Explore the GAP dataset
We still know little about how, when and why gender provisions are implemented - the GAP dataset sets out to change that.
In past years, there has been an increased interest in peace agreements and the provisions included therein, especially those that pertain to women’s rights and gender equality – often dubbed “gender provisions”. In 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 called on actors negotiating and implementing peace agreements to “adopt a gender perspective”. The inclusion of gender provisions – specific “tasks” or articles that pertain to issues related to gender equality and women’s rights – has been used as a yard stick to measure the extent to which the calls for a gender perspective in peace agreements have been fulfilled, with scholars puzzling over the conditions under which such provisions are most likely to be included in a peace agreement.
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However, we still know very little when, why and how gender provisions in peace agreements get implemented.
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Introducing the Gender and Peace dataset
​I created the Gender and Peace (GAP) dataset to help improve this understanding. The dataset includes over 300 provisions from 23 Comprehensive Peace Agreements signed in 20 countries. It builds on existing resources - including in particular the Gender PA-X database developed by the Political Settlements Research Project at the Edinburgh University, and the Peace Agreements Matrix (PAM) database, developed by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
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If you want to learn more about the methodology behind the GAP dataset, reach out to me!
The visualizations below illustrate data for comprehensive peace agreements signed between 1991 and 2020.
As seen on the map, the aggregate level of implementation 3 and 7 years after the agreement signing varies greatly among the countries - while little to no progress took place in some countries, others have come close to implementing all of the gender provisions.
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The second visualization provides more details on the implementation of individual provisions. Finally, a few visualization suggesting some correlation (or lack thereof) between the level of implementation and various other factors are also included.
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When referencing the dataset, or any of the visualizations before, please make sure to cite:
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Fal-Dutra Santos, Agnieszka, Gender and Peace dataset, 2024.
How I created the GAP?
The GAP builds on two existing datasets: the Gender PA-X database developed by the Political Settlements Research Project at the Edinburgh University, and the Peace Agreements Matrix (PAM) database, developed by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The former lists all the peace agreements between 1990 and June 2021 which include provisions on women, girls, gender or sexual violence. The database includes 421 agreements, including ceasefire agreements, partial and local peace agreements. The PAM dataset, on the other hand, includes 34 comprehensive peace agreements (CPAs) from peace processes in 31 countries. The PAM dataset focuses on evaluating the level of implementation of peace agreement provisions. For that reason, it includes a narrower sample of only comprehensive agreements.
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The GAP dataset builds on those existing resources, but includes important new elements. First, it provides a better insight into the level of implementation of gender provisions. While the PAM dataset provides an assessment of the level of implementation of such provisions in some agreements, it does not do it for others. Often, the articles that speak about gender or women’s rights are classified as part of another provision – for example, on human rights or disarmament – and there is no way of gauging to what extent the assigned level of implementation reflects the level of the implementation of the gender aspect of the provision specifically. Second, the GAP dataset also includes a coding for the level of specificity of gender provision – recognizing that provisions vary not only with regards to their content or subject matter, but also the level of detail with which the given subject matter is treated.
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For more details on how I created the dataset, including details on the methodology for assigning implementation scores to individual provisions, feel free to reach out to me: agnieszka.fal-dutra@graduateinstitute.ch.