Regina Birchem:
I was asked to moderate this panel with Eugenie, and my role is to make sure we achieve our objectives. The objectives are to get some case study reports from areas where there are conflicts going on. The case studies that we hear today are not all the areas of conflict in our organisation. We have speakers who will follow a brief format in which they will give the roots causes of the conflict that they have experienced in their countries and as part of their presentation, will tell what the cover up story is. All of this is to lead to an analysis that will tell us what are commonalities and I hope that in the discusion afterwards we can arrive at some of the commonalities and what we as a group of women for action will do. It will be a bit frustrating for the women up here, because they are confined to only about 4-6 minutes to tell what they have experienced in their country and their analysis of it which they are doing with a great deal of knowledge and information but hopefully this will be an entre to more discussion around every table on these issues, particularly with those who are leaving early.

Angola, summary by Liss Shanke

I have been working for the United Nations in Angola for two years. Where is Angola? Angola is in Southern Africa. It is one of the ex-Portuguese colonies together with Mozambique, Sao Tao Principe, Guinea Bissau and __ which means that you speak Portuguese and that is one of the reasons why you don't know much about it.

Angola is one of the longest conflicts in Africa. A war of liberation started in 1963, up till then it was a Portuguese colony, it was independent from 1975 and since 1975 a civil war has been going on. What are the roots of the conflict? First it is economic, primary goods in Angola you will find petrol and diamonds. The government controls the petrol, the opposition, the guerilla movement controls the diamonds. The government is called MPLA, the opposition is called UNITA. They have had those two resources for 25 years been fighting for 25 years and they can go on fighting because they have the economic resources to support them. This means of course that these resources are not only attractive nationally but also internationally. In Angola you will find all the main oil companies, also the Scandinavian ones, and that is an important part of the conflict. The capital of Angola is the most expensive in the world, in the statistics we beat New York, DC and Tokyo, so there is also extreme poverty. The oil companies pay $30,000 per month for a house. Which means of course that all kinds of prices correspond to what the oil companies can pay, way beyond most Angolans can ever imagine paying.

The second root of the conflict is the lack of national democratic institutions and traditions. The Portuguese came to Angola in approximately the year 1400 and the civil war started in 1975, that is, there has never been such a thing as a peaceful Angolan state. Before the Portuguese arrived, there was different tribes as you had different tribes in the states or in Scandinavia or in Southern Europe, there was no such thing as a nation, you never had any kind of nation building that was peaceful . The Portuguese didn't built a nation, they build a colony, and then a long civil war, so young people, the majority of the population have not known anything else but civil war..

My third reason would be low level of human development. The United Nations agency that I worked for was the UNDP - the United Nations Development Programme, for which I still do consultancies for. They have developed an index of human development, where you look at three elments: the age span, the gross national product and the level of illiteracy. If you look at these three elements in Angola you find that the GNP is very high, approximately 1500 dollars, which is very high by African standards. Illiteracy is more than 50% and the life span is approximately 44 years old, and in most African countries it's going down because of AIDS. When you rank the 174 countries, on that UN index, Angola is 160, and with that high GNP it should be much higher on the list.

The cover up story, as in most African countries is race and tribalism, we are very fond of the world tribe when we are analysing African countries, and that is to my experience, generally a cover up story. We do have conflicts between white people in Angola, muluttos and the different African tribes but that is not the reason of the conflict in itself . Another part of the cover up story is the privatisation or a personalisation of the conflict. The leader of the group that is controlling the diamonds - UNITA - is led by Jonas Savimbi, and he is portrayed as the devil himself, which of course he is not, but he has been a leader of the opposition movement for 25 years. The difficult question and the 100 million dollar question is what are the solutions and what could WILPF be doing?

In my opinion we must go back to the roots of the conflicts, so the solutions and the WILPF actions in my opinion should be linked to the roots of the conflict. Is there anything we can do when it comes to the oil companies. For instance, when it comes to Norway we do pride ourselves on being a very democratic country, but we have oil companies who are indirectly supporting the conflict in Angola. There are companies that should be challenged on the national level. Second would be lack of democratic institutions, that would be any kind of support or action that can help support long term democratic institutions and traditions. I think that is one of the issues where it would be possible for WILPF to develop concepts of leadership training for women. If we want women at the negotiation table, we need women as leaders at all levels of society and it’s a question of formal capacity and information capacity building.

First of all I would like to clarify that I call this country Zaire. Zaire is in Central Africa. It is the third largest country in Africa, we were colonised by Belgium and got our independence in 1960, we speak French, we have four national languages and we have 250 dialects. We are very, very rich. We have diamonds, oil, uranium, cobalt, copper, anything you can name in terms of minerals, they are in our soil. And that is a curse or a blessing for us I don't know. Since we have many minerals there is a foreign interest in our wealth. Today I remember Mobutu who was the ex President of Zaire, he said that before him was the chaos, and after him will be the flood, and today in Zaire, there is a war going on for three years, and people are dying, and I'd like to explain the roots of the conflict which is difficult, because I don't always understand it myself.

