Take Action Today To Stop Rape As A Weapon Of War

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May 262011
 

Via the Nobel Women’s Initiative:

“Dear Friends;

  • Did you know that up 500,000 women were raped during the Rwandan genocide?
  • Did you know that over 64,000 women were raped in Sierra Leone?
  • Did you know that over 40,000 women were raped in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
  • Did you know that thousands of women are raped every day in Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo?

Enough is enough.
Thursday is our international day of action against sexual violence in conflict.

Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi and Mairead Maguire will TAKE A STAND to end rape in war. We urge you to TAKE A STAND in your home country and join us virtually.

Following the unprecedented conference in Montebello, Quebec where they hosted over 120 women from around the world to discuss strategies to address sexual violence, the Laureates will be TAKING A STAND in Ottawa – addressing Canadian parliamentarians and urging them to take the lead to end rape in war.  Together – through online action – we can also take this message to governments all over the world.

Take  a stand:

  • Go to the UN Action Stop Rape Now website at http://bit.ly/m4GiDb and download the sample letter asking your elected official for increased action against sexual violence in conflict – and send it! Tell your government you are TAKING A STAND!
  • Write a blog post, tweet or share on Facebook. We will be posting videos and live-tweeting throughout the day – letting you know what ACTION we are taking.
  • Make sure to check the NWI blog and follow the #endrapeinwar hashtag. Use it in your posts – lets make it trend!

Sample tweets:

  • Hundreds  of women will be raped today. TAKE A STAND and send a letter to your gvt urging to #endrapeinwar http://bit.ly/m4GiDb
  • Almost 48 women are raped every hour in Congo. TAKE A STAND and send a letter to your gvt urging to #endrapeinwar  http://bit.ly/m4GiDb

Sample  Facebook posts:

  • As you sit at your computer right now, hundreds of women around the world are being raped as a strategic tactic of war. Tell your government: enough is enough! TAKE A STAND and send a letter to your elected official urging them to take action. link:  <http://bit.ly/m4GiDb> http://bit.ly/m4GiDb
  • Women  Nobel Peace Laureates are TAKING A STAND to end sexual violence in conflict. Why don’t you? Send a letter to your elected official urging them to be a leader by acting to end rape!
    link: http://bit.ly/m4GiDb

Make  sure you let us know when you have TAKEN A STAND by:

Women Nobel Laureates are taking a stand to #endrapeinwar . TAKE A STAND and send a letter to your government urging action: http://bit.ly/m4GiDb

Join us on Thursday. Together – we can move the earth.”

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 Posted by on May 26, 2011

A Cup Of Rancid Tea

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Apr 242011
 

In a country that has spent the last 10 years fighting wars that we can’t win and which have cost so much in every sense of the word, it is understandable that Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea describing the journey that led him to want to build schools, especially for girls, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, struck a chord. It was a story that many wanted to believe. We wanted there to be a romanticized way that the white colonizer could convince the dark heathens that we would save them. We needed a Lawrence of Arabia looking hero and Mortenson fulfilled our fantasy.

Even the U.S. military, which has waged the counter-productive, impossible to win war in Afghanistan wanted to believe, to the extent that they invited Mortenson to advise and speak to troops on many occasions. As Greg Jaffe writes in the Washington Post, Mortenson provided a kinder, gentler way of winning hearts and minds that the military badly wanted to be true,

Mortenson’s narratives of wise, patient and kind Afghan and Pakistani elders made it seem as though progress in Afghanistan was achievable. All U.S. troops had to do was learn the Afghan culture, show some patience and deliver a little bit of progress, and the Afghans would see the U.S. military’s good intentions and turn against the Taliban. In this formulation, counterinsurgency — a complex, morally ambiguous and frequently bloody type of war — came to look a bit like social work with guns.

The allegations made by 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer have however severely dented the armor of our hero. While no one disputes that Mortenson has built schools, it is deeply disturbing that,

a financial statement from the Central Asia Institute (CAI), which Mortenson co-founded in 1996 and is acting executive director of, show that only 41 per cent of funds raised actually went towards schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the American Center for Philanthropy, a charity watchdog, CAI claims that $1.7 million was spent on Mortenson’s “book-related expenses,” more than they spent on all of their schools in Pakistan last year.

