Biden-Harris Should Lead on Women’s Rights and Help End Syrian Conflict

An overwhelming body of cross-national research has shown that women’s participation in governance advances national security, improves service provision for entire communities, and can even prevent conflict relapse. Including women in governance is not just good for those women — but for entire societies.

Syria is currently fragmented into four distinct zones, governed by four different entities: the regime of Bashar al-Assad in southern and western Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Northeast, Turkey in the Northwest, while an assortment of rebel and jihadist groups control Idlib.

Between 1992 and 2019, women represented only 6 percent of signatories to peace agreements worldwide, and only 13 percent of negotiators. In 2015, only 3 percent of UN military peacekeepers and 10 percent of UN police personnel were women, considerably lower than even the modest UN target of 20 percent.