First of all I'd like to talk about foreign interest in Zaire is in our minerals and that's why they don't want a strong government, they want a puppet. The CIA in the Cold War were interested because our position is very strategic, we are in the centre of Africa and we are bordered by nine countries, so during the Cold War it was very important for the Americans to stop us going to the other side. They had to put in someone they could trust the protect their interest. That is why they killed Momomba and they put Mubutu, and he stayed for 32 years. And then, a bit like using a kleenex, when they didn't need him, they threw him away and then put Kabilla in place. Kabilla was there to gather the interest of the west. The conflict started with Rwanda. You must remember that Rwanda and Burundi very close by, I think you will remember that in 1994 there was a genocide and the west just watched people killing each other. In Africa we don't have ethnic conflict, it is a cover up story, they just use it to cover their interest. When you look closely at what was happening in Rwanda, you can tell there was a foreign interest of the French, American and everyone.

The conflict in Zaire started with Mubutu because the Americans were embarrassed by him because they had created a monster and then they didn't know what to do with him, so they had to look for a change because it was a time for democracy, and they needed something. So Mubutu when they wanted to take him out, they chose Kabilla with the aid of Rwanda and Burundi. And you have to understand how a big country like Zaire cannot stand against a tiny country like Rwanda. In Rwanda the army was well trained, they had received arms from Americans which has been proven today, they gave the military logistics for Rwanda, and the excuse was that in 1994 we received 2 million Hutu refugees, and in these 2 million refugees there were some Hutu who were the author of the genocide in Rwanda, so the excuse was, Rwanda has to go in and chase those Hutu, and so when they went there, they had to look for Zairian support, so that is why they choose Kabilla. It is very interesting to know that when Kabilla was still a chief rebel, many multinational corporations went there to sign contracts with him, even when he wasn't the President, then they put him in power. In Africa, especially my country, we like a strong leadership. We don't have political leaders, we just have gangsters, puppets and why do you have to have puppet? Because if we have a strong leader in our countries, those people that are interested in wealth, and in helping foreign interest and that's how it's going on. Now because we don't have an army, because we don't have a good leadership, the government has asked for help from other countries, so there are six countries involved in Zaire, and that is very complex because we don't know what to do. In Zaire there is partition, there is 3 areas of conflict in the same country, in the north there is a rebellion supported by Uganda, in the east there is a rebellion supported by Rwanda, and you have the central government supported by Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. Why Angola? Because you have to remember during the Cold War, the CIA used Zaire as a base for destabalising the region. So the situation is so complex that I don't know what to do or say. But what I can say is that people are suffering, and that is what we forget sometimes. I have my family living there, and they are suffering, they are victims. I'm from the North and my grandparents live there, and my family live in Kinshassa, the capital,, and since the war there is difficult communications so I don't know what is going on. Because of that there is no democracy. The governmentt and the rebels use torture as a means of political repression. Women are very much victims of what is going on because they use rape, and there is poverty. I can give an example, I have a cousin and he has two brothers, because of the conflict they had to flee in the bushes and they starved, and there is no medical care, and that has happened a lot. There is a survey made by IRC - the International Rescue Committee - they say that estimated 2.5 million people have died because of the war, but nobody says that.

What can we do to help? There is no easy answer, but for me an easy answer is that the west leaves us alone. But that would be a utopia, because they will never leave us alone. I think WILPF can help but how? Today to resolve the conflict, I think there is a movement of Zairian who would like to have an International Criminal Court (ICC), and there is some talks , and I know a priest who went to Washington DC, USA to lobby the congress for the US to support an ICC. I think WILPF can support the idea that we create an International Criminal Court for Zaire. Perhaps we should send a WILPF mission of investigation about crimes - because there is no information, and people are silenced and need to know what is going on. Also WILPF can support women to be in the peace process talk, because I think very soon there will be talks but what is the place of women? I don't see any women. So I think WILPF can help to raise the issue of participation of women.

My conflict started 11 years ago. Sierra Leone is a former British colony, we were a central part of the slave trade and we are very, very rich. We too have all kinds of diamonds and minerals, in fact it is said that we have the best diamonds, if there is such a thing. And because we were colonised, we have also what is called tribes in the interior as well as Creoles around the city who were former slaves. So there is some kind of a class structure flowing from colonisation. It is not a religious conflict, it is not an ethnic conflict. Our conflict is not as complex Zaire, but it is difficult to resolve because the root causes of the conflict are political and economic factors together - whoever controls the diamonds controls political power in Sierra Leone.

Why economic conflict? It is easy to say that it is the external factors but because it is an internal conflict, we first have to look at the internal dynamics of the economic factors The fact is that whoever controls the diamonds inside controls political power, whoever controls the cocoa and the coffee also controls Sierra Leone. Because we have had 25 years of a one party rule which has created a dominant political class, that political class holds economic power and has held it for that period of time, disenfranchising the other majority class and that is the root cause of the conflict because that majority class who are fighting against the dominant ruling political class created by the one party state. That is the internal dynamics of the conflict that the rebel movement, which represents the disenfranchised class is fighting to take political power, so that they can get control of the economic basis of the country.

What has strengthened or perhaps the reason why the conflict has been going on is because of the external factor, it won't stop until the external participants are sure of who the internal powers are, the conflict will not stop. Because they need to know and prepare who controls the diamonds, the cocoa and the coffee and all the other minerals so that they will get the contracts from the puppet, whoever they are It's not the beginning but its definitely the ongoing reason for the conflict. That's the relationship between the political and economic reason for the conflict.