Also, as Michelle Goldberg points out, while indeed CAI built numerous schools, education requires more than just a building–ongoing funding for books, teachers, etc. are key. But as Goldberg writes, while we want to believe in the white knight in shining armor image that Mortenson presents, it isn’t the best model for making a sustainable difference.

Mortenson became as famous as he did because people love the idea that one intrepid humanitarian can solve intractable problems in the world’s most desperate places. Schimmelpfennig calls it the “White in Shining Armor” approach to development. It makes for good stories, but it usually doesn’t work. In nearly every country in the world, there are people on the ground trying hard to improve things in their communities, and the most successful programs work through them. The Global Fund for Women, for example, takes applications for grants in any form and any language. It supports organizations like the Afghan Institute of Learning, which began by running underground girls schools during Taliban rule, and which has since trained more than 7,000 female primary school teachers. The problem isn’t that the world of development lacks real heroes. The problem is that they’re rarely the ones we hear about.

Kalsoom Lakhani wisely offers this perspective on the Mortenson saga, saying,

We should also use this opportunity to look inwards at ourselves, at our ability to get carried away by a charismatic personality and digestible narrative, in which Mortenson was the John Smith in the Pakistani version of Pocahontas. Rather than society questioning whether good intentions truly equaled good aid, we gave him a platform, feeling warm and fuzzy for the part we indirectly played in saving schoolchildren. This thinking is endemic of a larger problem with charity and non-profit giving, in which show ponies and personalities often sweep us off our feet. We forget that we must demand transparency, and that we need to go beyond giving, remembering instead to give well, and who our money should be ultimately going to. This means supporting institutions and organisations that are not built on personality alone, but on community engagement and sustainability.

There is no question that CAI’s finances need to be thoroughly investigated and Mortenson needs to be given a chance to fully respond (the 60 Minutes story unfortunately came out just before Mortenson underwent a heart proceedure from which he is currently recovering and therefore it may be some time before he is able to respond).

Regardless of that however, the Mortenson story is merely a variation of the we are better than everyone else therefore we must save them and show them the wisdom of our ways mythology that poisons so much of our public dialog.

And let’s remember that Mortenson is hardly the first person to observe that educating children, especially girls, is a very effective way to better a society. Human rights groups have been saying this six ways to Sunday for a very long time. If we truly bought into this theory however, we would be spending a great deal more on education and a great deal less on military action. Women’s rights groups such as RAWA have been operating schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan long before Mortenson showed up to discuss the matter with the male elders of remote villages. Yet RAWA, which operates on very minimal funds and in the face of great danger and usually the disapproval of those very same warlords and elders, only generates niche support in this country while Mortenson catches the attention of the whole country for the simple reason that we were brought up to believe that this was the model of heroism that will save the world.

It won’t.

 

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 Posted by on April 24, 2011

Reclaiming Her-Story–FPN Letter To Other Women’s Organizations Regarding The Needs Of Iraqi Women (2007?)

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Mar 282011
 

In our ongoing look at the Feminist Peace Network‘s story as part of Women’s History Month, this letter (undated, but probably sent in 2007) went to representatives of several other women’s groups, including WILPF, NOW, Code Pink, Global Women’s Strike, Nobel Women’s Initiative and VDay.  Unfortunately, nothing substantive resulted from it, and the letter could just as easily be sent today apropos of numerous conflict-afflicted areas in the world.

Gentlewomen,

As I think you all know, the already dire situation for Iraqi women and children has become horrendously worse during the last  few months, both for those still in Iraq and for those who are now refugees.  Yet this crisis is all but invisible to the U.S. peace/anti-war movement which seems to be centering its message on ending the war but supporting the troops, a message that while expedient in terms of building a broad coalition against the war, only addresses part of the problem.

As women’s organizations and feminists, we  need to demand that the specific harms to women as a result of this conflict be addressed as part of the anti-war movement’s agenda.  Harms such as:

–Lack of maternal healthcare.

–The difficulties facing women trying to get passports (you have to travel to Baghdad and have a male relative’s permission) in order to flee the country.

