WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY: ETHIOPIA

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UNIFEM WOMEN, WAR AND PEACE WEB PORTAL: ETHIOPIA/ERITREA

"I would like to [...] describ(e) my own experience as a woman political prisoner. In prison, we tried to comfort one another to overcome the psychological and physical torture. We shared food and other necessities that we received from friends and relatives, and we tried to establish a sort of communal life. Those who had no children with them tried to share the burden of bringing up children born in prison, helping with their education. We shared our knowledge and experiences. We tried to enhance the future participation of women in political, social, cultural and economic activities in a peaceful and democratic atmosphere by raising each other's political consciousness. This support was the source of our moral strength and survival. Outside prison, women who faced common problems continued to give this type of support to one another."

Naamat Issa, member of OFC (Oromo Liberation Front)

“There is a relationship between peace, the environment, and the situation of women. The problems of bringing peace to Ethiopia, the difficulties of protecting the environment and women’s inequitable participation in economic and political life, all have the same roots.
To remove obstacles in the way of peace, to secure the survival of natural resources essential for the future, or to improve the situation of women in Ethiopia, those who make policy will have to look carefully at, and be willing to change, some fundamental assumptions and attitudes. […] A woman sustains life, makes it possible for everyone else to go to work, bears and nurses children, and provides them with their earliest education. The failure of international and national governments to acknowledge these activities as value-producing robs women of their dignity, while all other activity is given some measure of respect by being quantified in the general economic analysis. Without this unpaid work of women, no other production is possible. Unless the activities of women that do not involve exchanging money are included in the shaping of public policy, there will be no qualitative participation of the female half of the population in development. The situation of women is the key to any analysis of the economic underpinnings of a society, and to any realistic hope there might be for sustainable improvement.”

Bogaletch Gebre, Founder/Director of KMG, an Ethiopian nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower Kembatta women and their communities in support of their right to be free of harmful customary practices and other forms of abuse - September 1991