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Introduction

Women’s Many Roles in Reconciliation

Women are in a unique position to effect reconciliation and to promote values which lead to the prevention of violent conflict. They are often the first to take the risks necessary to move towards reconciliation © By Shelley Anderson *

Today, women in many parts of the world are already intimately involved in reconciliation processes, processes often first initiated and implemented by women collectively. This work can be very practical, such as the summer camps the IDP Women’s Association of Georgia organize to bring Georgian, Abkhazian and Ossetian children together, or Rwandan women’s groups building of model villages where Hutu and Tutsi live together.

It is frequently part of a more strategic attempt to improve relations and build a sustainable, long lasting peace. At the beginning of the nine-year long war in Bougainville, women planned a peace settlement between secessionists and the Papua New Guinea government, played a key mediating role in the 1994 Arawa Peace Conference, and organized a mass meeting where women from all sides of the conflict agreed to work together for peace. An island-wide programme on nonviolent conflict resolution was developed, leading to trained women walking alone into the jungle to seek out and persuade guerrillas to lay down their weapons.

In Kenya, women in the Wajir Peace Group successfully intervene in conflicts between ethnic groups, partially by keeping careful track of tensions in the market place and rumours. The Sudanese Women’s Voice for Peace promotes dialogue and reconciliation among different ethnic groups and guerilla factions in Sudan, and has established underground links between women in North and South Sudan. In Northern Ireland two women, the Roman Catholic Mairead Maguire and the Protestant Betty Williams, reached across sectarian lines to establish the Peace People movement.

Women’s strengths for this role in reconciliation are many. They include good listening and communication skills, the willingness and flexibility to compromise, extensive experience in practical problem solving, and caring for real people above abstract principles.

Angela King, Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women to the United Nations, pointed out some of these strengths in analysing the role of women in the UN Observer Mission in South Africa (UNOMSA), which she served as Chief of Mission.

‘The presence of women seems to be a potent ingredient in fostering and maintaining confidence and trust among the local population. In performing their tasks with their male colleagues, women were perceived to be more compassionate, less threatening or insistent on status, less willing to opt for force or confrontation over conciliation, even it is said less egocentric, more willing to listen and learn -though not always- and to contribute to an environment of stability which fostered the peace process.’ (‘Success in South Africa’, UN Chronicle, No. 3, 1997).

Such strengths frequently arise out of women’s already existing roles, and are often practised and honed within the family and local community. In some cultures, women have traditionally had a role in resolving more public, organized conflicts. In the early 1990s, the White Scarf movement in Armenia tried to use the old custom of women breaking up fights between men by waving white scarves to intervene in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Conflict resolution trainers often encourage the revival or spread of such indigenous traditional practices. This can be very problematic, as in many cases such practices give women no choice about their role in reconciliation, and in fact constitute serious abuses of women’s human rights. One example out of many concerns Afghanistan, where the custom of ‘badh’ involves a murderer’s family would send a female family member to join the murder victim’s family, in order to prevent revenge killings which would involve whole clans.

The question that must be addressed is when does capitalizing on women’s strengths in peacemaking become perpetuating traditional sex role stereotypes, stereotypes that rationalize domination and inequality, which are two roots of violent conflict. Aware of this contradiction, some activists explicitly reject traditional stereotypes of women, arguing that the values and attitudes that give rise to these stereotypes are inextricably linked to the values and attitudes that give rise to war itself.

Women in Black of Belgrade, which provided the only sustained, public opposition to the conflicts in former-Yugoslavia, has made a clear stand on this issue, with an explicit feminist analysis. ‘Since the beginning of the war most members of pacifist organisations have been women. Women’s participation in such organisations is taken for granted in the sense that activities such as caring for other, healing the wounded, giving shelter and consolation are considered their ‘natural’ role. Having realized that these feminine traits are misused in a militarist society such as ours and that even the democratic opposition and the peace movement repeat patriarchal models, we decided to make our resistance to war public - not as a part of our ‘natural’ role but as a conscious political choice.’ (Women in Black, 1994 pamphlet ‘We Are’, Belgrade)

Part of their resistance to war includes building and maintaining contacts with women throughout former-Yugoslavia, such as project Open Heart, which aids Serbian women and children returning to live in Sarajevo. Women in Black’s work with refugee women has inspired other initiatives, like the ‘I Remember’ project (‘Sjecam Se’ in Serbo-Croatian) which encouraged refugee women, through art and writings, to record earlier positive examples of good relations between the different ethnic groups. Such personal histories lay the ground work for reconciliation.

