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UNESCO ROUND TABLE
Culture of Peace and the Foundations of Reconciliation
Paris, 8 September 2003
Edith Ballantyne, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
I want to begin with a personal note and talk about reconciliation primarily
following armed conflict. In my early life I was engaged in the bitter struggle
against fascism and nazism in Europe, and I learned what it is to be a refugee.
I have been part of a conflict that divided a society and community politically,
socially and morally to the point of death, and I have personally gone through
an inner process of reconciliation, or rather a process of overcoming resistance
to reconciliation. I know the pains involved in this process and how long
it is. The forced refuge in another continent saved me from the perils of
the bombs and the destruction of the Second World War. Yet I have not freed
myself entirely of resentment, mistrust and even a grain of rejection of
a reconciliating that takes place within a society in which nationalism,
racialism and so many inequalities and discrimination of all kinds continue
and again and again go overboard.
Later, in my many years of work with the Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom in Geneva, I got to know intimately some of the peoples'
struggles for independence, against oppression and gross economic and social
injustices. Supporting the people in their struggle while also trying to
find peaceful solutions to the conflicts that tear communities and whole
societies apart will always be an important part of what I do. The organization
I represent, and I personally, were supporting the anti-apartheid struggle,
and we continue to work for a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Middle
East. We continue to support the struggle of the indigenous peoples to achieve
their full right to self-determination. There are other conflicts close
to our hearts that we try to help bring to an end. Conflict resolution by
peaceful means is a commitment and we are equally committed to peace-building
once the guns are still and reconstruction begins.
Reconciliation has increasingly come to be seen as an important part of
peace-building processes. Experience is accumulating and much is written
about it; theories abound, and new paradigms are set. The means and methods
of reconciliation used vary considerably from situation to situation. It
is not likely, for example, that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
process used in South Africa, as remarkable as it was, can be applied in
another situation. It may remain a unique experience.
Professor Bar-On of the Ben Gurion University in Israel, writes and lectures
extensively on his experience in the context of reconciliation work between
children of German nazis that were high up in the Hitler regime, and children
of the victims of the holocaust. He draws attention to the legal and psychosocial
components of reconciliation. The legal components include questions of
what to do with the perpetrators and the victims of conflicts. Should the
former be tried and punished (as was the case in Nürenberg where individual
Nazi war criminals were judged and punished after the Second World War,
and today in The Hague and in Arusha where tribunals are judging and punishing
individuals for crimes committed in the Balkans and Rwanda). Or should the
perpetrators be forgiven once they confess to their crimes as is more or
less the case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission?.
We know that the relatives of the thousands of women and men that were tortured
to death or disappeared by the military regimes in Chile and Argentina and
other countries in the 1970s and 1980s refuse to consider reconciliation
until impunity is lifted and the criminals are tried.
And then, what about compensation to the victims of the crimes committed?
It seems to me that reconciliation also has an economic component that cannot
be neglected. So many conflicts today, while seen as religious or ethnic
wars, have their roots in economic injustices and exploitation. A few days
ago, the BBC reported that more white farmers are murdered in South Africa
today than are in Zimbabwe. This is likely to get worse if all the rich
agricultural lands remain in the hands of the white farmers and are not
better shared with the vast numbers of the landless and hungry population.
I believe that reconciliatory processes are crucial in peace-building and
the development of a culture of peace. But I believe that in today's world
they must be broad in concept and down to earth. While they must be sensitive
to religious and cultural factors and identities as well as to social settings,
they must also take the economic roots of conflict into account. They must
reflect the need and the will to root out the causes of a given conflict.
How does the process of reconciliation get started in a post-conflict climate
of hostility? Here, I firmly believe women have an advantage. As a social
group they are the natural peace-builders and conciliators. They do it all
their lives, be it in the family, in the community, at school or at the
work place. They are not the ones identified with carrying and using weapons,
at least not yet; during conflict they are as a rule busy finding food to
keep the families alive and together. They have that in common with the
women "on the other side". They more readily reach out to one
another to stop the killing and destruction around them, because they want
to preserve life; they can do that because they are not balked down by a
false sense of power. Also, women are practical and they never give up.
In so many armed conflicts, women have stood together to get their men and
government leaders to put down their arms. I know women in Sierra Leone
who throughout the years of armed conflict organized medical aid to give
to the sick, taught children in their homes when schools were closed or
it was too dangerous for the children to walk to school. They did not ask
on whose side they were. They have their networks that ignore the 'enemy
line' and work together for an end to the fighting.
In Albania, women returned the weapons their men had stolen from army depots
because they wanted to make their homes and streets safe from the easy use
of these guns. In Sri Lanka, Sinhalese women went to Jaffna to meet with
Tamil women to work together to seek an end to the conflict. In Northern
Ireland, women's actions have certainly helped to get the leaders to the
negotiating table. These are just a few examples of what women do and how
they cross the enemy lines, easing the barriers to reconciliation.
Women do not generally begin wars. They are usually the victims of war.
Women keep the families together and when the shooting and the destruction
are done, they heal the wounded and care for the maimed, and they pick up
the pieces to make it possible to go on with life. They have nothing to
gain from war and preparations for war. They have everything to gain from
peace and from the useful and peaceful use of resources to meet their needs
rather than wasting them on destroying what they helped to build. Of course
the same goes for men, if more of them would only realize it.
In October 2001, the UN Security Council finally recognized the experience
that women can bring to the peace processes, be this in the area of prevention
and management of conflict or of peace negotiations and peace-building.
In resolution 1325, the Security Council calls on governments and the United
Nations to bring women into all aspects of the peace processes. Not much
has changed yet since the adoption of this resolution, unfortunately. But
women are working to transform this resolution into reality.
Women have an essential part in developing a Culture of Peace, not only
as mothers in their close relationship with their children and as workers
on the ground, but also as experienced peace-makers and peace-builders.
One of the major aims of the International Women’s Year and the women’s
decade that followed was to open the way for women to the places of power
were decisions of war and peace are made; for them to have a bigger and
more effective voice in the complicated processes of conflict-resolution
and conflict prevention and peace building. Progress is slow, to say the
least. I would suggest that working for the implementation of UN Security
Council 1325 should become an important activity in this Decade to promote
a Culture of Peace. |
