SESSION REPORT  - -  THE HAGUE APPEAL FOR PEACE

Title of the Session:  When Women Invent Non-Violent Ways to Deal with Conflicts

Place: Conference Room 3

Time: May 13, Thursday; 13:30 - 15:00

Contact Details of the Person responsible for Compiling the Report: 

1) Ipek Ilkkaracan, Coordinator, Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR), Plajyolu Sok. No:12 D:9, Camlidag Apt., Suadiye, Istanbul, TURKEY. tel: 90-216-3572142, tel/fax: 90-216-3851262, e-mail: wwhrist@superonline.com  

2) Nadia Laila Aissaoui, Centre pour l’Innovation Sociale, Apartat 145, 08290 Cerdanyola, SPAIN. Tel: 34-935-866017; fax: 34-935-866001, e-mail: nadialeila@hotmail.com

List of Organizations Involved:
Listed in the order of: Name of Organisation, Country where the organisation is based, Name of contact person and her country of origin if different from the country of her organisation

a. 	Mainly Responsible:
•	Alliance for a Responsible and United World (no central office)  -  Nadia Laila Aissaoui (Algeria)
•	Women for Women’s Human Rights (Kadinin Insan Haklari Projesi), Turkey -- Ipek Ilkkaracan and Pinar Ilkkaracan

b. 	Others who have participated in organizing and were present at the session:
     
•	Arab Women’s Crisis Center Haifa, Israel/ Palestine; Hoda Rouhana and Rim Natour 
•	Association des familles des prisonniers et disparus sahraouis, Western Sahara; Sdiga Soutouf
•	Association of Women for Peace, Burundi; Marie Louise Sibazuri
•	Association of Women Against the Mafia, Italy; Rita Borselino
•	Fondation Charles Leopold de Mayer, France; Andre Michel and Marlene Tuininga (the Netherlands)
•	Helsinki Citizens Assembly, Azerbaijan; Rena Tagirova
•	Haidar Shoukria, Afghanistan
•	Internally Displaced People (IDP) Women’s Association, Georgia; Julia Kharavili
•	Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE), USA; Angel Cassidy
•	Sudanese Women’s Force for Peace, Sudan; (anonymous)
•	War Resisters International, USA; Joanne Sheehan
•	Women Living Under Muslim Laws, France; Caroline Brac de la Perrier (Algeria)

Brief Synopsis:

Seventeen women from peace and human rights organizations in 13 countries (Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Burundi, France, Georgia, Italy, the Netherlands, Palestine, Sudan, Turkey, USA, Western Sahara) have collaborated for the organization of the session at the Hague Appeal for Peace (see above for list of participants). We have gathered in Amsterdam for a three-day workshop 9-11 May leading up to our session at the Hague.

During the workshop, each participant has described the conflict situation in their country, and shared their individual and group experiences of how they dealt with the conflict and their initiatives towards a resolution of the conflict and towards peace building. By the end of the third day of the workshop we had reached two main conclusions as a group: 

First, we have expanded the definition of “war” beyond one that is limited to armed conflict. We have defined “war” as any systematic form of violence. For instance, starting from the experiences of the Association of Women against the Mafia in Italy, we have acknowledged the systematic violence that is fostered by “organized crime” (the so-called mafia) also as a form of war. We have noted that such  “organized crime” (mafia) groups are increasingly becoming a source of lawlessness, human rights violations and violence in many countries around the world, and there are many instances, such as in Georgia or in Turkey, where organized crime has developed organic links to armed conflict.  Moreover, starting from the experience of a group of ex-sex workers in the USA, who have set up an organization called SAGE - Standing Against Global Exploitation, we have also acknowledged prostitution as a form of war to the extent that it forces women into situations of violence and relentless exploitation against their will.  We have noted the many parallels that exist between war as “armed conflict”  and the violence caused by prostitution: For instance, findings of research studies that a majority of sex-workers suffer from similar post-traumatic stress syndromes observed in veterans of armed conflict; the violent desire to dominate as a common source of aggression in armed conflict as well as in prostitution; and the big profits involved both in the business of armed conflict and the business of prostitution.  Parallel to this expanded definition of war we have defined peace not merely as “cease fire” but as “lack of violence, establishment of social justice and equality.” 

