WUNRN
http://www.awaregirls.org/ -
Aware Girls is
young women led Organisation working for women empowerment, gender equality,
and peace in Pakistan. Aware Girls is working to strengthen the
leadership capacity of young women enabling them to act as agents of social
change and women empowerment in their communities..
PAKISTAN - YOUNG WOMEN
FIGHT EXTREMISM IN RURAL AREAS
Eight years ago, a brave 16-year-old girl in
Much attention has been focused
on the process of radicalisation of young men in the areas of Pakistan that border
So it takes
remarkable courage for a 16-year-old girl to decide to challenge how this
culture of violence was reinforcing and strengthening the oppression of women.
Eight years on, Gulalai Ismail, now a poised 24-year-old, is running two
programmes of work – one on gender empowerment and the other
on peacebuilding – from her home in
"I set
up Aware Girls
when I was 16 because all around me I saw girls being treated differently to
boys. My girl cousin was 15 when her marriage was arranged to someone twice her
age; she couldn't finish her education while my boy cousins were [doing so].
This was considered normal. Girls have internalised all this discrimination – a
woman who suffers violence but doesn't say anything is much admired in the village
as a role model. A good woman submits to her husband or father.
"Aware Girls raised
awareness of equal status. We did training that women have human rights, and
taught leadership skills and how to negotiate within their families and with
their parents to get education and to have control over their own lives."
Ismail is well aware of how the
position of women has deteriorated over the course of her life. "
That kind of harassment makes
organising training for young women particularly difficult. Ismail and her staff
have to strive very hard with communities in the villages where they work to
build trust that if daughters attend the training they will be safe. Parents
worry that their daughters will be "westernised" and forget their
"cultural values". For a recent training course on political
leadership to help boost the participation of women in politics, Aware Girls
had to organise 20 local community meetings to identify the 30 girls who
eventually went on the course. Working in remote rural areas requires considerable
patience and time, but Ismail is not interested in the easier option of working
only in urban areas.
It was the gender work that came
first, but Ismail soon realised the close relationship between gender and
peace. "In training, a woman told the story of how her 12-year-old son was
taken away to
The result was the Seeds of Peace
network, which Ismail set up last year and which has trained 25 young people.
They, in turn, will train another 20, to slowly expand a network across 10
districts of the province. She believes each person can reach 500 young people
to promote tolerance and challenge extremism.
"They identify young people
in the community who might be vulnerable to militants and they organise study
circles to discuss the causes and consequences of conflict and the history of
Talibanisation. We talk about tolerance for people of other faiths," says
Ismail.
Almost every aspect of children's
upbringing is affected by extremism. Even the school textbooks urge children to
be ready for jihad, says Ismail, and all around are songs and films that
glorify war, martyrdom and violence.
"Seeds of Peace aims to give
another perspective by getting people to think about human rights. Peace is not
just the absence of war, it is about respect and tolerance – and women have an
important role in educating their children."
Ismail is well aware that her
work challenges the Taliban's power, and that brings dangers. She is also aware
that there are huge political issues involved in the radicalisation of the
region where she lives, but believes that a grassroots community challenge to a
culture of extremist intolerance is also a crucial part of the search for
peace. Both high-level political negotiation and community participation are
required in conflict resolution.
Peace Direct's Ruairi Nolan backs
up Ismail's analysis of a peace process, using the analogy of political
negotiation as the bricks and community engagement as the cement that hold the
bricks together. Pointing to
At international conferences,
Ismail has met counterparts from