Women's peace movement gets into gear
Dina Ezzat explores a high-profile Egyptian peace movement's efforts to enlighten the world on women's wartime tribulations
Sociologists have often propounded that women have an innate tendency to be peacemakers; if more women were in positions of power, they say, the world would be a better place. Fewer wars would be fought, and more developmental projects would be implemented to serve needy people everywhere. As more and more women's rights organisations look to that vision as the underlying principle of their work, it was also the inspiration for an initiative launched by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak. The newly born anti-war organisation she presides over is called the Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement (SMWIPM).
"We are the Middle East's first international women's peace initiative, and as such we seek to empower women in this part of the world to participate in efforts leading to peace and security," Mrs Mubarak told the group's first working session, which took place on Sunday. It was the first of four scheduled workshops that seek to work out a comprehensive and holistic action plan -- on both the national and regional levels -- leading up to SMWIPM's hosting of an international peace conference in Egypt later this year.
The plan, judging from the opening remarks made by Mrs Mubarak and Inge Relph, SMWIPM's interim executive director, could be wide enough to include anything from taking strong stances against armed conflicts to securing better access to education and health care for women and girls. "Peace is not just about the absence of war," Mrs Mubarak said. "It is safety from many sorts of hardships such as poverty, scarce resources, violations of human rights and denial of access to a good quality of life." She said peace could be measured by how a society went about "securing social justice, the rule of law, respect of human rights, environmental safety and fulfillment of personal potentials".
Judging by these criteria, the prospects for true peaceful existence on earth seem dim. Horrifying figures released by international organisations like the United Nations reveal that 90 per cent of all those killed and wounded in armed conflicts are civilians. Of the nearly 50 million people who have been uprooted around the world, 80 per cent are women and children. Around two million children have been killed in armed conflicts, some six million seriously injured or permanently disabled.
Women and girls seem particularly vulnerable to this kind of trauma. Over the past decade, underage girls were involved in armed conflicts in at least 32 countries. Ninety million girls still have no access to education, and women comprise two-thirds of the 960 million illiterate people in the world.
Women are also subject to a very specific form of war-related horror: sexual violence. "Violence against women is the big silent thing," Relph said. Rape, forced pregnancies and forced disemboweling are among the more obvious features, if not weapons, of war. But according to studies done by governmental and non-governmental women's organisations, wars often bring about particularly tormenting experiences. In some conflicts women were forced at gunpoint to watch other women's breasts being cut off, and mothers were forced to see their daughters being raped.
"These all sound like horrible stories to tell," Relph said. "But they are facts of life for millions of women." There were also volumes of recorded testimonies by women who suddenly became the heads of their households when their husbands were lost in combat or made redundant by the labour market due to war-inflicted handicaps. Relph also mentioned the increasing tendency for women on the fringes, or in the aftermath, of armed conflicts to be brutally subjected to violence. "In North Carolina, in the US," Relph said, "four soldiers killed their wives after coming back from war in Afghanistan."
Mrs Mubarak emphasised that the goal is not just to end wars, but also to grant women an equal share in shaping the futures of both their own families and their communities at large. To implement this ambitious agenda, SMWIPM will work in solidarity with a growing base of global peace builders to ensure that women are more actively and visibly represented in all aspects of conflict prevention, resolution and post-conflict reconstruction.
In doing so SMWIPM is not only inspired by the agony of hundreds of thousands of women in this part of the world, but by the text and spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Adopted in October 2000, this resolution encourages the increasing participation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolutions and peace processes, urging UN member states to increase their voluntary financial, technical and logistical support for gender-sensitive training efforts. Above all, it calls for the UN and all concerned bodies to make sure that women and girls are not forced to put up with the horrors of war and are not denied the full participation in efforts undertaken to bring about peace.
As SMWIPM goes about mobilising its efforts and resources in the weeks ahead, it will be attempting to transform relevant commitments and instruments made by the UN and other international, regional and national organisations into credible accomplishments.
SMWIPM will not only be lobbying for the inclusion of women in the processes of peace- building, but will also be ensuring that the issues that affect women and their families, especially the root causes of insecurity and violence in their communities, will be given adequate attention and consideration in policy-making so that peace is made more possible and more sustainable.
Relph said the UN is currently studying the full- fledged impact of armed conflicts on women, with a goal towards better integrating women into the remedy process. Mrs Mubarak is determined to involve SMWIPM -- which has emerged in a region that has more than its fair share of conflicts and their aftermath -- in such international efforts.
SMWIPM plans to reach out to Iraqi women now living in fear of rape, Palestinian mothers who lose their children to the lethal weapons and harsh prisons of the Israeli occupying force, and Somali and Sudanese women who have become refugees due to the armed conflicts in their countries. The organisation also plans to work for local change, by thinking of ways to offer women living in Cairo's poorest neighbourhoods protection against domestic violence, early marriages and under-paid labour.
The women present at the Sunday workshop represented a wide range of political and economic trends. Some participants argued that it was this variety that would allow SMWIPM to formulate and implement a viable working agenda. Others argued for the need for an even wider base of women who could speak first hand about their own experiences with picking up the pieces in the aftermath of armed and political conflicts.
SMWIPM's action plan will commence on 7 March, or the eve of international women's day. "As we go along we will have to engage the mass media and civil society," Mrs Mubarak stressed. The objective is to allow unheard voices to emerge, and thus encourage "the growing numbers of ordinary women and men around the globe who wish to see reason and peace prevail over war".