Our second common conclusion as a group was the success of women’s creative strategies of  non-violence as a way to resolve conflicts.  In most of the experiences of peace activism shared by the workshop participants, we have identified a common thread of use non-violence as a strategy to resolve conflicts. It was through an example shared by the representative of War Resisters International from the USA that lead us to identify this common thread. In 1978, close to 3,000 peace activists had participated in an pacifist act of civil disobedience against the opening of a nuclear plant in the USA by blocking the entrance of the plant. This ended with the arrest of 1,500 people causing much disarray with law enforcement officials who did not have the prison space to place so many people. It was through this pacifist protest that no more nuclear plants have been built in the USA since then. In Azerbaijan, women and children from Azerbaijan and Armenia had established a spatial peace corridor across the border between the two countries as an area immune from armed conflict. In Burundi, Hutu and Tutsi women have built peace camps for families from both sides and started peace programs on the radio. In Georgia, women were running peace education programs for children from Georgia and Abkhazia aimed at destroying the image of the enemy and building bridges for mutual dialogue. In Italy, women have spearheaded an alliance of civil society groups against organized crime; they integrated anti-violence, anti-crime training into educational curriculum at schools, lobbied the government for allocation of resources confiscated from the mafia into use for social causes; and as such they broke the silent consensus that allowed organized crime to go on. In Sudan, women were identifying and promoting the use of traditional local methods of conflict-resolution such as communal singing and dialogue through village councils. In the USA, ex-sex workers have started a training course for male offenders of prostitution to raise awareness of the violence and suffering caused by prostitution.  

In each of these experiences, women had invented creative non-violent strategies to resolve conflicts by building bridges of communication between the opposite sides of the conflict, occupying the empty spaces left by war to organize around social causes, to build solidarity networks, to educate children for peace, to foster public diplomacy towards breaking of the artifical images of the enemy. All of these were aimed at establishing a solid basis for a sustainable peace building process.

Minutes of the Session: 

The session was moderated by Nadia Laila Aissaoui (Algeria) of the Alliance for a Responsible and United World and Ipek Ilkkaracan of Women for Women’s Human Rights (Kadinin Insan Haklari Projesi - Turkey). The presenters were Christina …. on behalf of Rita Borselino (Italy), Angel Cassidy of Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE), USA; Rena Tagirova of Helsinki Citizens Assembly, Azerbaijan; and Marie Louise Sibazuri of Association of Women for Peace in Burundi. Assisting with the Russian-English translation was Julia Kharavili of Internally Displaced People (IDP) Women’s Association, Georgia; and with French-English translation was Caroline Brac de la Perrier (Algeria) of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, France.

Nadia Laila Aissaoui opened the session by speaking about the origin of the idea by the Alliance for a Responsible and United World to organize a session on “women and peace” at the Hague Conference. The Alliance which has been supported by the French NGO  Fondation de Charles Leopold de Mayer  has been involved in peace work since its foundation. A group of women in the Alliance have been seeking to bring a gender perspective into the work of the network to emphasize the relationship between the patriarchal structure of many societies around the world and its relationship to war and peace. To this end they have organized a preparatory workshop in Amsterdam leading up to the Hague to explore what they called the “Yin Yang” perspective - a perspective that goes beyond binary thinking in which opposites exclude and dominate each other. Nadia commented that the aim of the initiative towards the Hague was to bring into light the role and concrete contributions of women in resolving conflicts around the world.

