UN body to help involve women in conflict resolution

Kigali- Rwanda (PANA) -- A four-woman team of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) arrived in Kigali Saturday to assess the impact of the armed conflict on women and their role in peace-building and conflict resolution.
The team, headed by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf from Liberia, announced that it would help empower Rwandan women to participate in conflict resolution and peace building.
"We have come to Rwanda after learning that the 1994 war and genocide left thousands of people in terrible conditions, especially women.
So we found it imperative to involve them (women) in conflict resolution and management," Johnson-Sirleaf said.
The team, comprising women from war-ravaged Liberia, Bosnia and Angola, will tour various genocide sites in the country.
It will hold talks with various women's associations and organisations, notably "Pro-femmes Twese Hamwe", an umbrella of more than 40 women's associations, the Wanda's Association of Counsellors of Rauma, Forum for Women Parliamentarians, legal aides and women's rights organisations, among many others.
"Together, they will devise means of extending their help to homeless families affected by the 1994 genocide," sources close to the delegation said.
"There is need to strengthen the capacities of women in situations of armed conflict and to promote the integration of gender concept into all peace-building activities," Diana Opar, director of the UNIFEM in Rwanda, said.
The delegation is also scheduled to visit Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.