Women, Peace and Security. What does that mean to you?
What does that mean to women, including single mums
struggling to provide for their families? How do rural women make time to
participate in workshops and training programmes, and consultations on
development planning when they are working long hours to provide for their
families?
Where are the spaces for young women, who continue to
be marginalized from decision-making forums, even in their own communities
simply because of their age?
At a recent NZAID funded Community
Empowerment Programme consultation, which brought together femLINKpacific's Solomon
Islands counterpart - Vois Blong Mere
Solomons, and our rural correspondents for the Western, Northern and
Central/Eastern Divisions formulated our collective position not only on Human
Development, but more importantly Human Security to assist policy makers.
What are the steps needed to ensure we can
all equally participate in the putting an end to our cycle of conflicts and
political unrest?
How can we also ensure that the story of women's
peacemaking interventions become part of an important peace culture for Fiji?
How do we claim our own skills of peacemaking and
reconciliation?
The correspondents from Fiji and the
Solomon Islands, whose knowledge and expertise are drawn from their ongoing
peace facilitation and community empowerment work at local community level,
noted that for many women, human security means personal and family security:
"Feeling safe, knowing that our children are safe from exploitation,
that our natural resources and environment are safe and protected from
exploitation. We are free to move around, express ourselves; we are safe in our
homes and can go to our gardens; we are able to worship; we can take our
children to the hospital.
The
consultation also recognised that too often, women have been expected to be
peacemakers in the home and local community, but the imagination and
inventiveness they have developed through centuries of practice in these
settings is rarely used in larger conflicts. Instead, there continues to be too
much "lip service paid" or superficial attempts to the participation
of women in formal decision making processes and not enough consideration is
given to transforming the existing barriers to women's participation in the
public sphere: "Women
have knowledge and skills but they should not be confined to general
stereotypes. We have the life-skills to be able to drive a boat or manual car,
access clean water, fix a tap or create a fresh-water collection system."
Such positive reforms would actually ensure
that the experiences and resources of women, are
utilized, as called for in Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognizes
"the important role
of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building,
and the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all
efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security."
Ultimately, there was agreement that women
must also be assisting in defining the type of security sector we would like in
our country. But a human security agenda also requires information reaching
women in their own communities, and not just limited to mainstream media forms,
as well as having available and safe channels through which women can
communicate their concerns including early warning indicators of the emergence
or resurgence of violence especially at the local level. So, as an
organization advocating for women's equal participation in decision making on
matters relating to peace and security, femLINKpacific firmly believes that
ensuring women's full partnership in public peacemaking is another step which
can enhance peace, especially through the use of non-violence campaigns
"The world of humanity has two wings; one is
women and the other men.
Not until both wings are equally developed can the
bird fly. Should one wing remain weak, flight is impossible. Not until the
world of women becomes equal with the world of men in the acquisition of
virtues and perfections, can success and prosperity be attained as they ought
to be..." (Bahaii saying)