If you look deeper at the division between the disenfranchised and the enfranchised class, the new political class, you will find that within that division there are two elements, those who hold political power are also the richest and the most educated. Because they were sent and can send their kids overseas to be educated. It's not only the fact that you are rich and poor, you are also educated and uneducated, employed unemployed, skilled and unskilled and all those issues we saw in the explanation of the Palestine/Israeli conflict can be also found in an internal situation, those elements do exist, therefore we can see why there isn't really a difference whether or not it's between Israel and Palestine, but even within internal conflicts, the issues are parallel, they are common.

The two other root causes of the conflict are historical, that during colonisation there was partition of Africa. In the partition of Africa, the Liberians believed that when the British drew the lines, they took part of Liberia, and the part of Liberia they took in partition and colonisation and the drawing of those lines, is part of the diamond fields. And during the destabalisation, the external factors that influenced the conflict was Liberia, because Liberia found that this was the time to come back and say "Give us our diamonds, or what we would do is go and take the diamonds because it also belongs to us." But it's not said, it is not written down. There is an understanding between the Sierra Leoneans and the Liberians that the bottom line at the end of the day is the diamonds. They are not only supplying the arms, because they like one side or the other, but it enables them to go to the diamonds while the others are engaged in fighting . The result of that, if you look at the figures, the export of diamonds through Liberia has expanded 1000 times when they don't own any diamond fields as such. Again we find the drawing of lines whether it is in Palestine or in Sierra Leone, there are common reasons for parties to feel that these are not the legitimate lines, and therefore you can see why they would participate in the conflict, why they will find a reason to support one side or the other.

For me the last common issue between the conflicts is arms. During the Cold War it was easy for the west and Russia, they were open about it, if you wanted to go Communist the Russians would support you, and if you wanted to support the west, the French, the US, the UK would support you. After the cold war, it is everybody and the road to conflict, the Russians now who are split, but countries like the Ukraine are finding ways to distribute their arms. These conflict areas, or potential conflict are hotbeds for the receipt of arms. If you want to sell your arms, you find a conflict, it doestn' matter who, the rebel side appears to be socialist, but they are not, they just want political or economic power. It's not a question of policies or principles and they get the weapons. There will always be the conflict, because they people have to sell their arms. They have to sell their arms.

How would WILPF help my situation in Sierra Leone. In two major ways, perhaps in a way we do one very level. One is at the policy level where WILPF's support of the issues of peace and human rights and democracy in the context of the UN can support those policies and gender as well which Christine referred to. At the policy level we can support those issue at the level of the United Nations, because once those policies are established, it is easier for us to use them in country situations, and say okay, this is it, and this is what we are going to do at the country level. I believe that we do that extremely well. There is evidence of that in what we are involved in at the United Nations. The second level is on the level of programmes, and for me that means that when we define our programmes on an international level, they focus our policies at the implementation of the country levels. What I mean by that is there - for if we support women's human rights, we have got CEDAW established at the United Nations policy level, but if we look within the WILPF family and say we find a criteria for choosing 10 countries in the WILPF family in which we will implement our programme of establishing women's human rights, because we have to say at the end of the day what have we achieved on the programme level that will show that we are really doing work. At the end of 3 years we did not only support at the policy level at the United Nations, also we have made 10 countries achieve something in the implementation of that policy.

In Sierra Leone, we would be able to say that women participated, not only did we support the resolution of 1325 at the Security Council, but at the country level we have 10 countries who are members of the WILPF family, in which there are conflict and in which we know we have achieve women's human rights ,and this is how we did it.

The second level is in strengthening civil society, because we are an NGO, one of the ways we can help is how we strengthen civil society within. If we take women and peace, we have got it at the policy level, but we know change will come also through the development of civil society, and I believe that if we work within the WILPF family, and choose women and peace and then choose 12 countries in conflict and say we are going to try to establish peace within these countries and the way we are going to do that is by choosing how women are going to influence the peace processes in their country . The way to do that is to strengthen WILPF by actually doing programmes, through training, not only as a national country programme but as an international country programme so that we can say that in these 5 countries when we established 1325 this is what we also did at the country level as an example. The result of that within the WILPF family, we will become result orientated because we are not frustrated because at the international level there doesn't seem to be that kind of push but at our own personal and local level is so strong we can see that civil society was strengthened because WILPF in Sierra Leone, or WILPF in Burundi, or WILPF in Congo is so strong now that this is the impact they had at the national level.. It may be utopia, because there are other dynamics, do we want to tell them what to do, and all of those kinds of things, but there are ways and there are ways, and we have the wherewithall, not the financial but the education and the experience to bring that to fruition.

