Women making peace, not war

It is a remarkable sight, and a moving one: more than 100 women, many from conflict zones all over the world, dancing together for peace. They are activists, academics, philanthropists, journalists and community leaders, brought together this week by six women Nobel Peace Prize laureates for a five-day conference in Belfast. This is ahead of the G8 summit of world leaders, which will take place in Co Fermanagh later this month.

There are stories of violence, poverty and near-unimaginable trauma; there are moments of anger and outrage, frustration and fear.

The emotional intensity is, at times, almost unbearably high, and tears flow freely, even as the women continue to talk and listen to each other. But the dancing is a moment of joyous release.

Leymah Gbowee, the irrepressible Liberian laureate, is up on the platform, urging the women to their feet. As music booms out of the speakers they get up tentatively at first, swaying a little self-consciously, but soon they are well in the flow, clapping and singing along: "The world will get no better if we just let it be."

Peace conferences are fairly common in Belfast, as the city seeks to build on its international reputation for success in solving conflict, but this is unusual, not only in the scope of its ambition but also in its potential as a catalyst for real, as opposed to aspirational, change.

Titled Moving Beyond Militarism and War, it seeks to find "women-driven solutions for a nonviolent world". As the laureates points out, almost 90 per cent of casualties of war are civilian, with women and children comprising a large proportion of victims.

Each of the six women behind the conference – Northern Ireland's Nobel winner Mairéad Maguire, Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Rigoberta Menchú Tum of Guatemala, Jody Williams of the US, and Gbowee – has a proven record in challenging human-rights abuses at home and elsewhere. They have started peaceful revolutions, ended wars and brought rogue governments to heel.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative, which they founded in 2006, seeks to harness the prestige generated by the award on behalf of oppressed women from around the world whose voices are all too easily ignored.

But you don’t ignore these laureates. Ferociously determined as individuals, together they exert influence at the highest levels of government.

Getting rape officially recognised as a war crime across a number of jurisdictions is just one of the group’s many achievements since it was formed.

This conference isn’t overly academic. Yes, there is intelligence at work, but it comes in hard, practical form: sharing strategies, exchanging innovative tactics and swapping suggestions.

As one delegate remarks, “This isn’t one of those conferences where all you do is drink coffee all day. It’s about using the laureates’ influence to open doors and getting access to the people who have the power.”

For Rachel Vincent, who works with the Nobel Women’s Initiative, the focus is “the how-tos of how you make peace”, whether that’s Burmese women independently collecting data on sexual violence, Sudanese women seeking to enter politics or Guatemalan women testifying against the military regime in their country.

A powerful act
According to Gbowee, who was instrumental in bringing Christian and Muslim women together in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia's civil war in 2003, simply assembling this radically diverse group of women was a powerful act.

“Every space has the potential for evoking new learning and creating action,” she says. “One of the things the global women’s movement lacks, which is essential for growth and development and awareness, is a space to meet.

“What the Nobel Women’s Initiative has done is to provide a platform, for women in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Arab world, to invoke action through experience-sharing. It’s about networking and partnership. Just by being here we have achieved some of our goals.”

Although she wants to address “the things that men don’t want to talk about: militarism and war”, Gbowee makes no claims for a universal female experience of male-imposed violence.

“Conflict and peace mean different things in different contexts. As an African, what I consider peace might not be tolerated by someone from your world. The moment we start to generalise, we lose the unique qualities and skills that individuals bring.”

There is a sense of making things happen at this conference. One of the Liberian delegation, for example, describes the financial challenges that her community has in accessing clean water. Later that day a donor comes forward to assist with the project, and the problem is solved, easily and quietly.

Shirin Ebadi, one of the first female judges in Iran and the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, remarks, “In this conference, we [are trying] not to make participants listeners only; we [try] to provide opportunities to find partners, friends, networks to find solutions to their issues.”

Fuelling that sense of possibility is an integral part of such a gathering, and several of the laureates speak passionately about their experiences.

Williams won the Nobel for her campaign to ban landmines across the world. The numbers of people killed and injured by anti-personnel mines have dropped from 20,000 a year to 4,000, although, as Williams says, that’s still 4,000 too many.

She describes a formative incident in her childhood, growing up in Vermont, alongside her brother Steve, who is deaf. “The boys who lived next door were tremendous bullies, and they focused much of their bullying on my brother. One time I tried to beat them up; unfortunately they were bigger and faster than me, and they got away.

“I didn’t even recognise that, had I caught them, they would have probably beaten me up. But it really fired in me righteous indignation against injustice, whether it’s bullying in grade school or the bullying of the US invading Iraq, which I consider an illegal war.”

Peace process
Holding the conference in Belfast also gave delegates the chance to reflect on Northern Ireland's own peace process, 15 years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement.

Maguire, who received her prize for her work with the Peace People in the 1970s, and was in the headlines when she was refused entry to Israel last year, is frustrated by the perceived lack of progress.

“We have come a long way with the peace process, but now we seem to be at a standstill,” she says. “We haven’t got what was in the Belfast Agreement. That’s why I believe we need to do an audit on the agreement, particularly on the issues of equality, the human-rights agenda, and how we deal with the past. We need to see how far we’ve come and urge the politicians to go farther.

“Peace processes can go into reverse, you know. We can’t get complacent. Many delegates to this conference are surprised that we still have the peace walls, the sectarian society, the racism. We aren’t there yet.”

As they leave Belfast the six Nobel laureates have a message for the G8 leaders who will follow them to Northern Ireland in a few weeks.

“We strongly urge G8 states to decrease military spending,” they say. “Redirect the investment to education, training and social services that will improve livelihoods and address the root causes of violence.”

The Nobel women point out that, despite tackling rape in conflict, G8 nations continue to be the highest arms exporters and among the largest investors in new weapon technologies.

It remains to be seen if their call will be heard, but you can bet these formidable women will keep on speaking until it is.

As Williams points out, “Demilitarisation isn’t a dirty word, nonviolence isn’t nonaction, and real peace isn’t for wimps.”