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International Women's Day
I wanted to share my experience of the CSW meeting, which ran from February 23 to March 8th (International Women's Day) at the United Nations this year.
From the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations:
* International Women's Day (March 8) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This day is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday.
* When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
* International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men.
This year's CSW at the United Nations ran from February 25th to March 7th
* In celebration of this day, I wanted to offer to you a humble glimpse of my experience at the CSW related events I attended this year. These were circle gatherings around the 2010 Sophia World Women's Conference being planned for Bulgaria, receptions sponsored by the Sophia conference delegation and the Women Founders Collective, and the UN Crafts Fair.
Being in the presence of many women, hundreds, thousands,
from around the globe
a rich, glorious array of skin tone, shapes and sizes,
adorned in color, fabric, and design reflecting tribes and traditions from Indian to NY corporate, from African to western casual
speaking in vocal tones, accents, and styles, reflecting a planetary panoply of sonic vibration
all gathered to be together
in a space of sharing experience, learning, advocating, and celebrating.
This, in itself, was enough, was more than enough, filling my heart to the depths with tenderness,
bursting my heart with delight and the simple comfort of belonging.
Young, charming women from Uzbekistan selling handmade bedspreads and tablecloths fit for a queen, adorned with hand dyed, hand embroidered silk thread patterns of leaf and tendril and flower
An American woman, in love with the Merasi artisans of India's Thar desert, selling their charming traditional crafts and recycled candy wrapper mandalas and promoting their U.S. concert tour
Fatima, the unflagging Afghan-American woman, offering traditional rugs and jewelry, supporting
dozens of goundbreaking projects for women and girls in her homeland
Filipino women who work with the street prostitutes in their country, seeking ways of healing
their broken hearts and abused bodies
Women from Uganda and Bosnia and South Africa and Kenya and the Benin Republic and Switzerland and the Netherlands and America
Men of good heart and clear minds, men who listen, men who value the strength of softness and silence and openness to the felt journey
Being together, sitting in circle together, embracing unknown bodies, kissing fresh cheeks,
partaking in this grand global gathering of touching feminine presence.
Diplomats, business women and men, grass roots activists, nourishing the birthing of the 2010 conference in Sophia; gestating a UN sponsored 5th women's conference, perhaps in 2012.
Whole Women Healing selling beautiful shawls, offering our Cloth of Compassion quilt proposal for the Sophia conference, promoting our participation in the "Making Way for the Feminine" conference, discussing a request for training in healing modalities for next year, re-connecting and exploring new connections, witnessing, embracing, listening, considering.
And myself, feeling completely at home and in the wilderness simultaneously, treading on earth and dancing in space at the same time, holding unwavering confidence and "how in the world can I, we ever accomplish. . . in the same breath?", in union and alone, tears and laughter together.
We move forward, strengthened in our interconnectedness, our ability to hold steady, our willingness to abide in uncertainty and loneliness, and our openness to celebrate in the pleasure and pain of this moment. May you take delight in your womanhood!
Please feel free to be in touch if you want more information about the CSW and/or Whole Women Healing's programs, quilt project for the 2010 Sophia World Women's Conference, and planned trips to Colombia and India.
Comments
I truly appreciate this piece by Joan Whitacre, highlight the recent U.N. CSW conference and the annual observance of International Women's Day. It brought to mind two things for me, in particular.
First, few people in the U.S. realize that the strongest area of work for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation is its Womens Peacemaker Program (WPP: www.ifor.org/wpp). The WPP office works across the world, especially in developing nations, to strengthen the leadership, capacity-building, and technical expertise of women. This work is critical, particularly in countries where gender is a barrier to holding office in business, government, and other key institutions.
The IFOR WPP made two important appointment in recent months, hiring an African Regional Desk Coordinator, Euphemia Akos Dzathor, based in Ghana, and an Asian Regional Desk Coordinator, BRS Suganthi, based in India. This is cause for hope and celebration.
