconflict developing countries that feature women's political representation at above-average levels. A frequently identified correlate of this heightened representation has been the presence of electoral quotas for women (Bush 2011; Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna 2012; Paxton, Hughes, and Painter 2010). More generally, the role of societal rupture and transitions from conflict to peace or from authoritarianism to democracy have been a focus of gender and politics research in recent years (Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna 2012; Hughes 2007; 2009; Hughes and Paxton 2007; Viterna and Fallon 2008). Within such transitions, the role of women's participation has been identified as a key determinant of more beneficial posttransition outcomes for women (Viterna and Fallon 2008). Peace processes and the accords that they yield represent a mechanism through which transition and women's rights become linked and theoretically hold the potential to shape postconflict societies. However, the link between women's involvement in peace processes and the subsequent adoption of electoral quotas has not been explored. In this article, we seek to answer the question: What is the relationship between postconflict transition, peace processes, and quota adoption? To this end, we examine the role played by peace accords and, more specifically, accords with a focus on women's rights in leading countries to adopt electoral quotas for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2005 UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons articulate the right of refugees and displaced persons to repossess property lost as the result of armed conflict. These principles are significant because they reverse the international community’s explicit approval of permanent war-time deprivation of property during the first half of the twentieth century. They consolidate the norm of post-conflict restitution of property and they also provide a set of standards for property repossession regimes to be applied worldwide. However, examined in the context of two of the most extensive attempts to restore property to refugees and displaced persons—Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, post-1995—the Principles do not adequately address six key issues. These are: the lack of desire of many of those dispossessed to return to their pre-war place of residence, the displacement of secondary occupants, where responsibility lies for property during its occupation, temporal limitations on repossession, differing conceptions of property, and co-ordinating regional restitution regimes. This article proposes further consideration of these six issues and their refinement in the Principles in order to enhance the Principles’ effectiveness and applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay offers an explanation for how and why women's rights are included in contemporary peace agreements. I identify six causal mechanisms by which women secured participation and women's rights in the peace processes of Burundi (1998-2000) and Northern Ireland (1996-98). First, violent conflict and peace talks produce the conditions of 'grievance' and 'optimism' necessary for social movement mobilization. Second, women use 'procedural grafting' to demand inclusion in peace processes. Third, they use 'strategic essentialism' to overcome the ethno-political divisions of the conflict. Fourth, women call upon relevant practices used in peace processes of the Global South. Fifth, high-level actors may influence peace processes to further international objectives. Sixth, women's involvement with transnational feminist networks facilitates the reproduction of international human rights language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]