|
|
International
Women's Day - March 8, 2004
It's All About Women
In 2000, the United Nations
took a long overdue step: It "remember[ed] the ladies" in peace and
security issues. In that year, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution
1325 (R 1325) on Women, Peace and Security. By doing so the Council
affirmed, for the first time, that integrating a gender perspective and
ensuring women's participation are necessary at all stages of armed
conflict as well as pre/post conflict.
Subsequent to passage of the resolution, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
moved that the UN study and report on women, peace and security. An
independent expert assessment was also commissioned by UNIFEM, adding to a
growing body of analysis on the matter.
Since then, women's organizations around the world have been working and
collaborating on a set of concrete activities that the UN, governments,
NGOs, academics and others can and should be doing to address
implementation of R 1325. And as the annual meeting of the UN Commission
on the Status of Women is to be held in March 2004 - where one of the
topics to be discussed is women, peace, and security - the resolution
takes on new urgency.
As Carol Cohn noted recently in The Women's Review of Books, "Resolution
1325 breaks new ground because it not only recognizes that women have been
active in peace-building and conflict prevention; it also recognizes
women's right to participate - as decision makers at all levels - in
conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peace-building processes....
The resolution recognizes that women are disproportionately victimized in
wars and calls upon all parties to armed conflict to take special measures
to respect women's rights."
Understandably, the resolution has an active constituency. Women from
nations all over the globe are mobilizing to put pressure on the Security
Council with a view to implementation. They are advocating for several
specific steps to be taken, including having women participate in Security
Council missions or serve as UN special envoys, having more women engaged
in field operations, increasing gender-sensitive training, mainstreaming
gender perspectives, especially in peacekeeping, and having the Security
Council consult regularly with women's groups.
With women comprising more than half the world's population, it should go
without saying that women take part in peace negotiations in war-torn
countries. Such negotiations are the first step towards building a
post-conflict society; women need to be part of the process of shaping
their own futures, as any Afghan or Iraqi woman knows.
This is not only a political perspective; it is a practical one. Women are
the caretakers, and they keep life going during and after war. They know
what it takes to make society function, and they have proven themselves to
be remarkably adept and innovative during hard times. Typically, they want
to have contact with other women from all sides, and together, they
envision alternatives and viable ways to solve problems and to heal rifts.
In a 2002 statement to the Security Council on women, peace and security,
Kofi Annan pointed to the fact that "existing inequalities between women
and men, and patterns of discrimination against women and girls, tend to
be exacerbated in armed conflict." Citing the preponderance of women and
children as the world's refugees and internally displaced persons, and the
problems unique to females during armed conflict, he noted that "if women
suffer the impact of conflict disproportionately, they are also the key to
the solution of conflict. Women's groups and networks at grassroots level
have provided many examples of the imaginative strategies and flexible
approaches required for effective conflict prevention."
He was right about women's skill with imaginative strategies. In
Melanesia, for example, women have established women's community media to
share information in the hopes of making R 1325 a reality at the local
level. Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo pressured their
governments to honor their signatures to the resolution and lobbied hard
for its implementation. In Kosovo, women translated R 1325 into multiple
local
languages and removed the UN jargon from the document in order to make it
more accessible. With help from Italian women, they secured funding to
sponsor several TV programs explaining the resolution. Iraqi women held a
workshop to explain it to lawyers and others.
Why are so many women mobilized around this resolution? Because it's an
amazing opportunity to move away from militarism, to affirm women's
rights, to make the world safer, to transform the way we live. If such
transcendence is possible, it will take the full participation of women,
and a genuine appreciation for a gender perspective on human society.
There is always the chance that Resolution 1325 will not move beyond the
rhetorical commitment for which the UN is noted. Approved but not
implemented, it could languish as one of numerous documents that make its
authors feel good while women go on being treated as wartime booty.
But somehow that doesn't seem likely. There are just too many good women
who care and who are active in seeing it through, country by country. As
Carol Cohn noted, "What makes 1325 unique is that it is both the product
of and the armature for a massive mobilization of women's political
energies." There's no way of stopping that kind of energy; just ask anyone
who was in Beijing in 1995 for the 4th World Conference on Women. When it
comes to women's peace and security, we are a tireless force - a veritable
army, you
might say.
– Elayne Clift
March 8, 2004
International Women's Day -
March 8, 2004
Articles
Females: Superior by Choice, Design and Default
by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Getting Behind Abuse by Linda Light
It's All About Women by Elayne Clift
New Enemy Threatens Baby Girls by Manipadma
Jena
No Turning Back by Kalyani Menon-Sen
Single Moms by Choice by V. Radhika
Towards Freedom From Fear by Malvika Kaul
Poetry
Beacon of Hope by Neria
Harish Hebbar, MD
Mothers Never Die by Michael Levy
Woman by Pavalamani Pragasam
Women Empowerment: Today's Vision for
Tomorrow's Mission by Hillol Ray
International Women's
Day - March 2001
Ah! Women by Roberta Lee Wilcox
Ahilya - A poem by Manisha Bansal
And the International Women's Day was Born by Meera
Chowdhry
Being A Woman by Manisha Kulshreshtha
How to be a Woman, though a Human by Sangeeta Goel
March 8th - International Women's Day by Pavalamani
Pragasam
Most Beautiful Things
about Women by Smitha V
Mother Teresa: Woman of
the Century by Bijal Dwivedi
Musings of a Lady - A poem by Maria Reed-Shore
Nari 2001 by Lavanya Shah
Nevertheless - A poem by Manisha Bansal
Thoughts on Women's Day by Gargi Chaudhuri
What you can Never
Understand about Women by Smitha V
Women: Symbols of Sacrifice or Sacrificial Lambs? by
Meenakshi Madhur
By arrangement with
Womens Feature Service
Top
|
|
