Back in 2000, the world body adopted a resolution calling for greater recognition of what the UN, in its odd terminology, referred to as "gender perspective" in peacemaking. In other words, bring on the women.

Meanwhile, in time-honored UN fashion, at the Council's request Secretary General Kofi Annan came up with a report on the question. This endorses the view that, among other things, there needs to be a much stronger distaff presence at the negotiating table -- from which, it will have been observed, women have been pretty much absent to date. And this despite the not unacknowledged fact that women and girls in recent years have been among the principal casualties of war.

Addressing the Council, Annan praised its two-year-old resolution as a "landmark" event. Citing his report, he said this shows that women can be the key to the resolution of conflicts. If that is so, it has to be wondered why it's taken so long to get them seriously into the decision making processes. For example, where were the women at Dayton and where are they now in Gaza and Jerusalem?

The Secretary General said it was time that women have a voice in formal peacebuilding, but he also said -- perhaps on a false premise that sounded like a putdown -- that for this to happen women must build the requisite skills. Millions of women may think they already are politically mature enough and intellertually well enough equipped to have a place at peace tables without special training and that they probably would perform no worse than male negotiators have done. Indeed, might very well do a lot better.

Women are noticeably in a minority in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and in UN field missions, but this is due in part to the failure of many governments to accord them the representation they deserve in national forces or as civilian officials. A glance around the Security Council's horseshoe table at a typical meeting will find few women sitting there in senior positions -- unless wheeled out for an occasional token appearance.

A dismaying statistic that emerged in the recent Council debate is that in recent armed conflicts more than 70 percent of the fatalities were civilian, and, overwhelmingly the casualties were women and girls. Elisabeth Rehn, a former defense minister of Finland (one of a very few countries that have numerous women policymakers), and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who ran unsuccessfully for President of Liberia, have done a study on behalf of the UN agency Unifem that includes the following:

"Women's bodies have become a battleground over which opposing forces struggle. Women are raped as a way to humiliate male relatives, who are often forced to watch the assault. In societies where ethnicity is inherited through the male line, 'enemy' women are raped and forced to bear children. Women who are already pregnant are forced to miscarry through violent attacks. Women are kidnapped and used as sexual slaves to 'service' troops."

There was much, much more and all of it evidence of the awful things that have happened to women and girls in war. But outside the Security Council, no one seemed to pay a lot of attention to the Rehn-Sirleaf findings. Least of all media obsessed with Iraq. Isn't it long past time for the world to wake up to a terrible problem and resolve to do something about it?