Peace: "Feminism Is The Missing Piece"

Peace is essential. You just have to turn on the TV or open a newspaper to see millions of reasons for condemning wars and occupations. Feminist groups like the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom succeeded in 2000 in getting the adoption of a United Nations Security Council resolution requiring member states to include women in all peace negotiation, peacekeeping and conflict resolution processes. Like many other groups, WILPF is calling for the construction of a culture of peace that goes well beyond the absence of war, and implies in-depth examination and action to address its causes.

Demilitarization is also essential—more than ever since September 11, 2001, and its war-filled aftermath. During the nineties, humankind was marked by circumscribed and all too often forgotten conflicts such as the Rwandan genocide, the Balkan war, the Gulf war and ethnic conflicts frequently instigated from outside by superpowers seeking to consolidate their control over a region or appropriate its resources. These so-called low intensity wars caused the deaths millions of women and men, to say nothing of the millions of women and girls who were raped or reduced to sexual slavery. A number of groups are relentlessly committed to obtaining compensation and redress for these victims.

Since 2001 we have been treated to a never-ending war and an intense glorification of military action. Conflicts persist in some 50 countries and territories around the world. The toll of civilian victims continues to mount. Civilians, especially women, are literally taken hostage or targeted in the attacks; we are also witnessing a new trend, in which the principle of women's rights and freedom is being used to justify attacks on civilian populations. US military bases festoon the planet (there are 702 in 130 countries), military spending is rising (in 2005, Canada's military budget had expanded by $15 billion in five years). State and rebel armies recruit among the poorest members of the population and in some cases enlist children.

Feminism is an essential response to these wars and this state of militarization. Feminist actions to resist war and militarization take different forms, depending on the analysis driving them. There are actions to include women in peace processes or to protest the impunity of attackers and states or groups that employ rape as a war weapon. Others, like the Women in Black network, carry out civil disobedience actions to say no to aggression and construct transnational links. Women in the former Yugoslavia who are members of this network have contributed largely to important discussions on the militarization of our daily lives, rejection of nationalism, power relations and the need for "protection" that is instilled in us as children under patriarchy, etc.

Some women are critical of the feminist current based on the notions of equality and difference that celebrates women's inclusion in armies or views women as the "natural" architects of peace. Another feminist, Jules Falquet, describes the new international and sexual division of labour in her piece entitled "Hommes en armes, femmes de service" (Men in Armies and Women in Service Work) in which she analyzes militarization as the consecration of the sexual role division under patriarchy.

Since 2000, the World March of Women has brought forward the issue of peace and demilitarization, on the urging of women from in conflict regions, notably the African Great Lakes. We included peace as one of the fundamental values in the Women's Global Charter for Humanity. Our commitment to addressing the causes of poverty and violence against women has led us to question the combined effects of systems like patriarchy, capitalism and racism, all of which play a preponderant role in maintaining the world in a state of war and a perpetual war against women. Durable peace will only be achieved with a profound transformation of the relations between women and men.

*A slogan used by feminists in Vancouver, Canada.

To find out about Resolution 1325 and discover how groups are using it, visit their website: http://www.peacewomen.org/Website_French/wpsindex.html

Nairobi Declaration on Women's and Girls' Right to a Remedy and Reparation, March 21, 2007, Coalition For Women's Human Rights In Conflict Situations http://www.wunrn.com/news/2007/05_07/05_28_07/060307_nairobi.htm

For an excellent analysis of diverse feminist actions to resist war and demilitarization read: From Where We Stand:

War, Women's Activism and Feminist Analysis", by Cynthia Cockburn, published by Zed Books, London, February 2007.

See Belgrade's Women in Black website http://www.zeneucrnom.org/index.php?lang=en

See Andrea D'Atri, Échec de l'égalité, échec de la différence, September 2004 http://www.ft-europa.org/francais/Strategie/EI21/Femmes_Guerre_(Ad'A).htm

"Hommes en armes et femmes « de services » : tendances néolibérales dans l'évolution de la division sexuelle et internationale du travail," Jules Falquet, Cahiers du Genre 40, May 2006.

For pieces published by the March on women's view of the situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa, a report on an international seminar on peace and demilitarization, calls for peace, etc., see http://www.marchemondialedesfemmes.org/themes/paix/fr/