The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

In the second work step, key questions for country reports were formulated.
The experts were requested to take a position on the history of
the development of the conflicts, the course of the conflicts, civil resistance,
particularly that of women, and on experiences of violence and
strategies for solution and for addressing the violence of the war. The
key questions were formulated simply as incentives for the flow of the
account, and not as questions to be answered strictly. Due to the difference
of the concrete conflict/wartime experiences, each expert concentrated
on a different aspect.
In the third work step, the experts drafted country reports, which were
then translated into the other working languages and circulated. Then
each expert was allowed to choose which key question she wanted to
address in her report.
In the fourth work step, the working seminars in Brussels were orga n -
ized. The reports were discussed in two seminars of several days each
in 2010 and 2011, and the recommendations for sensitizing policy were
drafted.
In addition, two pilot seminars on the Middle East conflict were designed
in Brussels, the results of which were also incorporated into the recommendations
of the project. An initial pilot seminar on the history of
cooperation between peace activists from Israel and Palestine since 1988
was organized in the spring of 2010 in cooperation with the EU Commission
(DG Research). Activists, peace researchers, experts in the EU
Commission, and politicians from the European Parliament participated
in the discussion around the failure of the attempts to bring peace to
the Middle East, and the consequences of that fact for civil society
peace initiatives in Israel and Palestine. In the spring of 2011, in cooperation
with the UNWRA office in Brussels, the visit of a group of activists
to Gaza was organized, in which the work of the women’s initiatives of
the UNWRA in Gaza and their significance for civil society could be discussed.
In the fifth work step, the knowledge obtained in the project was consid -
ered and compiled, and presented to the closing conference of the first
phase of the project in November 2011 in Brussels.
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