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... However, many of the men did what they pleased with the food they received: either selling it directly, often in exchange for alcohol, or giving food to the wives they favored. " Sudanese women worked closely with tribal chiefs and relief organizations to establish a system allowing women to pick up the food for their families, despite contrary cultural norms. In Pristina, Kosovo, Vjosa Do bruna, a pediatric neurologist and human rights leader, is now the joint administrator for civil society for the U. N.
Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In September 2000, at the request of NATO, she organized a multiethnic strategic planning session to integrate women throughout UNMIK. Before that gathering, women who had played very significant roles in their communities felt shunned by the international organizations that descended on Kosovo following the bombing campaign. Vjosa's conference pulled them back into the mainstream, bringing international players into the conference to hear from local women what stabilizing measures they were planning, rather than the other way around.
There, as in Bosnia, the OSCE has created a quota system for elected office, mandating that women comprise one third of each party's candidate list; leaders like Vjosa helped turn that policy into reality. In addition to helping aid organizations find better ways to distribute relief or helping the U. N. and OSCE implement their ambitious mandates, women also work closely with them to locate and exchange prisoners of war. As the peace processes in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East illustrate, a deadlock on the exchange and release of prisoners can be a major obstacle to achieving a final settlement. Women activists in Armenia and Azerbaijan have worked closely with the International Helsinki Citizens Assembly and the OSCE for the release of hostages in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where tens of thousands of people have been killed.
In fact, these women's knowledge of the local players and the situation on the ground would make them indispensable in peace negotiations to end this 13 -year-old conflict. REACHING FOR POLITICAL OFFICE In 1977, women organizers in Northern Ireland won the Nobel Peace Prize for their nonsectarian public demonstrations. Two decades later, Northern Irish women are showing how diligently women must still work not only to ensure a place at the negotiating table but also to sustain peace by reaching critical mass in political office. In 1996, peace activists Monica McWilliams (now a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly) and May Blood (now a member of the House of Lords) were told that only leaders of the top 10 political parties -- all men -- would be included in the peace talks.
With only six weeks to organize, McWilliams and Blood gathered 10, 000 signatures to create a new political party (the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, or NIWC) and got themselves on the ballot. They were voted into the top 10 and earned a place at the table. The NIWC's efforts paid off. The women drafted key clauses of the Good Friday Agreement regarding the importance of mixed housing, the particular difficulties of young people, and the need for resources to address these problems. The NIWC also lobbied for the early release and reintegration of political prisoners in order to combat social exclusion and pushed for a comprehensive review of the police service so that all members of society would accept it. Clearly, the women's prior work with individuals and families affected by "the Troubles" enabled them to formulate such salient contributions to the agreement.
In the subsequent public referendum on the Good Friday Agreement, Mo Mowlam, then British secretary of state for Northern Ireland, attributed the overwhelming success of the YES Campaign to the NIWC's persistent canvassing and lobbying. Women in the former Yugoslavia are also stepping forward to wrest the reins of political control from extremists (including women, such as ultra nationalist Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plastic) who destroyed their country. Last December, Africa Trifunovic, founding member of the local Women in Black (an antiwar group formed in Belgrade in October 1991), led a meeting that united 90 women leaders of pro-democracy political campaigns across the former Yugoslavia. According to polling by the National Democratic Institute, the grass-roots, get-out-the-vote work of groups such as Vox Femina (a local NGO that participated in the December meeting) convinced hesitant women to vote for change; those votes contributed to the margin that ousted President Slobodan Milosevic. Argentina provides another example of women making the transition from protesters to politicians: Several leaders of the Madres de Ia Plaza de Mayo movement, formed in the 1970 s to protest the "disappearances" of their children at the hands of the military regime, have now been elected to political office. And in Russia, the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers -- a protest group founded in 1989 demanding their sons' rights amidst cruel conditions in the Russian military-has grown into a powerful organization with 300 chapters and official political status.
In January, U. S. Ambassador to Moscow Jim Collins described the committee as a significant factor in countering the most aggressive voices promoting military force in Chechnya. Similar mothers' groups have sprung up across the former Soviet Union and beyond -- including the Mothers of Tiananmen Square. International security forces and diplomats will find no better allies than these mobilized mothers, who are tackling the toughest, most hardened hostilities. YOU " VE COME A LONG WAY, MAYBE Common sense dictates that women should be central to peacemaking, where they can bring their experience in conflict resolution to bear.
Yet, despite all of the instances where women have been able to play a role in peace negotiations, women remain relegated to the sidelines. Part of the problem is structural: Even though more and more women are legislators and soldiers, under representation persists in the highest levels of political and military hierarchies. The presidents, prime ministers, party leaders, cabinet secretaries, and generals who typically negotiate peace settlements are overwhelmingly men. There is also a psychological barrier that precludes women from sitting in on negotiations: Waging war is still thought of as a "man's job, " and as such, the task of stopping war often is delegated to men (although if we could begin to think about the process not in terms of stopping war but promoting peace, women would emerge as the more logical choice). But the key reason behind women's marginalization may be that everyone recognizes just how good women are at forging peace.
