The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

ner in which history is portrayed begins to change, artists who need to
act in freedom, and all those who work in public services with responsibility
for the entire population, and can perceive when prejudices
against certain groups of the population begin to worsen– to cite only a
few examples. All these civil actors must be given the possibility to feed
their observations into a monitoring network.
In addition to such specific civil actors, the monitoring network can depend
on the cooperation of a usually small group of civil action organizations.
In the case of Yugoslavia, these were women’s groups which,
prior to the outbreak of the war, attempted without success to inform
European public of the looming danger. Developing a systematic “earlywarning”
method is essential and crucial in potential conflict zones.
9. In those regions where conflicts develop, they need to be analyzed
at the regional and international level:
� What motivates the conflict – economic problems, ethno-nationalistic
power struggles, or religiously motivated disputes?
� What relationship do these conflicts have to post-colonial, post-socialist
and/or imperial geostrategic power interests?
� To what extent is the development of potentially violent conflict
today influenced by the power shift towards new multi-polar geostrategic
fields of conflict?
Here again, the role of civil society groups, which have the means to
monitor the shift of socio-political change and growing tension, must be
given the opportunity to provide their findings to the regional and international
community.
10.Monitoring is the first step toward the sensitization of international opinion
and awareness-raising.
Such networks should build on the hybrid structure of civil society, and
on bottom-up structures. Participation, transparency and democratic
structures are fundamental. Independence and seriousness is crucial in
the politically highly sensitive field of information on conflict development.
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