The last one is policy at the level of the international financial institutions. I think nothing happens anywhere without the issue of money whether it is how, at the United Nations level, funds are budgeted so that the policies that they make come to fruition, or the programmes that they engage come to fruition. Unless we say that the International Criminal Court of a country is going to be funded through the budget of the UN, it ain't going to happen because the countries who have to voluntarily give money choose who they give money to. If SL is not their interest for any strategic reason, Sierra Leone is not going to get it. Unless we influence the way policy is made at the UN level, money needs to go from the main budget, that will be the only way it will happen. The other way is through the IMF and the World Bank because if we say we are fighting the root causes of conflict and one of those is poverty, the result of poverty is how the International Financial Institutions engage the governments by putting them in such debt that they would never develop, they would forever be paying debt. We do work to support debt cancellation and again I come to this issue of how we support, and we make nice statements, but unless we engage countries at individual and country levels, so we can say this is what we did with these countries, for me its just political hot air.

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Colombia, Patricia Gurerro

Look at the map to see the geopolitical and economic resources that Colombia has, we have 5 borders with Peru, Ecuador, Brazil Panama and Venezuela, we have two oceans and cover 1,400,000 and we are one of the richest countries in the world. Colombia is the second richest country in terms of water resources, this is the area of the Amazon. The guerillas cover an area the size of Switzerland.

As you know, we are right now in an internal conflict which involve guerillas, paramilitary, the army and the population. For CNN and the American media, the problem in Colombia started maybe 20 years ago because of the narcotics, the narcotrafficko growing a lot of cocoa in my country. This is the view of the Americans right now, but this is a lie. If you see the strategic situation in Colombia, the Panama Canal now is not enough for the commercial interests for the Untied States, so they need another canal in the north of Colombia, and that is in an indigenous area. In the south there is also petrol, and this is also in an indigenous area. In the north, gold is located. You see the area of the resources, you see the area of the war - the ELN, FARC. All along the border, the cocoa is growing.

In this moment the conflict right now start not just in the country side or indigenous areas, now it starts in the cities, in the most important cities which the history of the popular fight like Balacarama, the oil city in the middle of the Magdalena Merio, it is a river that crosses our country.

At the basis of all the problem is economic problems, rich countries and guerillas, these are not new guerillas, this is the USA external policy. In 1963 and during the Cold War, the US introduce through the CIA a political idea, a policy about the internal security. And what is the problem for the internal security? Communism in Cuba, and in central America and a lot of countries in south America. In the 1980s this policy of internal security changed from communism to narcotics. In that time we have very strong military policies, and in that time we have the Plan Colombia. What happened in this time? This is the time when the social repression for the peasant and worker organisation, because we have just two parties in our country, the liberal and conservative party, any other expressions or political organisations are repressed and continues and is part of this ideology of the internal security theme, who see the workers organisations as part of the ideology, and they disallow democratic expressions. This is a time of violence.

During this time the government promises agrarian reform but they don't do, which is when FARC started. The origin of most of the guerilla movement is in the country side with the peasant and this is the real origin of the guerillas, and in very general terms this is the basis of the problems in my country, we don't have the possibility of expression or the land. Human rights violations are the biggest problem in my country. The complexity of our problems is very, very big, but in terms of the suffering, the people are suffering in terms of human rights, and in terms of women's human rights.

If we have to see and use the possibilities that we will have in our consultative status at the UN, we have to use this specific space. Why? Because part of the conflicts are economic, social and cultural right as well as civil and political rights. So we have to try in legal terms, through the conventions, the resolutions, we should use them in these spaces, because for us this is important. I was in the Human Rights Commission this year, and I found that this is empty for us, this is a space that we don't use in terms of human rights but this is a strong tool for WILPF. Not just in the Human Rights Commission, but in others where we use our Consultative Status. The agenda of the Human Rights Commission goes across all of the problems we have, in terms of economic, social and cultural rights.

In local terms, I think we have to break the silence about what is really happening in these countries, we have to try to use the media, and to clear what really happened in the countries. We also have to use the congress people because in terms of lobbying, and internal lobbying, it is very important to use the people in the congress or the EU . We also must lobby the countries to ratify the International Criminal Court Rome Statute, this is really important and something I will have to do, and so should all the countries that WILPF works in. I don't know how many countries have ratified, but this is very important because this is the possibility in the future for getting real justice. One of the biggest problems in all of our countries is that we don't have justice, we don't have social justice. The example of Pinochet opened the possibility for all of use to get these kinds of criminals in the court. Another example is that Canada and USA are out of the American system of Justice in the Organisation of American States. The OAS system is the only place where we have to condemn the actions of states, and where people can demand justice against their states. On the national level we work at getting women to the alternative peace table conversation. We have to combine all of these elements, to know these elements, to try to get a gender perspective in all these elements, because we now know what happened, and we really understand what happened in our countries, but we have to do something, take actions, real actions, because if we don't, nothing changes.

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Bolivia, Kati Patio Uriona

I imagine that many people are not sure where Bolivia is, it is the center of South America where we had a WILPF Congress in 1992. The situation in my country now has been very difficult for the last two years. It goes back to the famous so-called eradication of the cocoa which has effected particularly the rural people whose livelihood depended on growing cocoa. These were people whose survival depended on growing the cocoa. Now they are displaced and without work which has increased the economic crisis the country is going through and also the privatisation of all the state enterprises of Bolivia. Especially in the highlands we have had the problem of water resources. Particularly in the city of Cocho Banya, there is a well known development project called ____ which was initiated in 1996 and has still never been finished which has deprived the general population of the basic resource of drinking water. So that people do not have basic conditions for living and in many areas they have water services only three hours per day. In three hours you have to store up water for the rest of the day and in some of the outlying areas of the city, there is no water service so that water trucks have to come. And people have to make long lines from the early hours of the morning. So there is just a very small and inadequate supply for each family and this also contributes to health problems for lack of hygiene, there isn't enough water to be clean. Even in restaurants, the food is not safe because there is not enough water to maintain cleanliness.