Second, since today is St. Patrick's Day, it seems especially appropriate to take note of Ireland's Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, who gave a speech last week in Europe on women as peacemakers -- and what would be possible if more women held governmental positions in our world. Here is the text of the speech, as I received it:
WOMEN: STABILIZING AN INSECURE WORLD.
European Commission – Brussels.
Statement by Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate.
“Women as Peacemakers: A new governance?”
My thanks to our host Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner. Women: stabilizing an insecure world is indeed a great challenge. Not only stabilizing the world but transforming it, is the task we face together as an interconnected, interdependent Human Family. One of the many threats is that of violence, whose roots we are aware of. Thankfully, violence, be it individual, structural, or cultural, has been described as ‘a preventable disease’ by the World Health Organization. To cure it we need to transform our Culture of Violence to a Culture of Nonkilling, Nonviolence and Peace. Last year, the Nobel Peace Laureates launched a ‘Charter for a world without violence’. This Charter sets out 13 principles which when implemented by World Bodies and Governments will help build this new culture. The 13th Principle of the Charter calls upon all to work together towards a just killing-free world in which everyone has a right not to be killed and a responsibility not to kill each other.
Women play a crucial role in this building of a nonkilling world. We can unambiguously reject the use of violence in all its forms, insisting violence is never acceptable and there are always alternatives. Disarming our own mindsets from violence, militarism, and war, and deepening our compassion, wisdom and inner peace enables us to be peacemakers in our home, communities, and world.
Women can bring a new spirit and vision by insisting people, not profit, should be put first and this will happen when we all move beyond nationalism, tribal politics, and our own narrow interests, putting our common humanity above all that divides us. Mothers can change the world by encouraging their children not to join Armies, but rather use alternative means to uphold human rights and conflict resolution.
One of the causes of destabilization in our world, especially since September llth, 2001, is the Foreign Policies of the American government. These policies of military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the ‘war on terrorism’ with its subsequent abuse of human rights have only added to the fear and insecurity felt by many. This has been particularly destructive to the Muslim communities, who have been demonized and marginalized by such policies. These policies must be reversed to help stabilize our world. There are steps to sanity: End the occupation of Afghanistan, and Iraq. Abolish nuclear weapons. Israel should end the siege of Gaza and occupation of Palestine, and talk to its enemies. The American Administration should talk to Iranian leaders and solve their problems through dialogue and negotiations.
At a conference on women peacemakers, an activist and former Member of Parliament of Afghanistan maintained that investments in civil society at large and women in particular are a better solution for her country than foreign military missions. The words of this Afghani woman are words of wisdom and guidance as we together search for more civilized and successful ways of problem solving, than militarism, war and nuclear weapons. With a passion for peace and absolute conviction that violence never works, nonviolence does, we can change the world.
Mairead Corrigan Maguire
Peace People
www.peacepeople.com
www.nobelforpeace-summits.org
Joan Whitacre has written a moving account of this year's session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and the coming together of many women from all parts of the world during the session, ending with the 8 March -International Women's Day, celebrated in many countries more than it is in the USA. However, the joy of women and a few men together at the CSW must not hide the fact that the Commission has long been the "women's circle" at the UN with States sending the token woman diplomat, far removed from the difficult tasks of integrating the rights of women into the broad stream of human rights efforts. Finally, this yeear, the UN Secretariat on the Status of Women will be moved to Geneva, Switzerland, so that it can interact with the Secretariat of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. As long as women's equality is treated as a separate issue, it will always be marginalized. The UN will organize every five years a conference on the status of women with a 'wish list' of things that could be done but never are. The task, I believe, is to integrate an awareness of the condition of women into broader human rights efforts, as I have tried to do in this article below, published for International Women's Day on the renewed fighting in Darfur, Sudan. Rene Wadlow, representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens.