Other women are motivated to become involved in reconciliation work, or justify their involvement, precisely because of their traditional roles in society. One case in point would be that of the Association of the New Filipina (Kabapa) of the Coalition for Peace in the Philippines, where rural women asked for a temporary cease-fire between combatants so children could be vaccinated.

One crucial role for women in most societies is that of a mother. Women’s peace activism finds expression in the many mothers movements for peace and justice. Many societies make a distinction between the private world of home and family, and the public world, where issues such as collective identity and security are defined and decided. Within this traditional framework, women are defined mainly as mothers and relegated to the private world. Their intervention into the public world as political leaders dealing with questions of war and peace is seen as undesirable, even detrimental. Yet the same traditional role which often precludes women from public political life has also provided a major entry point, and justification, into politics. There appear two primary motivating factors for these mothers movements. The first motivation is the desire to learn the fate of disappeared adult children (and in some cases, unborn grandchildren) or other family members.

The best known mothers movement is perhaps the Argentinean movement known as Las Madres, or the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Las Madres helped inform the eventually successful opposition to Argentina’s dictatorship, just as the January 4, 1957 silent march of mothers in Santiago, Cuba, hastened the end of the Batista regime. Las Madres has inspired similar women’s movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. In Sri Lanka, women also organized publicly around their disappeared adult children. Currently in Turkey, the Saturday Mothers are bringing together Turkish from different political factions and some Kurdish parents to discover the truth about the fate of their imprisoned or disappeared children.

The second motivating factor for such mothers movements is the attempt to prevent their children from being conscripted or deployed to front lines. Such a movement flourished briefly in the former-Yugoslavia, where the Mothers for Peace organisation successfully demanded the demobilization of thousands of men. A longer lasting movement is the Committee of Russian Soldiers’ Mothers (KSMR), formed during the brutal Russian war in Chechnya. The organisation CONAVIGUA (National Coordination of Guatemalan Widows) in Guatemala also continues to campaign ‘against the conscription of young men, not only to protect them from socialization into army culture, but because the mothers are economically dependent on their sons.’

Women’s strengths include good listening and communication skills (LPI workshop, Somalia). Photo Susanne Thurfjell

These mothers movements are often the first public opposition to a conflict. While the original intent may not have been to oppose the conflict, the issues they take on can lead them to a critical analysis of the conflict and an awareness of the need to reach out to the other side in order to end and prevent further violence. Indeed, some movements, such as KSMR, split over this deeper, more critical analysis, with some components remaining focused solely on the return of their sons, and others developing a wider agenda for social change.

In either case, the fact that they are primarily concerned about their children gives them social legitimacy, and common ground with women from different sides of the conflict. Their identity as mothers and as women sometimes, though not always, also offers some degree of protection against official repression. They commonly have a decentralized organisational structure and very democratic decision making processes, which allows great flexibility in reaching out to others in the ‘enemy’ community. If not co-opted or destroyed by powerful stakeholders in the conflict, these movements can develop sophisticated proposals and strategies for an end to hostilities and repairing trust and cooperation between conflictants. The KSMR, for example, has made contacts with and continues to work with Chechen and Ingush women’s groups around the location and release of prisoners of wars, and the more longer term issue of reconciliation and peace between their peoples.

A common problem all these movements face, no matter how the women identify themselves or what framework they place their work within, is the crucial issue of increasing women’s access to political power and political decision making. As women bring their experiences and skills in peacemaking out of the private domain and into the public political sphere, how can decision makers be encouraged to listen to women?