There have been continuing protects among the people against the actions of the government and the failure of this water project because there has been so many years of waiting and this project is still not done. And as a result of these protests and the desperation of the situation, even the prisoners make a protest by crucifying themselves and sewing their mouths shut. So there has been a great deal of spreading of protest in Cocho banva on the issue of water and the crisis in water resources. The crisis is so bad that thieves are not stealing to be thieves but to survive.

And also at the international level we have unfortunately gotten that status of number two as the most corrupt nations list. And part of our misfortunes also comes from the very high level of illiteracy that we have in our country. This is increasing because with the economic crisis the majority of people cannot send their people to school. The protest has begun to be in the form of the rural people who block the highways who connect one city to another. Now in response the city people are finding that because of the blockades the prices of basic food in the cities are going up and among the poor people of the cities, they are arming themselves and going out to do battle with the poor people of the country - so the poor are going to battle with the poor. The government is now using this as a reason to threaten martial law. And so that the martial law would be a response to the turmoil in the country and at a personal level many people are leaving the country. Our work as WILPF we have been particularly been trying to educate people and working with mothers, teaching literacy. And particular working with single mothers of which we have many, many of them are very poor and deprived of the resources to support their family and some of them to the point of desperation where they kill their children and commit suicide. The number of homicides and suicides has increased and we are working particularly with this group because it is the women, the mothers, who make the decisions about their families. And concerning the water, we have been advocating and lobbying with the state enterprises and the government to push for the conclusion of the development project so that water will be provided. And there are obviously interests at work that benefit from this project not being completed for more than 20 years. So that our hope, our goal, is that people will at least have the means for basic subsistence. So that people will have the means for a dignified human life and not a sub-human existence.

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Philippines, Cherry Padilla

The Philippines is in a very strategic position vis a vis China and I think this is the main reason why the US is keeping its presence in the Philippines and in the Asia Pacific, and also Japan is an economic power, and also houses many US military forces. China is a big market and it is always at odds with the United States, of course now they are having some kind of relationship with economic globalisation. The Philippines has historically been ruled by the United States, we have independence but it is a bogus independence, but we are not free economically, socially and culturally from the US. English is the medium of instruction. Culturally we are very much influenced by the US. When they taught us the language we learned about apples but we don't grow apples! Culturally they really have great influence. Coke is cheaper than water, water is very expensive now because of privatisation. In the mass movement, we say that the Philippines is a semi colonial and semi feudal society. Semi colonial because we are not free from the control of western control/imperaialsm or western control because our economy is very much tied up with the western countries such as the US. We call it semi-feudal because most of the lands are not owned by the people but by big landowners, multinational corporation and also the church owns big tracts of land. The relations that exist between the people and the ruling class are really very feudal.

The problems in our country is tied up with the economy, we have widespread poverty in our land. We have two major armed conflicts, one in the south, Mindanau, and one other all over the Philippines, in about 100 war zones. The first conflict is the government versus the Muslims, the Moruu Islamic Liberation Front and the other is the National Democratic Front against the Philippine government. The Muslim conflict is very much based on land, this land in the south is very rich in natural resources and the country wants this area to be a growth center. Because of our policy of liberalisation of trade they want to open this up into more foreign investments, and also around the Visayas region. Because of this the Muslims in Mindanau who have been historically there since before the Spaniards came and who stood up against foreign colonisers, didn't want that because their land is at stake and and their sovereignty is at stake. Their struggle is based on the respect for self-determination, and they want some kind of autonomous country of their own. The other conflict between the National Democratic Front and the government. The NDF has been there since the new people's army was establish in the last part of the 1960s and now it is all over the Philippines. There was a time when this movement of the NDF and the communist had a split and started consolidating themselves and now they are in about 100 war areas around the country . There are peace negotiations between the government and the NDF which I would like to concentrate on, because I think this is not the present issue in the Philippines.

The NDF in its documents say that what they want is a just and lasting peace which can only be achieved if the widespread poverty in the country is addressed. They are open to negotiations and they entered into negotiations with Aquino was in power, but they broke down because the NDF say that the Philippine government is tying up the negotiations into the constitution. The framework of the Philippine government is for the NDF to negotiate within the framework of the Philippine constitutions and the NDF didn't like it because that is why they are having an armed struggle because they are opposed to the constitution which is not really addressing the needs of the people. The constitution talks about human rights but the governments keeps violating the rights of the people. The negotiations broke down because it is not really addressing the basic issues that the people have, the issue of poverty.