Whom the Goddesses would destroy, they first make unaware
Rene Wadlow
The goddesses have a sense of tragic irony by bringing together anniversary dates with events which highlight the opposition to the values being celebrated. Thus this year, with ironic timing, the world marks March 8th as International Women’s Day celebrating respect and equality of women with a new round of fighting in Darfur, Sudan in which women are special targets. Violence against women has taken the form of ethnic displacement, of mass rape, and constant insecurity in refugee and internally-displaced camps. The Darfur conflict has crossed frontiers into Chad and the Central African Republic where it has blended into other conflicts within these two countries. More and more people, especially women and children are displaced, and the infrastructure of life — homes, fields, wells and animals are destroyed.
The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur and the European Union protection forces in Chad and the Central African Republic are as yet unable to provide adequate protection or relief. In fact, there are credible reports that renewed fighting is underway in order to prevent the peacekeeping forces from acting. We are a long way from the disarmament, demobilization, and re-integration of militias called for by the UN Security Council. Nor is there much hope of seeing those who have committed crimes and especially those who ordered these policies put on trial, although investigations by the International Criminal Court are being carried out and need to be encouraged.
The uneven and unsuccessful negotiations on the future of Darfur have been carried out largely without women. Neither the Government of Sudan nor the various opposition militias of the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army have had women in key negotiating roles. Yet without the contribution of women, a stable peace process cannot be undertaken.
Reconciliation among ethnic groups and reconstruction of the economy will be a long and difficult process. Women will important agents of the reconstruction process. Thus we need to look at the gender dimension in the Darfur conflict. Gender is often a difficult idea to pin down. Basically the word sex relates to biological characteristics, while gender refers to socially constructed roles for women and men. If gender is constructed, then it must be dynamic, changing, and diverse within each society. Thus gender needs to be seen in the experiences of people, as a series of choices made in a specific situation. We need to pay attention to a detailed analysis of the socialization process in a given society. Transforming gender relations requires an understanding of the socialization process of boys and girls, of the constraints and motivation which create gender relations.
Thus for Darfur, we need to look at how pre-existing tensions among ethnic groups degenerated into pervasive, mass violence, generating new crises and especially a new scale of violence. Uncovering the gender differences of a society will lead to an understanding of power relations in general within that society. Gender relations help us to illuminate other contradictions and injustices inherent in those relations.
After this degree of violence in Darfur, can a community pull itself out from the cycle of violence and set up sustainable ways of living in which different categories of people may all be encouraged to contribute to the process? We need to be more fully aware of the role of women in specific conflict situations. Women should not only be seen as victims of war; they are often significantly involved in taking initiatives to promote peace. Some writers have stressed that there is an essential link between women, motherhood and non-violence, arguing that those engaged in mothering work have distinct motives for rejecting war which run in tandem with their ability to resolve conflicts non-violently. Others stress that the same continuum of non-violence to violence is found among women as among men.
In practice, it is never all women or all men who are involved in peace-making efforts. Sometimes it is only a few, especially at the start of peace making. The basic question is how best to use the talents, energies, and networks of both women and men for efforts of conflict resolution.
The vast majority of women do not take up arms but are desperately trying to survive. Internal, community-based efforts of peace can be led by women who are committed to finding alternatives to violence. Such efforts are often responded to with contempt and derision by male leaders from all sides and can be met with overt hostility and misogyny.
In Darfur, we see the breakdown of the positive structures of the State: education, health, socio-economic development. We also see the inability of traditional clanic leadership to fill the void. It is probable that only civil society will be able to provide new, creative structures. Men are too marked by the old patterns of power and division. It will not be easy to create new structures, but women, because they had relatively little power either in the structures of the State or in traditional clanic leadership, may be a new pool of talent able to think outside the existing patterns.
We must not let the rhetoric of International Women’s Day mask the day-to-day reality of violence and repression in Darfur. We can mark the day with a call to all parties in the conflict to sincere negotiations so that the welfare of all may be found.
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