–The women who have been sexually trafficked and forced into prostitution to feed themselves and their children.  The Independent (UK) has suggested that 50,000 women refugees may  be prostituting themselves which sounds like a huge number but if you consider that there are some 4 million refugees now, many of whom are women without male relatives and who are not able to legally obtain work, the number does not seem unreasonable.  As horrific as this is, it is a crisis that is all but invisible to the American public.

All of our organizations want this war to end, but bringing our soldiers home, while necessary, is not sufficient, we need to end this war for the Iraqi people too and work to help them restore their lives.  The first place that needs to start is immediately addressing the refugee crisis and setting up ways to enable women as part of this process.  We also need to demand that U.S. troops do not continue the wholesale slaughter of women and children.

To raise our voices loudly enough to be heard, we truly need to do so together.  I don’t have a specific plan of action in mind, at this point I am simply asking if you are willing to work together and to ask that you share your ideas.

In peaceful sisterhood,

Lucinda Marshall

Feminist Peace Network

 

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 Posted by on March 28, 2011

Reclaiming Her-Story–Time Out! Women Call Pre-Emptive Strike For Peace

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Mar 232011
 

In our continuing look at the Feminist Peace Network’s story as part of Women’ History Month, we were a signatory to this letter in 2003.  In retrospect one wonders if this should be an annual call.  Imagine if we took this path instead of using embargoes and no-fly zones.

TIME OUT! WOMEN CALL PREEMPTIVE STRIKE FOR PEACE

Open letter to the United Nations Security Council

Women call a Preemptive Strike for Peace as the clearest expression of our informed, collective self-interest. Peace best enables our lives and the lives of our offspring, our brothers, fathers, spouses and partners, families, friends, neighbors and fellow human beings, wherever they live.  Peace among humans is the necessary condition to rescue our beleaguered planet and it may well be the imperative for species survival.

According to the Global Action To Prevent War: “The past century was the most lethal in human history. There were 250 wars, including two worldwide wars and a cold war, with more dead than in all previous wars of the past two thousand years. Over six million more have died even after the cold war ended, when things should have changed for the better.

This situation must not continue into this new century and it does not have to.”

WE cannot allow it. We Must Act Now. Our approach is not idealistic. It is a pragmatic, relevant, achievable response to war. Everywhere (and historically) non-combatant women, adolescent girls and children are the most brutalized victims of war. Violence against this population is the most relentlessly cruel and widespread violence of war. All conditions that produce and reproduce such violence should be intolerable to every woman and man and to every institution designed to organize human life.

What We Want

We request the UN Security Council

  1. To join us in calling TIME OUT on war. To help mobilize every UN Agency, especially all those mandated with the protection and well being of women and children, to invoke the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Beijing Platform on Women, to declare the impending war on Iraq (and by default in the whole region), illegal, irresponsible, immoral, unnecessary and untenable showing a blatant disregard for the lives of women, adolescent girls and children. If anyone claims we can fight a war and protect the human rights of this population, we ask the question, what of the human rights of every human being to whom every human woman’s life is attached, and what of the universal nature of human rights?
  2. To request the Secretary General to submit information for consideration –in step with the weapons inspection and disarmament of Iraq–on the condition of women in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caspian Basin the USA and Britain as their lives embroil in the stresses of war in its every phase…impending (USA, Britain, Caspian Basin); escalating (Iraq); under foreign military occupation (Afghanistan).  
  3. To hold the line on war, enforcing the weapons inspection and disarmament project in Iraq unhindered and un-pressed for time by all parties.
  4. To call for unhindered, immediate and ongoing restoration of the critical life-support infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq and clean up of the depleted uranium contamination in both countries
  5. To mobilize with the NGO’s Global Action Plan To Prevent War and The Hague Appeal For Peace for implementation of their programs of action moving towards the Abolition of War. The time to act is now, before the military machine roars into full gear and runs amok.
  6. To recognize that the UNSC Iraq weapons inspections and disarmament project has laid the groundwork and precedent for universal weapons inspections and disarmament and to push and call for it in every forum.
  7. To call an emergency global conference on The Root Cause of Conflict and The Culture of Peace. The conference will deliberate upon the problems and prospects of the Oil Industry and the International Weapons Industry and articulate action plans and timelines for their conversion to socially useful and sustainable industries. We propose that the conference be held in Baghdad as soon as possible, drawing ‘stakeholder’ participation from NGO’s and labor unions, government and industry.
  8. To mobilize UNESCO to hold a Middle East Cultural Festival in Iraq by early fall. The festival should include scholarly forums/ conferences on religion and peace, for example, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and World Peace, Mapping Peaceful Paths for our Children’s Children’s Children; health and healing, ecology and human culture, youth culture. We envision a great surge in International travel on missions of goodwill to replace the cold and cruel insanity of the war fever.

