STRATEGIES FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIATION:

Introduction

Letter from the President

Human Security or Military Security

Afghan Women: Securing a Seat at the Table

The Middle East — Possibilities for Peace?

What Has Happened to the Women of Kosova?

A Glimpse of Global Fund Grantees in Conflict Zones

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Women's Funds Gathers Despite Global Turmoil

Looming Catastrophe in Bangladesh

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Events

Calendar

Impressum

By Felicity Hill and Leanne Grossman

	Zapatista supporters protest Mexican army occupation of Chiapas.

What makes the human race secure? Is it the continual build-up of military arms or the increasing development of nuclear arsenals?
For decades the peace and women's movements, spearheaded by groups like the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, have outlined a definition of security that transcends military parameters. We can not be secure until our economic and social needs as human beings are fulfilled. When they are not, violent conflicts result. The coexistence of extreme wealth and extreme poverty sows fertile ground for extremist propaganda, which incites scapegoating of "the other." The development of human security, on the other hand, forms the core of how nations can move toward peace and prevent future outbreaks of armed conflict.

It is often argued that it would cost too much to overcome world poverty.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, approximately 800 million people worldwide are malnourished and 16 million are dying from starvation; 980 million to 1 billion people lack health care.¹

Where would the money come from?
Just one B-2 Bomber costs $590 million. The 2002 US Government budget alone allocates $385 billion for military purposes. Yet the UN Development Program reports that it would only require $13 billion for every man, woman and child to achieve basic health and nutrition.²

To move toward a human security agenda, women must be full and equal participants in the political institutions that dictate security policy.

Women suffer disproportionately in situations of armed conflict as victims of rape, as refugees or as caretakers robbed of resources to feed and clothe family members. When women sit at the negotiating table, however, they are willing to remain there longer to prevent conflict. Women are more likely to introduce innovative solutions to avoid military confrontation. The Women's Coalition in Ireland is a case in point, representing all political and class groups. Formed in 1996, Coalition delegates met separately with various parties to influence them to enter roundtable talks. As one member of the largest pro-British party in Northern Ireland stated, the "moral weight of these women, many [of them] mothers of the victims of the conflict, brought a badly needed dose of reality at key moments, and got us moving again." In the May 2001 elections in Northern Ireland, the Coalition gained sufficient votes to be represented at peace negotiations.

Traditional mechanisms for cessation of conflict rarely involve women because they do not occupy leadership positions in governments or armed groups.

The basic principle of democracy is ignored when women who constitute more than half of the human population are left out of decisions that affect the fate of the planet. After decades of advocacy by women's organizations, the UN came to understand this and unanimously passed a resolution in October 2001 that would reverse current trends. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security calls for the participation of women in decision-making, peace negotiations, program implementation and for the protection of women and girls during armed conflicts.

The challenge ahead is twofold:
1) how best to hold all national governments accountable to implementing Resolution 1325, and; 2) how to decrease the economic dependence of many developed nations on the military-industrial complex. For lasting change, all nations must cease the production and sales of weapons of mass destruction. Finally, the developed world's labor force needs to be retrained to be able to produce the tools of genuine human security.

Felicity Hill, then Director of the UN Office of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (www.wilpf.int.ch), was a featured speaker at a recent conference organized by Women for Afghan Women, a Global Fund grantee.
Leanne Grossman is the Senior Communications Officer at the Global Fund for Women.

¹Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org).

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