Coalition Members who participated in some of the Juba negotiation meetings produced a declaration entitled ‘Engendering Agenda Item IV – Demobilisation, Disarmament, Reintegration and Resettlement and Agenda Item V on Permanent Ceasefire’ in August 2008.75 Including more women in formal peace processes provides states an opportunity to address wider societal issues around gender discrimination and empowerment that may have been pervasive before the conflict. Strong women’s lobbies in some countries have utilised peace negotiations as an opportunity to renegotiate power, leading to greater gains for women’s representation and participation in public life and transitional justice mechanism activated. For example, in the South Sudan country’s revitalized peace agreement signed in Addis Ababa in September 2018, women have been allotted 35% representation at all levels of governance through affirmative action.76 In addition, women use these opportunities negotiate beyond gender equality issues to broader social justice issues. In Sudan, women’s interventions broadened discussion agendas to provide wider scope on social sectors and protection for longer term stability.77 In Somalia, women participating in the Kenyan based National Reconciliation Conference of 2002 pushed for social reforms using human rights principles as the basis for increased representation.78 Dominant socio-legal norms of gender relations between men and women may regulate behaviour in times of relative peace and punish deviations but violent conflict weakens the, as communities and societies are torn apart and the state’s resilience destabilised. In such conditions, cultural restraints are more easily cast off and the weaker and more vulnerable are the first to fall to violence and exploitation. It is no accident that the majority of refugees and IDPs are women, and that female returnees and ex combatants fare worse than male counterparts. Without a concerted and 75 The Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice ‘Women’s Voices • Dwan Mon • Eporoto Lo Angor • Dwon Mon’ Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, 2011. 76 United Nations PeaceKeeping ‘Juba forum explores ways to advance the status of women in South Sudan’. 24 May 2019 Available at https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/juba-forum-explores-ways-to-advance-status-of-womensouth-sudan 77 Crf interactives ‘Women’s Roles in Peace Processes’ Available at https://www.cfr.org/interactive/womensparticipation-in-peace-processes/explore-the-data 78 Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative ‘Somalia (2002-2004)’ Case Study Series, Women in Peace and Transition Processes, April 2019 33