Continuing on the introduction, Ipek Ilkkaracan has explained the background of the collaboration between the Alliance for a Responsible and United World and Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR), an NGO based in Turkey. She explained WWHR’s recent experiences in peace activism: In Turkey, the group has worked with Kurdish and Turkish women Southeastern Turkey, an area of on-going armed conflict, around collaborative projects of action-research and human rights training. Through such collaboration they aimed to establish a cross-ethnic peace network. However, the initiative faced many obstacles due to fundamentalist ideologies of nationalism, ethnicism and an all-around culture of violence fostered by the years-long armed conflict in the region. Another peace initiative by WWHR entailed the WINPEACE network (Women in Peace) founded by women from Turkey and Greece to foster peace building between these two countries and in the region. WWHR as one of the founders of the network has undertaken responsibility for the organization of conflict-resolution training workshops for network members. However, the first planned workshop which was planned to take place prior to the Hague Conference was canceled due the recent outbreak of a diplomatic war in Spring 1999 between the Governments of Greece and Turkey.  Ipek commented that through these experiences they had learned that peace-building is a long process that requires persistence. WWHR had originally booked the workshop space for sharing the experiences of the WINPEACE Network, but given the difficulties in this work they decided to share the space with the Alliance which was organizing a preparatory women and peace workshop in Amsterdam leading up to the Hague Appeal. Ipek commented that participating in this preparatory workshop had been an inspiring experience since it brought together a number of success stories.

Before going onto the presenters, the moderators introduced all the 17 women who had participated in the preparatory workshop in Amsterdam. It was explained that the group selected only four presenters for the session at the Hague given the limitations of time. The criteria used by the group in choosing the presentations was to reflect the expanded definition of war (see above in the synopsis) and also to reflect the diversity of the regions and the creative peace strategies developed by various groups.

Presentations were made in the following order:

•	Angel Cassidy, Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE), USA, made a presentation on the definition of prostitution as war. She explained the founding of SAGE by ex-prostitutes for two purposes: To offer health-related, psychological, social and legal support to women who wanted to quit prostitution and the related problems of drug addiction and alcoholism; and to offer a consciousness-raising seminar to men arrested for soliciting prostitution (an illegal practice in the USA). The SAGE seminar, known as “the school for John’s”, provides an alternative to legal persecution and aims to prevent men from committing the same offense by raising their awareness of the violence and the exploitation survived by prostitutes. The seminar which is conducted by ex-prostitutes started as a pilot attempt in San Francisco and has set an example which is followed by other states in the USA.

•	Christina …(Italy) has presented on behalf of Rita Borselino from the Association of Women Against the Mafia in Italy (Rita Borselino had to leave after the Amsterdam workshop due to prior commitments at home.) The presentation explained the problem of organized crime - the mafia - in Italy. The Association of Women Against the Mafia was set up following the assassination of two judges who were spearheading the legal persecution of mafia leaders. Women have started organizing first in Palermo where the second assassination had taken place. They have made peaceful demonstrations by hanging sheets outside of their windows with slogans of protest against mafia violence and calling public meetings. This was the first time that the silent consensus around organized crime, a long-standing problem in Italy, was broken, and the explicit expression by women of their protest against organized crime has encouraged other civil society groups to join in on the wave of protests. This lead to the formation of a country-wide alliance of civil groups and community organizations. They lobbied the government to pass a law that requires the allocation of resources confiscated from the captured Mafia leaders towards social causes. The Association has also started an initiative for integration of anti-violence, anti-organized crime training into school curriculum. 

•	Rena Tagirova of Helsinki Citizens Assembly, Azerbaijan spoke about the armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the seperatist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The on-going conflict has fostered the building of the image of the enemy across the opposite sides. Two women from the two sides of the conflict in Azerbaijan and in Armenia have started an initiative of public diplomacy for peace. Rena explained that as a first step the Head of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in Azerbaijan went to Yerevan to meet her counterpart in Armenia, and from there on the two groups started a campaign of peace diplomacy opening up the channels of communication and dialogue between the civil society groups and the media of the two countries. One of the successes of this campaign was the formation of  a peace corridor across the border made up of women and children from the two countries - this was an area that they claimed to be immune from the armed conflict. The public diplomacy started to break down the images of the enemy that the Azeri and the Armenian people had of each other and Rena commented that this is a solid basis upon which the peace process can build upon.