A U. N. official once stated that, in Africa, women are often excluded from negotiating teams because the war leaders "are afraid the women will compromise" and give away too much. Some encouraging signs of change, however, are emerging. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, dismayed at his difficulty in attracting international aid to his genocide-ravaged country, recently distinguished Rwanda from the prevailing image of brutality in central Africa by appointing three women to his negotiating team for the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In an unusually healthy tit for tat, the Ugandans responded by immediately appointing a woman to their team. Will those women make a difference? Negotiators sometimes worry that having women participate in the discussion may change the tone of the meeting. They " re right: A British participant in the Northern Ireland peace talks insight fully noted that when the parties became bogged down by abstract issues and past offenses, "the women would come and talk about their loved ones, their bereavement, their children and their hopes for the future. " These deeply personal comments, rather than being a diversion, helped keep the talks focused.
The women's experiences reminded the parties that security for all citizens was what really mattered. The role of women as peacemakers can be expanded in many ways. Mediators can and should insist on gender balance among negotiators to ensure a peace plan that is workable at the community level. Cultural barriers can be overcome if high-level visitors require that a critical mass (usually one third) of the local interlocutors be women (and not simply present as wives). When drafting principles for negotiation, diplomats should determine whether women's groups have already agreed upon key conflict-bridging principles, and whether their approach can serve as a basis for general negotiations. Moreover, to foster a larger pool of potential peacemakers, embassies in conflict areas should broaden their regular contact with local women leaders and sponsor women in training programs, both at home and abroad.
Governments can also do their part by providing information technology and training to women activists through private and public partnerships. Internet communication allows women peace builders to network among themselves, as well as exchange tactics and strategies with their global counterparts. "Women understood the cost of the war and were genuinely interested in peace, " recalls retired Admiral Jonathan Howe, reflecting on his experience leading the U. N. mission in Somalia in the early 1990 s. "They'd had it with their warrior husbands. They were a force willing to say enough is enough.
The men were sitting around talking and chewing qat, while the women were working away. They were such a positive force... You have to look at all elements in society and be ready to tap into those that will be constructive. Lasting peace must be homegrown. Inclusive security helps police forces, military leaders, and diplomats do their jobs more effectively by creating coalitions with the people most invested in stability and most adept at building peace.
Women working on the ground are eager to join forces. Just let them in. Swanee Hunt is director of the Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. As the United States' ambassador to Austria (1993 - 97), she founded the "Vital Voices: Women in Democracy" initiative.
Cristina Post, a former judicial clerk at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, is an attorney at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York. The Black and the Green Grass-roots women's organizations in Israel come in two colors: black and green. The Women in Black, founded in 1988, and the Women in Green, founded in 1993, could not be further apart on the political spectrum, but both claim the mantle of "womanhood" and "motherhood" in the ongoing struggle to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One month after the Palestinian intifada broke out in December 1988, a small group of women decided to meet every Friday afternoon at a busy Jerusalem intersection wearing all black and holding hand-shaped signs that read: "Stop the Occupation. " The weekly gatherings continued and soon spread across Israel to Europe, the United States, and then to Asia.
While the movement was originally dedicated to achieving peace in the Middle East, other groups soon protested against repression in the Balkans and India. For these activists, their status as women lends them a special authority when it comes to demanding peace. In the words of the Asian Women's Human Rights Council: "We are the Women in Black... women, unmasking the many horrific faces of more public 'legitimate' forms of violence -- state repression, communalism, ethnic cleansing, nationalism, and wars... " Today, the Women in Black in Israel continue their nonviolent opposition to the occupation in cooperation with the umbrella group Coalition of Women for a Just Peace. They have been demonstrating against the closures of various Palestinian cities, arguing that the blockades prevent pregnant women from accessing healthcare services and keep students from attending school. The group also calls for the full participation of women in peace negotiations.
While the Women in Black stood in silent protest worldwide, a group of "grandmothers, mothers, wives, and daughters; housewives and professionals; secular and religious" formed the far-right Women in Green in 1993 out of "a shared love, devotion and concern for Israel. " Known for the signature green hats they wear at rallies, the Women in Green emerged as a protest to the Oslo accords on the grounds that Israel made too many concessions to Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization. The group opposes returning the Golan Heights to Syria, sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians, and insists that "Israel remain a Jewish state. " The Women in Green boast some 15, 000 members in Israel, and while they have not garnered the global support of the Women in Black, 15, 000 Americans have joined their cause. An ardent supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the group seeks to educate the Israeli electorate through weekly street theater and public demonstrations, as well as articles, posters, and newspaper advertisements. While the groups' messages and methods diverge, their existence and influence demonstrate that women can mobilize support for political change -- no matter what color they wear. - 1 - Questia Media America, Inc. web Publication Information: Article Title: Women Waging Peace. Contributors: Swanee Hunt - author, Cristina Post - author.
Magazine Title: Foreign Policy. Publication Date: May 2001. Page Number: 38. COPYRIGHT 2001 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
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Research essay sample on Grass Roots Northern Ireland