On October 28th. 2002, in the Secretary-General’s Statement To Security Council on Women, Peace and Security, Mr. Kofi Annan reported, …“patterns of discrimination against women and girls tend to be exacerbated in armed conflict…. But if women suffer the impact of conflict disproportionately, they are also key to the solution of conflict…However, with a few exceptions, women are not present at the formal negotiating tables and at formal peace negotiations. The report calls for greater representation of women in formal peace negotiations… The world can no longer afford to neglect the abuses to which women and girls are subjected in armed conflict and its aftermath, or to ignore the contributions that women make to the search for peace”.

Mr. Kofi Annan’s report was based on a 179 page study undertaken by his office in response to UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This historic resolution was unanimously adopted following an open discussion on October 24 & 25, 2000 when for the first time since its establishment in 1947, the UN Security Council  (UNSC) considered war from women’s perspective.  Better late than never.

UNSC Resolution 1325 reiterates the importance of bringing gender perspectives to the center of attention in all UN peace-making, peace-building, peacekeeping, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. The resolution provides a number of important operational mandates. They include:

  • Increase representation of women in decision-making for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict and peace processes (paras 1 and 2);
  • Increase appointment of women as special representatives and envoys (para 3);
  • … support local women’s peace initiatives; and ensure protection and respect for the human rights of women and girls (para 8);
  • Ensure respect for international law applicable to the rights and protection of women and girls (para 9);
  • Adopt special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence (para 10);
  • Ensure that Security Council missions take gender considerations and rights of women into account, including through consultation with local and international women’s groups (para 15);
  • The Secretary General to carry out a study on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, the role of women in peace-building and the gender dimensions of peace processes and conflict resolution and submit a report to the Security Council (para 16);
  • The Secretary General to include in his reporting to the Security Council progress on gender mainstreaming throughout peacekeeping missions (para 17)

Any resolution is only as good as its full implementation. While the UN Secretary General’s study was underway, UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund For Women) commissioned a simultaneous, independent study reporting similar conclusions. Each of these studies and both should have certainly mobilized the UN system to call the UN’s overarching mandate into full operation. The Preamble to the Charter establishing the United Nations says:

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

  • to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
  • to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small
  • to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
  • to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

AND FOR THESE ENDS

  • to practice tolerance…in peace with one another as good neighbors
  • to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security
  • to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest…

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Clearly, war is not a “condition under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”.

Yet here we are, sliding precipitously into the Bush administrations WAR ON TERROR in terrifying and unconscionable disregard of the findings of two exhaustive reports and in direct contravention of our collective obligation under UNSC Resolution 1325 and a host of other treaties including the UN Charter and the UN Universal Declaration Of Human Rights.

Women and men of good conscience must not allow this outrage. We are resolved to mobilize all resources in our power for peace. We urge every United Nations agency all National missions to the UN (signatories to the UN Charter) and all NGO’s to do the same.

We believe that the only appropriate follow up to UNSC Resolution 1325, is to implement the Hague Appeal For Peace: Replacing the law of force with the force of fair and just law. Ours is a human rights response. We assert our inalienable, common human right to Live Free of tyranny.

We have come through the bloodiest century in human history, with multiple, unprecedented, global attempts to chart a course for peaceful conflict resolution between and within nations. We have delineated in binding treaties, much of the international legal framework for peace. We have expressed our vision and intent in words. Now we must implement our common human will in action.

In the USA, Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and other leading women activists are mobilizing against the escalating war on Iraq under a Code Pink Alert. Starhawk, one of the leaders explains: “a Code Pink alert: signifying extreme danger to all the values of nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving men have held. We choose pink, the color of roses, the beauty that like bread is food for life; the color of the dawn of a new era when cooperation and negotiation prevail over force”.

Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness has helped to maintain a steady flow of Peace Teams into Iraq since the first Gulf War. Across the globe, organizations like Women In Black, Global Women Strike, have sent women into strife ravaged areas to be peacemakers. The Women’s International League For Peace and Freedom was founded on such actions.

In September, UNIFEM helped form a coalition of women in Azerbaijan to do peace work in the region. These are just a few of the many actions of Peace Women. Women of extraordinary courage and will are putting their lives on the line alongside men of conscience and humanity to prevent war. And this is not accounting for all the hundreds of thousands of courageous men organizing worldwide to avert war and work to bring us the sustainable world we envision.

Like the newly formed coalition in Azerbaijan, invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Beijing Declaration and Action Platform, the final documents of the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Women in Development: Equality Development and Peace Between Men and Women in the 21st. Century, the UNSC Resolution 1325, and CEDAW we invite all Women, all peace-loving institutions and all peaceful people of the world to join our call.

TIME OUT! WOMEN CALL PREMPTIVE STRIKE FOR PEACE.

ENDORSING ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS

Women’s International League For Peace And Freedom, NY Metro

Evelyn Mauss (board Member Physicians For Social Responsibility, Consultant National Resources Defense Council -for identification only)

MADRE

Deborah Gorham, Prof. Emerita, Dept.of History/Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Professor Harriet Alonso City College NY, Women’s Peace Historian, Author

Feminist Peace Network

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 Posted by on March 23, 2011

Addressing The Vulnerabilities Of Women And Children In Japan

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Mar 172011
 

In the aftermath of the disaster in Japan, it is crucial to recognize and address the particular vulnerabilities of women and children.  There is nothing new about this, but these needs are rarely addressed adequately.  Make no mistake, addressing food and water needs, shelter needs, clean up and trying to stop the unfolding nuclear disaster are critical, but that does not minimize women-specific needs. Via  Gender Across Borders,

As the World Health Organization notes, women and children account for more than 75 percent of people displaced by disasters. For those women, disaster magnifies health care disparities and the burdens assigned by gender roles…

…As caretakers, women may spearhead the family’s search for shelter and safety. Away from home, the women displaced in Japan could face increased vulnerability to sexual assault.

There are already reports of vulnerable women being preyed upon,

There have been reports of men approaching single women, pretending to be a police officer or someone from an aid organization offering to take them to a ‘safer place’. They are trying to take advantage of stranded women during the crisis. Please spread this around, and tell anyone you know who is in Japan. Don’t go anywhere alone, buddy up with someone and stick together.

And bear in mind that interpersonal violence is already a huge issue in Japan. Domestic violence in Japan jumped 20.2 per cent in 2010.  In most cases the victims are women.  Also, while it is good that American troops are providing humanitarian assistance, it is important to remember that there is a long history of American soldiers preying on Japanese women near U.S. military bases in Japan.

A women-only shelter has been set up.  The contact information is:

Asia Japan Women’s Resource Center
Shibuya Coop 311
14-10 Sakuragaoka
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150
Japan
Tel: 03-3780-5245
Fax: 03-3463-9752
Email: ajwrc@jca.or.jp

In addition to physical safety concerns, there are also concerns for pregnant women who may not be able to get adequate health care.  But beyond that there is another crucial concern in the aftermath of this disaster. As The Daily Beast points out,

A full-blown nuclear meltdown would be devastating for pregnant women and their fetuses, which are particularly vulnerable to the lasting effects of radiation. Should the worst-case scenario become a reality, it could lead to a generation of children born with all manner of maladies, from congenital malformation to mental retardation. Even at radiation levels too low to make a mother-to-be sick, health consequences for a fetus can be severe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

…Because ionizing radiation can cause DNA damage, it can thwart the cell division necessary for healthy formation of essential organs. Birth defects resulting from exposure to radiation include smaller organs, microcephaly (a condition in which a baby is born with a smaller brain) and lowered cognitive functioning. However, these effects “usually require relatively high doses of radiation” and such extreme levels are not yet confirmed, said Dr. Douple in an email.

Finally, many women in shelters are without such basics as tampons and babies need diapers, formula, etc. supplies of which are usually an afterthought, but the need is very real.

As aid begins to make its way to Japan, the vulnerabilities specifically experienced by women and children need to be fully addressed and an integral part of relief efforts.

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 Posted by on March 17, 2011
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