Gender mainstreaming in the IGAD II SUDAN peace process

Gender mainstreaming is generally defined as a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.This requires careful consideration of the implications, for both women and men, of actions, policies and programmes. In earlier peace processes, there was no particular attention to women's needs, experiences and capacities, and thus "˜gender mainstreaming' came to be used to mean a focus on so-called "˜women's issues'. But current research and policy tend to include men's special needs as well, and point to the fact that sustainable peace can be obtained only if both women's and men's issues are taken into consideration