Some women’s groups have had a certain amount of success in gaining the political will to implement their proposals for peace and reconciliation. These cases include the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, and the Liberian Women’s Initiative (whose ‘Bridges to Peace’ programme in Monrovia works to prevent conflicts). Others still struggle to be heard, such as the Sudanese Women’s Voice for Peace, and Palestinian and Israeli women involved in the ‘Engendering the Peace Process’.

To gain access to political decision making remains a major challenge, a challenge that many believe has two sides. For not only must women peacemakers gain political power, they must transform those same political structures and processes into more democratic and egalitarian forms. A few token women with political power does not automatically mean improvement overall in women’s political, economic or social status. Such improvements are essential if women are to become a more effective force for peace. Such a change would lay a more solid foundation for democratic participation and respect for human rights, which are essential components in building sustainable peace.

This must be done in order to effect real change and to deal with the root causes of war. For real, long lasting reconciliation involves a shift in thinking, values and attitudes. Such a paradigm shift cannot occur without a gender perspective, just as any effective analysis of the resistance toward reconciliation processes, such as the fear of appearing weak, of losing ‘face’ or actual power, or the fear of appearing less than a man if female leadership towards peace is accepted, must incorporate an analysis of the power relationships between men and women.

violence, including organized, socially-approved armed violence. Although women do contribute to war, researchers such as Elizabeth Ferris have pointed out that war is a male construct. While women can be violent, as seen in the genocide in Rwanda, female violence is far less frequent, and often in response to severe and long term violence directed against them. Female violence is seldom ritualized or institutionalized.

Women have many roles in reconciliation. The functions women have in reconciliation processes are complex, reflecting the multiple roles women have in society. Like women’s lives, such functions must be viewed holistically. Women are peace educators inside the family, in schools, in women’s and mixed organisations, and elsewhere. Their networks and knowledge of local affairs make them effective early warning monitors, alert for rumours, increasing tensions, a sudden influx of weapons and others sign of potential conflict. Their sometimes extensive kinship links, social expectations and training can make women highly effective mediators. Their status as outsiders, the perception that they are not primary stakeholders in conflict, also reveal a role as negotiators and originators of new approaches to peace.

For people interested in reconciliation, the challenge is to develop an integrated gender approach. A complete understanding of the root cases of violence, and hence the corresponding attempt to build a culture or cultures of peace, can never be complete without an analysis of the politics of gender, or the power relationship between men and women. ‘Notions of “masculinity” are a powerful tool in this process of making men into soldiers,’ wrote researcher Jacklyn Cock about the apartheid-conflict in South Africa. ‘There is a connection between masculinity and militarism; the traditional notion of masculinity resonates with militarist ideas. The army is an institutional sphere for the cultivation of masculinity; war provides the social space for its validation.’ (Cock, p. 58)

Such notions of masculinity and femininity are also reflected in the ways governments and politics are conceptualized and structured, and indeed permeate the attitudes of entire cultures so much so that male aggression is sometimes seen as natural and inevitable.

Armed conflict does not erupt out of a vacuum. Perhaps the most common form of physical violence is that of violence against girls and women. It is estimated that some 40-60 percent of women and girls in any given culture will experience rape, domestic abuse and/or incest at least once in their lives. The links between this ‘private’ violence and the ‘public’ violence of armed conflict must be examined. The attitudes and values that give rise to the former lay the ground work for the latter. Both are rooted in mind sets where domination, control and beliefs in certain group’s superiority and others’ inferiority are central. A mind set that permits and justifies the use of physical or psychological force by a ‘superior’ against an ‘inferior’ cannot be safely relegated to one corner of life, such as the home, or certain personal relationships. It will become a part of public life. It is time, as UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Programme notes, that the traditional ‘feminine’ values of tolerance, listening and openness to dialogue, become accepted as values for both women and men. Such a paradigm shift will pave the way for lasting reconciliation.

* Shelley Anderson is coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Women Peacemakers Program.

Selected Bibliography