•	The last presenter, Marie Louise Sibazuri of the Association of Women for Peace in Burundi explained the situation of the armed conflict between the two ethnic tribes of the Hutu and the Tutsi in Burundi which has lead to a substantial number of internally displaced people. The fight between the two ethnic groups concerned a struggle for political power and control over resources and the ongoing militarization drove its strength from the deepening divisions and fostered animosity between the people. The Women’s Association for Peace which is made up of women from both ethnic groups started a peace campaign through peace camps established in each ethic community and through the broadcasting of peace programs on the National Radio. In the provinces where the radio programs were broadcast they received great attention from the general public, and a concrete result was the return of people to their respective villages, decreasing the number of internally displaced people to a substantial level.

Following these four presentations there was a  short question-answer session. Two questions were in respect to the presentations on armed conflict: Were the women leaders grassroots women or women with a public profile?   In Azerbaijan, the initiative was lead by women with popular public profiles but also involved women who were not as public but who were active in women’s organizations. In Burundi, the women going into the peace camps on both sides were not political leaders but grassroots women - some illiterate - who were leaders in their respective communities. Their popularity in the community has lead to the easy recruitment of other women on each side.  The second question inquired about the support of the international community. In Azerbaijan, such support was crucial as both women leaders were the heads of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, an international NGO. In Burundi, the international support was more of technical and financial from the European Center for Common Ground and from UNIFEM.

One participant commented on the expanded definition of war suggested by the session, saying that she appreciated this perspective which goes beyond one of armed conflict; she emphasized the importance of defining any systematic form of violence as a type of war that needs to be prevented. She mentioned a point from Angel Cassidy’s presentation where Angel was motivated to start with SAGE the last time she had a life threatening experience as a prostitute and she was imprisoned with another ex-prostitute who has become a source of strength and inspiration for her. The participant posed the question of what motivated the other presenters to take the first step towards peace. Marie-Louise from Burundi said that once she escaped a situation of death very closely during the armed conflict. And she felt that there had to be a reason for it, which she said became her active involvement in peace building. Caroline Brac answered on behalf of Rita Borselino from Italy saying that for Rita it was the assassination of the judge by the mafia; the judge was Rita’s brother and she felt that a peaceful fight against the mafia was the only way she could make the memory of her brother live on. For Rena from Azerbaijan, the initiative came through again a painful experience of the loss of a close Azeri friend in the war.

A participant commented on Angel’s presentation making the parallel between violence and patriarchy: He stated that men are brought up to be misogynists and hence they tend to violence and develop the aggressive instincts to dominate. How does “the school for johns” deter men from committing the same offense again? Angel responded that the most effective part of their seminar is the communication by the ex-prostitutes of the pain that they suffered in working as prostitutes.  Another participant commented that this is the power of non-violence, that through peaceful communication, the two sides see each other for the first time as human beings. 

A final comment was on the importance of two-way dialogue and open communication in resolving conflicts. The breakdown of communication leads to conflict, she said; and one needs to favor negotiational, open communication over defensive, dispositional communication to open the way for peaceful dialogue.

Session papers: 

The session presentations entailed brief oral accounts due to limitations of time and if longer written versions are necessary we can provide the papers. Please let us know if you would like to include them in the Hague Report.

Results:

The session was organized under the Hague agenda point “Prevention, Resolution and Transformation of Violent Conflict.” The session reached the conclusion that a gendered analysis of the root causes of war is essential as the phenomenon of violence has organic links to patriarchal organization of society which fosters the tendency to dominate and the aggressive fight for power. The main recommendations were:

1.	There is a need to identify the linkages between patriarchy, gender inequality and violence and to acknowledge that the diverse forms of systematic violence (armed conflict, militarisation, organized crime, prostitution) are also different forms of war and that they are all interrelated. Any effective strategy towards peace building would need to rest upon such a gendered analysis.

2.	There is a need to give visibility to the successful local, bottom-up initiatives by women in peace activism; to bring out the common thread of creative non-violent means that women have found in preventing or transforming conflicts. Giving visibility to these ‘modest’ initiatives would lead to a snowball effect of successful strategies;

3.	There is a need for anti-violence training, peace and human rights education at all levels, starting with children; and expanding upon local initiatives to build international networks for exchange of experiences and for solidarity for peace.