LISTEN TO WOMEN PEACEMAKERS
By Sakuntala Narasimhan

February 15, 2003 – (Kathmandu Post) War is news. Peace isn’t. Aggres-sive, macho, belligerent postur-ing catches media attention. Movements for tolerance, humane and harmonious, don’t. Which is why four recent peace proposals failed to catch the spotlight they deserved.

One of these, an international resolution on peace and conflict, known as the Kampala Conference Declaration of 2002, got completely ignored by the media despite the strong 15-point recommendation - drafted by women joining hands across the continents - at the end of a triennial, global Women’s Worlds Conference in Uganda.

The other, the ‘Not In Our Name’ (NION) movement that is gathering wide support across the US, has received media attention only in passing. This, despite the strong passions that underlie the movement, which condemns the American president’s determination to wage war.

The third initiative was a joint call for peace by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). At the launch of their joint report on women and armed conflict on January 22, 2003, UNIFEM director Noeleen Heyzer pointed out that the "nature of war is changing, with combatants using women as weapons of war". Heyzer added that the death toll of women and children in civilian populations is rising. While she saw the report as an "important tool for change" (towards promoting peace worldwide), the media paid scant attention to the event despite its UN origin. Was this because it called for peace, rather than war?

The fourth peace call came at the end of 2002 from an AWID (Association of Women in Development) conference which sought international commitment from all governments for accountability (in promoting gender equity, especially as agreed to under the Platform for Action drawn up at the Beijing conference of 1995) and peace (condemning unilateralism, and opposing the advent of a permanent ‘war on terror’). This too failed to make it to the mainstream media as worthy of coverage.

Was the sidelining of these four initiatives due to the fact that three of them were put forth by women, or was it because the theme was peace, rather than a call for war? Queried at random, some people said both reasons were applicable. "Women urging peace is not news. It would be news if women wanted war," said one man, while four respondents remarked that what women say "does not command the same weight as what men say".
The NION movement of USA, which has drawn support from Australia, Italy, Belgium and the UK, is the dissenting voice of thousands of American citizens who disapprove of their President’s decision to launch military operations (in Afghanistan and Iraq as ‘protection against terrorism’).

What is most significant is that this movement was started by relatives of the victims of September 11, thus emphasising the conviction that killing Afghans and Iraqis by the thousands (and also American troops in the process) is not a solution or the way to combat terrorism. "War will only lead to more hatred of Americans and more terrorism as a consequence," say those who endorse NION.

The Kampala Declaration lists a comprehensive 15-point resolution, seeking among other things, the creation of a database on women, peace and security experts, and organisations to be made responsible for funding women’s peace-building activities, dissemination of information on best practices in peace building (including through the internet), and holding national troops and staff involved in peace keeping missions accountable in human rights violations. (The US has refused to agree to this clause, effectively eroding its professed commitment to upholding human rights worldwide).

Women suffer inordinately in times of armed conflict and consequently, they are important stakeholders in the search for sustainable peace. Therefore, the Kampala Declaration demands that women refugees must be included in the decision-making mechanisms of camps to ensure equitable distribution of relief aid and other assistance. It also demands that the "traditional mechanisms used by women for conflict resolution and peace building should be not only supported but also institutionalised". Women’s involvement in the peace process, the Declaration avers, is "not a luxury but an absolute necessity".

Resolution number 7 of the Declaration also calls for the integration of programmes on gender awareness and peace education at all levels of education, so that the younger generation may be better equipped for peace building in the years to come.

The connection between gender equity on the one hand, and peace on the other, is not incidental. "As a mother you don’t want your kids to go to war. We women are slow in supporting armed conflict," says Jody Williams, one of 10 women who have been honoured with the Nobel Prize for Peace. She was in Afghanistan in July 2002 and saw the ravages of war herself. Why is it that fathers, who are also parents, do not similarly think of the costs and consequences of war on their children? Women call for ‘conflict prevention’; men call for ‘pre-emptive military action’.

"We need to go to war before Iraq gets nuclear weapons," says one American spokesman (male), and "this is the only way to protect US citizens". One may well ask: who used the first-ever nuclear bomb on an unsuspecting Japanese population, killing 200,000 innocent citizens in minutes?
"We need to go to war in Iraq because the region is vital to our economic health," said an American man on the Oprah Winfrey TV show last month. "But where is the question of health - economic or any other kind - if life itself is threatened by war?" retorted Alice McGrath, an American housewife, with devastating logic. She added that casualties would affect both parties, the aggressor as well as the invaded, regardless of who is right or wrong.
Women rely on intuition, men on logic, goes the popular saying. But in the context of peace, its clear that women are the more logical in reasoning, and the men are the ones getting carried away by their egos. Or their irrationality, perhaps?

Global peace and gender equity is quite obviously connected - like two sides of the same coin. One more good reason, then, for having more women at the decision-making table.

From: http://www.mahilaweb.org/footer/news/feb_03/kathmandu_post.htm