Then came under the Ramos Administration during which they were able to forge agreements on four fronts. 1is to talk about the economic and social aspect of the armed conflict. 2 respect for human rights, 3, to look at the political and social structures in Philippine society, and 4 is for them to lay down arms. But they won't lay down arms unless these three aspects are really addressed. During the Ramos government, the first term which is a respect for human rights, they based their agreement on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other Human Rights conventions. They had an agreement on that but during the Ramos government the negotiations broke down again. The Estrada government now came and did not honour the four agreements, the first respect for human rights, so when the new government came Arroroy, the peace negotiation resumed came again, because there was already agreements on the four areas, they are looking into them again. However, the talks that commenced in Oslo Norway again stopped because the government is accusing the NDF of killing a general at the time of the peace negotiation. Then the NDF is accusing the government of massacring a group of people at the time of the peace negotiation. The peace talks are again stalled. I think that the issue here now is basically to really address the roots of the problems, which is poverty and to define the forces behind the continuing existence of massive poverty in the land . As the mass movement would say, the real causes of poverty in our country are, imperialism, it is capitalism, it is feudalism. These three major problems they would say are the roots of the problem in our country and unless these three main roots are addressed there will be armed conflict in the Philippines.

Why is the agreement on the respect for human rights is important in this peace negotiation? Because the civilian population are always at the center of conflict, and the mass movement has always raised the issues of human rights violation especially violence against women, because during conflicts it is the people caught between . However there are lots of human rights violation, for example during the time of Aquino, the government was talking about peace, but during demonstrations farmers were killed in front of the palace, they were just fired on by the government forces. This is the reason why the first agreement is about the respect of human rights. And it is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international bill of rights and the different conventions on human rights.

What have we done? As I've said, the US is a very important stakeholder in the Pacific, we have this visiting forces agreement. We don't have the bases now, because out of our mass struggles we were able to dismantle the US bases in the country, but the US Philippine military agreement is still there, and they approved this Visiting Force Agreement so they can train forces, do joint training exercise, and this is the main areas which is under protest by the NDF and of course by other groups in the country because they do not want the Visiting Forces Agreement because it will only create a lot of conflict in the country, so we say that unless we are free of the control, of western control, and free of the impositions of a lot of institutions, and financial institutions, the issue of poverty will not be addressed. We do a lot of campaigns against the Voluntary Forces Agreements, against human rights violations, the release of political prisoners, and a campaign against economic globalisation which is all tied up into the existing poverty and armed conflict in the country .

In terms of what we should do as WILPF internationally, one is international solidarity is very important, support to struggles of people around the world, especially where WILPF sections are involved. During the peace negotiation in Oslo Norway there was a debate whether to hold it in Norway or the Philippines. The NDF did not want to hold it in the Philippines due to past experience, after the negotiations had collapsed, all the people in the negotiation table coming from the NDF were arrested, so they wanted to hold it in a neutral country so the safety of the people in the negotiation were well protected. They a always raise the issue of belligerency, the government does not recognise the NDF as a belligerent state, of cours the NDF would say they were a belligerent state, because belligerency is only obtained not given by the governing power but it is achieved by people who are in conflict who are raising this conflict. So the recognition of the state of belligerency and second the issue of the place where the negotiation should be held. It is again stopped because of different developments, each side is accusing the other of different violating the confidence building measures. If you want to hold a peace negotiation, you have to have a confidence building measure on both sides.

For WILPF international I guess it is important to provide support, international solidarity, and to be very clear on our policy on armed struggles on peoples from around the world. In our constitution, WILPF is opposed to violence, but what would be our policy on the armed struggle of the Colombian people, the Palestinian people. We need to be very clear about our action - we have to be very clear of who is the real force behind these armed conflicts around the world and really focus on this main force behind the main problems in the world so we don't spread our efforts.

In terms of programme of action, I heard about education, peace education is a good way, because we are socialised into looking at things differently and whoever is the dominant power, this is the kind of ideas that we also get, so we have to address the institutions, education we must also be very careful, it could education could be empowering in terms of looking at the root causes but also pacifying.

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Nepal, Nirmala Sitoula

Even in Nepal there are so many problems. We are going to focus on our main issue, that is, the Maoist struggle. I will also say something about the royal massacre. The Maoist movement was established six years ago in 1992, t he Maoists submitted their memorandum to the Prime Minister but their demands were not fulfilled. Since then the Maoist movement have been Their activities are focused on the remote areas in the western region. And they have already declared their own government. Where the women did not suffer before, they now suffer from their drunk husband, and now they are not suffering, and now their husbands in the southern areas they help their wife and children. So they are feeling women's rights, they are ahead of other districts women. Now they are doing their activities in Katmandu, such as exploding bombs and school buses. In the violence between police and Maoists, so many police, Maoists, innocent people, children and others have been killed, a lot of people are victimized and kidnapped,

So many Maoists have killed but only about 300 in the public record. They want to cover those killing Maoists so we cannot see what is really happening. Women have been killed by rape. I want to tell one example of rape that is very terrible in which WILPF Nepal section is actively involved in this case, our President Neelam, worked with us. A group of police raped 2 Maoist women activists for 2 months continuously in the police camps. The Maoists surrounded the camp and threatened the camp, the Maoists give them time to move, at the same time Maoists borrowed those two women before dead, so after the police moved to a different place, the Maoists found the ladies buried inside the police camp. It was very terrible and there are so many cases like this that are happening in Nepal. At that time police we heard that there is two men also, they raped those women in front of those men. Insulting, torturing women in prison is common in Nepal. In Nepal there is incapable and unreliable government and political instability so that we have suffering and problems are increasing, even after the restoration of democracy the rate of crime, violence, looting, unemployment have increased day by day. Almost all opposition parties and all women rights organization are for dialogue between the Maoists or the government, but the government is still not successful for the dialogue. Now we have again a new government and the Maoists are responding of the PM for the dialogue, that is why the Maoists are postponing their activities. Because of the dialogue all Maoists are postponed, it depends on their dialogue how it is going on. We hope it will be positive . Our section have given utmost importance to this problem, we held seminar, gathering etc for the dialogue .

