The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

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Palestinian and Israeli women’s peace initiatives have differed from those of their mixed-gender counterparts in several important respects. They have been pioneering, clearly defining central political agenda items a step ahead of the bulk of the peace camp: in May 1989 in Brussels, Israeli and Palestinian women called for the mutual recognition be - tween the State of Israel and the PLO, and the end of the occupation. Second, women’s peace action has been extremely persistent in refus - ing to give in, in the face of the deterioration of the situation on the ground. And third, it has focused on a series of concrete actions: it is the Jerusalem Link which took the initiative of organizing an international political, academic and cultural event in June 1997, on the theme “Sharing Jerusalem – Two Capitals for Two States”, at a time when this idea was a taboo for the immense majority of the Israeli public opinion, even within the peace camp. Women activists, however, have been consistently excluded from official or semi-official initiatives, and their distinctive perspectives have been largely ignored. As time progressed, Israeli-Palestinian women’s peace movements increasingly saw their impact within both Palestinian and Israeli public opinion fade, parallel to the deterioration of the peace process. With violence raging everywhere and with it the hope for a negotiated agreement fading away, women’s peace organizations were engulfed by a sense of failure, frustration, and fatigue. Mainstream peace movements such as “Peace Now” no longer dared organize “mass demonstra - tions”, knowing that they would have been unable to mobilize a popular support. It is within this context that a group of veteran Israeli and Palestinian women activists decided to take a critical look at past efforts, with a view to increasing their efficacy. Building on years of joint peace work and the personal trust that had developed as a result, they looked at ways of overcoming existing pitfalls, and designing a more efficient and productive framework for action. The conceptual starting point for what was eventually to become the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian- Israeli Peace (the IWC) was the adoption of the landmark UN Security 236
Council Resolution 1325 that calls for ensuring not only protection for women in conflict situations, but also recognizes women’s contributions and advocates their active participation in all stages of peace-making and peace-building. Besides highlighting the potential power inherent in women’s peace efforts, Resolution 1325, by furnishing a broad international umbrella, they indirectly suggested a way to overcome the bilater - al impasse in Israeli-Palestinian relations at that time. The idea of creating a tripartite partnership involving not only Israeli and Palestinian, but also prominent international women with considerable experience in diplomacy and political negotiations was first raised in a joint appearance by a Palestinian woman, Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, and an Israeli woman, Terry Greenblatt, at a special session of the UN Secur - ity Council in 2002, convened to mark the anniversary of UNSC Resolution 1325. They suggested that such a framework could contribute to a gendered peace agenda. It could, they believed, address the obvious inability of existing Israeli and Palestinian women’s groups – separately and together—to communicate vertically with policy-makers, and might act as a vehicle for greater horizontal mobilization within each society. It could also leverage support and visibility for the work of women’s peace organizations at the highest regional and international levels. Following a series of informal preparatory meetings, Zaheera Kamal who became Minister of Women’s affairs of the Palestinian Authority, and Naomi Chazan who was then a Deputy President of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, approached the then Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Noeleen Heyzer, with a request to support and facilitate the process of translating this concept into reality. In July 2005, UNIFEM, with the support of the Belgian gov - ernment, convened a strategic planning meeting in Istanbul that brought together forty Palestinian, Israeli and international woman leaders and advocates. After intense deliberations, a Charter of Principles was adopted which lays out the political programme, the mission, and the objectives of the IWC. 3 3 For the IWC Charter and other documents, see the IWC website: www.iwcpeace.org 237
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The Contribution of Women to Peace
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Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels
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PROJECT REPORT THE CONTRIBUTION OF
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tribunes and now at the Internation
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NGOs, but also through their own au
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Two world views: Peacebuilding and
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posing certain populations, raciall
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In the second work step, key questi
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so that in times of crisis, people
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confidence of the people, who frequ
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morial culture was to be forged, na
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in Bosnia-Herzegovina so far that t
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war, as the precondition for the pr
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of the conflicts have proven to be
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We can draw many lessons from the w
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mali elite, which competed with the
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The third stage, which I call warlo
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Shukria Dini concludes her report w
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To date, the women’s initiatives
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the expulsion of the Tutsi from Rwa
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In 1961, the destruction of the Tut
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against British facilities. The res
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Palestine There are no secrets in t
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At the same time, Lama Hourani reco
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tention for children with special n
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of the Golan Heights, the West Bank
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nations and clashes between the Isr
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� “Collective trauma and the ep
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has been an opportunity to exchange
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In July 2005, at a strategic planni
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Israeli peace movement is a weak, c
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total of thirty resolutions of the
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Yugoslavia is to some extent an exc
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Women’s networks show the effecti
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much of history remains alive in th
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Expansionist Serbian nationalism de
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structured, and the monarch was giv
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The representative of the constitue
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small organization with only some 3
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goslav state presented itself as th
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ered and led to painful realization
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longer returned to the countryside.
