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| Number 5 | April 2000 | ||
Contents
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Yin-Yang Workshop Are women - or better - is woman - by nature, better disposed towards peace than men and man? Nothing is less certain. We only have to bring up "great" figures of History like Joan of Arc, Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher - without forgetting the women who sat knitting at the Place de Greves - to dismiss the "essentialist" myth of innate female gentleness. This holds true for our modern times as well. With regard to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a UNICEF brochure recently said: "It is no secret that there are women amongst the extremists who murder their neighbours, colleagues, friends and even relatives". Despite this, the brochure reminds us that that the reconstruction of the same country was only possible a few months later thanks to the creation of the movement "Pro-Woman/ Twese Hanwe", formed through the efforts of thirty two women's associations. It is a fact that may not make the front pages of the more dominant press but that compels notice from the associative press and field visitors: in very many regions where conflicts rage today, women, swallowing their tears, join to rebuild and re-establish peace. Why women particularly? Undoubtedly because of the traditional separation of roles between the sexes. Like a woman-doctor in Sarajevo said to a journalist: " Men can die. They at least have that choice. When life no longer has a price, it is a luxury to be able to die. Women on the other hand must survive if only for their children." Since time immemorial, women have been the victims of war, indeed the favourite targets. They have always cried, consoled, nourished, tended, lodged. But there is something new. The appearance of the famous "Women in black" in many ravaged cities serve as testimony: since a few years, emerging from their roles as victims and providers of consolation, women started to say "No" to those who made them and their children suffer. For example, as happened recently in Colombia, they refused to make love to men in arms. No to war, no to violence of all kind. It has been established that 90% of this violence, physical violence at least, is committed by men. Who were the precursors of this resistance? Those admirable Argentinean women, mothers and grandmothers of victims of the military dictatorship, who in 1977, created the May Square movement. These "mad women" in white scarves who transformed their individual grief into collective combat and demanded that the assassins, torturers and kidnappers of their children and grandchildren be brought before justice and sentenced. This battle - which is unfortunately still not over - inspired women and mothers the world over to act. Against war, against the Mafia, against drugs. In short, against all that could be called organised crime. In Latin America, in Asia, but especially in Africa. Should we be surprised that the continent where the peace initiatives by women seem the most numerous today is precisely the one that is the most undermined by conflict and violence and where women are the most confined within their traditional roles of wife and mother? Last May, a conference held by UNESCO in Zanzibar on the subject: "Women come together for peace and non-violence in Africa" made it possible to appreciate the recent burgeoning of women's committees, movements and NGO campaigns for peace in nearly all the countries of the continent. Some of these initiatives took place after the conflicts - care, lodging, reconciliation, reconstruction - but more and more often - and sometimes in the heart of the same movements - they seek to act for the "future". In real terms, they try to introduce the ethos of a culture of peace into education, to use traditional practices - song, music, stories - to diffuse budding conflicts, or simply to invite protagonists to sit and discuss or even, as was the case in Mali recently, to organise the boycott of the importation of arms. Thus the favourite victims converted into resisters: women - or more precisely, some women, now in growing numbers - are becoming what one could call "agents of change". Agents of change who have rarely, because of their exclusion from power, had the possibility to intervene in conflicts, but who are more and more present before and after. Often, they question the very legitimacy and usefulness of these conflicts and take recourse to creating new conflicts, generally non-violent; precisely because they are "out of touch" and detached. In the meanwhile, neither action nor thought today limits itself to the so-called "public" domain of armed battle. "War, it was said in Zanzibar, is everywhere, within families, at work and in the schools". By converting their suffering to combat, the Argentinean mothers blurred the traditional distinction between the private and the public. The final document of the recent meeting in Amsterdam of the Alliance for a responsible and united world on "Women and peace" said "Peace is not just a cease-fire. It can only be built on respect for others and equality" (see report below). Which in concrete terms means that is also necessary to fight for instance against conjugal violence and against prostitution, for the human rights of women... A question remains. When these women, in a future that is perhaps closer than we think, get their hands on the levers of different kinds of power, will they know how to continue to say "No" to the demons of nationalism, competition and personal benefit? In other words, will they know how to retain their own values and be able to resist the temptation of acting like men? Marlène Tuininga (France)
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