We have already started a campaign for signature collection in support of the slogan Dialogue Between the Government and the Maoists is the Need of the Nation in Nepal. We also want to collect signatures from the IEC meeting in Geneva. Afterward we will submit them to the Prime Minister and the Maoists upon returning home to Nepal. Now the other small conflict, about the dowry system in almost all parts of the eastern part Nepal the dowry system is prevalent. It is a system where the parents or family of grown up women should pay a huge amount of money and other properties to the family of the bridegroom in the event of marriage. The custom has been ruining financially tens of thousands of economically weak families. It has been causing several other negative impacts also. It is the main cause of bride burning in South Asia which is spreading in Nepal from the Indian influence. When the family of the bridegroom and sometimes the groom himself thinks that the amount of money and properties they got in dowry is little they begin to torture the bride to extort more from her parental family. In many cases the torture reaches to the mother by hanging or poisoning or in many cases by burning by her in-laws. So we decided to launch our campaign among women in those regions to arouse them against it. We have selected one district Donsa. We have started several kinds of awareness building programs, seminars, mass meetings and promotions and get -togethers coordinated by WILPF Nepal section.

In brief I'm going to tell you something about the royal massacre. A terrible unexpected incident happened n June 3 2001. Such an incident had never happened in Nepal before, of the 5 royal family members, four were declared dead. One survived He was struggling for his life in the hospital. They declared him the king, but after four days he was also declared dead. The king's brother, became his majesty the king nowadays in Nepal. According to the high commission's report, Dipendra the king's son is responsible for the massacre according to the report. He shot all of his family members including others who were members and then shot himself. But Nepali people are not ready to accept and believe it. Everything happened secretly and in the dark.

Curfew in the funeral procession. Curfew if people raise their voice and come to the street. The post-mortem report did not allow journalists inside the hospital. Their dead bodies were sent to the military hospital even though there was not sufficient equipment in the military hospital for the treatment. So there is enough evidence that Dipendra was innocent and not responsible for the royal family massacre. So that Nepali people are still struggling for the truth. That will come out one day. WILPF Nepal section also demand for the true and factual result.

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Ireland. Gloria Frankel

I'm here representing the Irish Section but I'm not Irish. Ireland is very tiny, a small island off a larger island off the continent of Europe. Ireland does not have diamonds or oil, it has been traditionally a poor country, known widely for its poverty, for its neglect for the famine in the 19^th century which resulted in the death or the immigration of half the population. The population of the island was 8 million and is now between 4 and 5 million, it never recovered. The economy in the 19^th century was based on potatoes, people had no other crop, and when they failed, the starved . There are still a lot of potatoes in Ireland, but there have developed strains which resist the blight. But there still needs to be diversification of the economy because you can't have people living on one crop like that.

Ireland has been part of the UK for centuries, not quite a colony but not quite apart. It's been a difficult relationship. The British would like to think of the Irish as being part of the British culture, but they are not. In the 1920s after a long struggle, the south gained its independence and the north remained part of Britain, although part of the people in the north considered themselves Irish as opposed to British. The British had sent or encouraged a large number of people to develop the north three centuries before, so there is industry in the north but not the south . As a result of this was that the majority of people in the north, were of Protestant background, and Catholic in the south. I don't think religion is the real core of the problem, the problem is human rights, respect for different cultures and language. The immediate cause of the conflict in Northern Ireland, although it had been simmering for a long time, was the civil rights marches of the late 60s. I have to say that I think that the British government overreacted through there is a great difference of opinion about that. Our of the civil rights marches and the way the police dealt with it came the conflict which is has continued in its violent form until now.

There was three years ago, after a great deal of effort by people on the ground by the Irish government and the British government, a peace agreement which was signed and which was voted on by the people of both sides of the island, both the north and south. This agreement is a very remarkable document, it tried to deal with a great variety of problems and to establish rights for minorities, to set up new ways of dealing with all kinds of problems, new structures, better and closer relations between the British and Irish governments and we are still in the situation where the result of the document is not secure. The agreement is not secure. They have not been able to achieve a police force which is acceptable to both sides. The other thing is that the people who you might call terrorists on both sides, have not turned in their weapons, so there is still a level of violence and the agreement needs the support of the international community and public, of organisations like WILPF who will understand the background to it and can explain to people about the conflict. Ireland has not been on the top of the agenda for the British section for a long time . The Irish section is tiny and tries to make contact with the north without a great deal of success. We have no members in the north, and there is not much of a peace movement in the south, so the Irish Section very much needs international support.

