BLOG: Unheralded Heroines of Peace

For reasons that have already been extensively studied and debated, throughout the ages women and children have constituted the vast majority of innocent victims of violence and armed conflicts. It remains ironic that these victims, the most vulnerable and affected, emerge from their precarious condition of weakness and frailty to provide consolation in moments of anguish, to be healers of suffering and to help abate the torments caused by ruthless violence, in all its manifestations.

By the very nature of her being, women -- from the moment they are born -- learn to be peacemakers and negotiators in conflicts. This is a task that within the family they carry out in the most natural way. And the skills they exercise, by virtue of their innate abilities, as catalysts of disagreements in the intimacy of their homes, in the more complex situations, we have seen them acting as mediators in hostilities, as bridges to overcome differences, and as intermediaries in serious disputes.

And the truth is that women “listen with their senses". They can, through the healing of the heart and soothing of sentiments, reach the soul to cure wounds where medicine stumbles and science fails. Often relief comes more from treating the affliction than from treatment of the actual physical injury. Just as a mother puts her child to sleep with the sweet whispering of her voice and soft caresses of her love, women soothe pain with only the breath of serene words and their tranquil presence.

There is not doubt that in armed conflicts, valiant, exceptional, and extraordinary attitudes produce heroes. But just as there are heroic acts forged in the heat of battle, there are also those forged in the battle for life, in times of peace. Exemplary conduct, that contributes to peace. Surely to those heroic feats of war, we could put many well-known names, as medals to honor and bravery exist. But there are so many unknown names, of those who have performed epic deeds in peace, which, for the sole dimension of its abundance, remain shrouded in the deepest of silence.

I, who come from one of those small nations -- as the poet said -- where “our history could be written in a tear", can vouch for this other type of heroism. For example, those self-sacrificing mothers of my homeland bearing the cross of poverty on their shoulders that, without any companionship other than their solitude and the burden of their responsibilities, support and educate their children so that they may achieve their impossible dreams, are heroines of peace.

Those dedicated women who, defying prejudice and defeating the inertia of inequality, climb to the mountain peak, are heroines of peace.

When, in the Central American region, from whence I come, we passed through the bloody polarization in the 1980s, the women who enlisted in any of the civilian trenches to assist the helpless and destitute, to care for refugees or to contribute to the reconstruction of their homeland, were, without objection, heroines of peace.

When, in my country, we suffered the impact of a brutal natural disaster that split up the geography like a jigsaw puzzle, into hundreds of pieces, all those compatriots and women who came from other parts of the world as members of volunteer missions, to help in that moment of misfortune, to breathe encouragement to the grief-stricken, to repair lives and to build opportunities, are heroines of peace.

There is no greater contribution to peace than acts of solidarity, large or small, that light in the darkness, that make coexistence easier, and that lighten the heavy burden of life.

That woman who is real, who exists everywhere and who we do not see because we have become accustomed to her silent, daily, constant and untiring presence. That stranger who, without a monument or tribute, builds peace everyday. Because the cry of suffering, the agony of tribulation do not have nationality or borders