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the old national tensions. In the s
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The Programme for the Long-Term Con
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No rational analysis which balanced
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erships made several suggestions du
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first free elections in June 1990.
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overwhelm the others. The Serbian l
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change. In the underground and duri
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The anti-bureaucratic revolution wa
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war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to br
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sary. Of course there were exceptio
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in 1918, it had satisfied the needs
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and intellectual elites who led the
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their experiences in court, the UN
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Resistance to the war in former Yug
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At a few places in Croatia, several
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of the Serbian government, and foun
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Working conditions for women’s or
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important war criminals, is creatin
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Many came to südost. It was not po
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was told about war and horror were
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The on-going conflict in Somalia is
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an effective strategy for the colon
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men, who profited from their coloni
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such as the liberation of Kuwait fr
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opportunity to emerge from the viol
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Ethiopia felt justified in military
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The manner of holding such discussi
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political insecurities, debt and po
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in the crossfire between government
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and have been the ones covering the
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As in other conflict zones, women i
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cess was held in Djibouti, which le
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Somali women used all kinds of crea
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The road to peace for Somalia curre
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The political administration of Rwa
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epresenting him. The God of Rwandan
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“equal pay for equal training and
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Oct. 26, 1961: Grégoire Kayibanda
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are sufficient, it would be enough
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Western ideology: Ideology must her
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the period of the first two republi
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was even refined to the point of ad
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jority - an “ethnic” majority w
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REPORT ON ISRAEL MOLLY MALEKAR, TEL
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The remarkable military victory of
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The continuous official Israeli pro
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The failure of Camp David and the S
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in a very intimate, yet sad, manner
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Page 185 and 186: tus in place of that of protected r
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Page 189 and 190: The cooperation with the system and
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Page 205 and 206: The lack of trust in the internatio
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Page 211 and 212: estinian President Yasir Arafat’s
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Page 215 and 216: UNRWA also provides technical and v
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Page 219 and 220: services programmes to reduce pover
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Page 223 and 224: micro-credit programme, which is ma
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Page 227 and 228: Job creation UNRWA alleviates the i
Page 229 and 230: een no previous record. And on July
Page 231: REPORT ON WOMEN’S PEACE INITIATIV
Page 235 and 236: sist on the resumption of negotiati
Page 237 and 238: The third activity of the IWC has f
Page 239 and 240: Looking retroactively to all the ye
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Page 245 and 246: Cultural events form a framework in
Page 247 and 248: INTERVIEW WITH SHUKRIA DINI, NAIROB
Page 249 and 250: With my education and experience, I
Page 251 and 252: INTERVIEW WITH YOLANDE MUKAGASANA,
Page 253 and 254: witness, and that’s the only thin
Page 255 and 256: Certainly I see myself living on th
Page 257 and 258: Today, we have been thrown back fur
Page 259 and 260: A very hard experience with war was
Page 261 and 262: had to teach me the paragraph about
Page 263 and 264: sein invaded Kuwait, which made it
Page 265 and 266: inging in other men and even childr
Page 267 and 268: I got out of Gaza in 2007. I still
Page 269 and 270: I faced a great challenge to do wel
Page 271 and 272: In the mid-’70s, Yasser Arafat an
Page 273 and 274: ANNEX PROJECT CONCEPT Women’s Con
Page 275 and 276: KEY POINTS FOR REPORTING ON CONFLIC
Page 277 and 278: � What role did the work of women
Page 279 and 280: USPID, Unione Scienziati per il Dis
Page 281 and 282: Toda Institute, for Global Peace an
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Yolande Mukagasana is a widow and s
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Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation Brussels
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The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

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