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Western Sahara, Sinha Ahmad

Thank you for giving me the opportunity for expressing myself and voicing the situation in my country. I represent women and people who have been living for 25 years in war. I come from the refugee camps where I have been staying with my people for 25 years. The south Sahara is situated in the north of Africa and the borders are from the south Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania from the west, Atlantic ocean also from the west. Since 1875 the south Sahara has been a Spanish colony, and in 1973 its people asked for independence. Spain promised to give the Western Sahara its independence in 1975 but Spain betrayed that promise, particularly on the 14^th of November when Spain divided the West Sahara into two parts, between Morocco and Mauritania. The two states, Morocco and Mauritania entered into a devastating war during which the two states used very violent arms such as napalm bomb. These countries forced the people of the Western Sahara to go out of their country to the Algerian border because they refused the partition of the land between the two mentioned countries.

Two years after the beginning of the war, Mauritania had recognised the right of the Mauritanian people to decide for themselves, but the conflict remains with Morocco which refuses the recognition of the right of the people and continues the war in order to get the part withdrawn by Mauritania. In 1991 the United Nations declared the right of the people in West Sahara to decide for themselves through a referendum of the country. This resolution was signed by both Morocco and by the people of West Sahara, and the United Nations has been in the West Sahara since 1991. But Morocco has declared in the United Nation that it refuses this step of referendum inside the borders of West Sahara and sustains its violent position against Western Sahara.

The European states that are in friendship with Morocco, such as France, Portugal etc have exercised pressure upon the United Nations in order to forget about the referendum asked for by the Saharan people. But the United Nations Secretary General has recognised that the referendum made in Western Sahara is strong enough and honest enough to be adopted. This referendum should give autonomy to the West Sahara, but inside the power of Morocco. This autonomy is on the economic level and security level, and the foreign politics, army and justice and interior affairs. All of that should be under the power of Morocco. And the people of West Sahara only ahs the right to decide on their own lifestyle in their borders. This is what they have got after waiting 10 years for the application of the referendum. That is why they have gotten up to 25 years of massacres, crimes, displaced people, people of West Sahara are feeling very depressed and disappointed with the United Nations Resolutions.

Now and through the NGOs in South Sahara, people of this region are asking the world to recognise their rights to live on their own land. Without serious action of the international community, the war in South Sahara is going to continue and the struggle is going to continue. Women in South Sahara are living in two parts, some in the refugee region and the other under the power and occupation of Morocco. Those who are in the refugee camps are living in tents, in very hard conditions of life with no potable water, the water has a lot of salt, and with misery and poverty. Despite the bad situation, women in the refugee camp are very well organised, and they have a politic or strategy of development at the political and especially educational and cultural levels. Women inside the borders under the Moroccan power are living in hell, facing jail, terror, violations of human rights. I ask that WILPF endorse the demands of my people in order to exercise some pressure on the international community and to ask Morocco to let another referendum be done, an honest and free referendum to allow the people to decide for themselves.

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Albania

Thank you for the possibility to say a few words about my country. I am sorry for my English. I am not exact in English. Albania is country in South of Europe. It is bordering Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro. You have heard about conflicts in this region, in the Balkans. First, I want to say information about the situation in my country, in Albania. Things in Albania are going better than three years ago, you have heard that in 1997 the government lost power. There was a big problem because all the stores of arms in Albania which landed in the hands of the populations, especially in hands of young boys girls and children. This is the terrible problem. There is conflict in my country between one part and the other, but the free arms in the hands of the populations are very terrible problem. NGOs are working to disarm the populations and the government is working in this direction too, and we have some successes in this work.

A lot of arms are closed in store, but we have a lot in the hands of people. WILPF is working in this direction have a project in the region of Kazar near our capital and in Rayon another city in the Southeast of my country. The place where we are going is very difficult, the opposition in our country is extremely destructive. This is the reason which damaged the state in 1997 and lost the power in this moment.

Another problem in this moment is the situation near my country in Macedonia. I have some expression about this situation. For the last years when they were combating in Bosnia after in Kosovo, Macedonia was totally quiet. Now when war in Bosnia has finished and in Kosovo also finished, another situation in Macedonia showing now last month. What are the roots of conflict in Macedonia? In my opinion, it is a multiethnic problem. There are two communities, Macednoia and Albnian. The second problem is rights in Macedonia state, people use weapons and fight to win them. Not with weapons in my opinion. Macedonia is combating the Albanian community in one part and the state of Macedonia in the others. In my opinion, this is not right, not with weapons, with discussions to try to win the rights which for community because it isn't a small community but a big community of Albanians in Macedonia. I have another opinion. There are some civilized states which have interest in conflict in the region. This is more important. We need together to fight to stop conflict in the region because people are killed in my region and Albania is in the risk in this moment because neighbors are in war. You can remember the situation in Kosovo. The refugees damaged houses, killed mothers, children and others. brothers in Kosovo. This is the situation. I am worried for this.

WILPF sections have projects and are working concretely with women, mothers to disarmam the populations. You can have another chance to information for this project and others from my friend which will arrive today, Tatania. For your finformation, we have one project working in some small town near the Lake in Albania where I live, a small population of Macedonian people live there. They have all the rights in my country and we have cooperation with some there to do education on peace culture for multiethnic collaboration. And the last I support movement to avoid the use of deleted uranium weapons, and I am active in this movement .

Thank you for your attentions.