SUDAN:

“We, the women of Darfur, have united to heal the wounds. We have built our power. It is time for the Darfurian movements to unite."

This is the collective message that a group of 70 female civil society leaders from Sudan and Chad urgently want leaders of Darfur's rebel groups to hear. “We want you to remember that every day a young woman is raped, and another leaves school. We have already lost a generation and do not want to lose other generations,” they wrote in a letter addressed to rebel leaders during a peace-building workshop in July. Two months later, the women have returned to their homes – or at least to their temporary homes, for many of the women have been displaced by violence – and are gathering signatures from other women in their communities. So far, more than a thousand women have signed the letter – and many men have wanted to, according to the participants.

Brought together by My Sister's Keeper, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the Institute for Inclusive Security, women traveled from Chad, Abyei, Red Sea State, Khartoum, and Southern Kordofan to meet in Juba for a week-long peacebuilding workshop. “We intentionally brought women in clusters from some areas such as Wau and Kuacjok to facilitate their working together after the conference,” said Gloria White-Hammond, executive director of My Sister's Keeper.

“My personal hope from this letter-writing campaign is that it will succeed in putting pressure in all rebel leaders to pay attention to what is happening on the ground in their communities as they go to war,” said Amna, one of the conference attendees. Right now the peace process has stalled in large part because the rebel groups are not united in their grievances against the Sudanese government, said Amina, another participant. “There is no trust between the negotiating parties, and most of them have a hidden agenda, even the government. So when they sit together around a table for negotiation, each only has in mind his own tribe and how much he can win,” she said.

The women participating in the Sisterhood for Peace initiative, as this partnership between the three organizations is called, want to address the stalemate from multiple angles. In addition to the letter to the rebel leaders, they drafted one for lead mediator Djibril Bassole and one to First Lady Michelle Obama. They call for “strong and neutral mediation” to “restore the confidence of the parties” so that negotiations will be inclusive and productive.

Darfur peace talks restarted this week between the Sudanese government and one coalition of Darfur rebels, the Liberation and Justice Movement, which formed in February when the latest round of negotiations got underway in Doha. According to news reports from Doha today, the two sides agreed to finish their negotiations by October 19 and finalize a draft peace to circulate between all the rebel movements shortly thereafter. However, optimism about the Doha talks has waned because the two rebel groups who wield the most firepower and support among Darfuris pulled out or refused to participate.

But as the sentiments of the Sisterhood for Peace participants illustrates, patience with this refusal to participate in peace talks has also faded.

“Our eyes are dry from crying over what has happened to our families. (…) [W]e are exhausted from the persistence of the war with the ongoing killing, violation and absence of security,” the women wrote. But months later, as the list of signatures on the letters grows, participants say that they feel renewed optimism in the strength of their message of peace when they band together, particularly in light of the only limited role women have played in peace processes in Sudan.

“When [the participants] arrived at the conference they seemed just so beat-down; you could feel the despair and sense of powerlessness,” said White-Hammond of My Sister's Keeper. But between watching the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell about women peacemakers in war-torn Liberia, meeting and learning about the accomplishments of the Sisterhood for Peace's diaspora delegates, participating in the trainings, hearing the testimonies from women peacebuilders in South Sudan and Nuba Mountains, there was a distinct shift in outlook.

While the Sisterhood for Peace participants continue to solicit support for their message in their communities, the organizers are working to find channels get the letters into the hands of each of the rebel leaders, the mediation team, and to set up a meeting with Mrs. Obama.

As White-Hammond said, “I would say the headline for this conference is ‘Hope Resurrected!”