COLOMBIAN WOMEN DEMAND PARTICIPATION IN THE PEACE PROCESS

December 5, 2001 - (Guayaquil, Ecuador) After seven days of deliberations in alternative peace talks on the Peace Boat, Colombian women are proposing that they become a mediating group to bring ways of resolving the agonizing peace process now taking place between the government of President Pastrana and the armed groups. The women's alternative peace talks are composed of combatants, ex combatants, army reservists, women serving in the public sector, women from civil society networks working for peace, indigenous leaders affected by the violence and by the cultivation of illicit crops, victims of kidnappings and of the crossfire. There are also participants coming from national and international NGOs, including among others, from Columbia, the Association of Women Heads of Families of Cali, from the USA, the Drug Policy Foundation which opposes the present US Anti-drug policy and Feminists for a Gift Economy, an international feminist network, from Geneva, Switzerland, the Association of New Synergies in Development, and the Japanese Peace Boat, from Tokyo.

The group is also supported by the governments of Norway and Switzerland, two countries which are mediators in the Colombian conflict, by the Embassy of Columbia in Venezuela, by the Institute of Development Studies in Geneva and the University of the Andes in Bogota. In this unprecedented meeting, very sensitive issues were discussed, such as the effect of the drug trade on the war, the creation of alternative models of development, the participation of women in the official peace talks from which they have been until now excluded. The women are proposing innovative mechanisms for post conflict design, overcoming impunity in war crimes as a condition for the restoration of confidence, and asserting the responsibility of the international community in this process.

These alternative peace talks have created much interest because of the political diversity of the participants. They include women from different ideological backgrounds now and will continue to do so in the future. The women are succeeding where generations of men have tried without much success, freeing themselves from resentment and sectarian hate to begin to construct the confidence, the tolerance and the consensus necessary for the peace process in Columbia. The proposals of the Women's Alternative Peace Talks constitute a weave of many threads which must be expanded to include all the social and political sectors of the different regions with the purpose of capitalizing on the experience of all the parties involved in the conflict.

With the proven capacity of women to lead and manage situations in a transparent way, to transform and re invent, to innovate with reason and from the heart, with the sentiments of mothers, of sisters, of grandmothers, of daughters, and of trusted friends, they reaffirm their conviction that without them there will not be any definitive solution for the construction of a new society.