In consideration of UN Resolution 1325 (which called for women's equal participation in promoting peace and security and for greater efforts to protect women exposed to violence during and after conflict), this volume takes stock of the current state of knowledge on women, peace and security issues, including efforts to increase women's participation in post-conflict reconstruction strategies and their protection from wartime sexual violence.

In places as diverse as South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Nepal, negotiators of national peace plans have for years sanctioned the creation of local peace committees (LPCs) to address community-level sources of grievance and thereby to build peace from the bottom up. In A Crucial Link: Local Peace Committees and National Peacebuilding, longtime practitioner Andries Odendaal engages in the first comparative study of LPCs and asks whether and where the committees have succeeded.

"A Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Book" -- dust jacket.