Tackling
terrorism is
women's work
PressInfo #
227
September
21, 2005
The UN
International Day of Peace
By
Scilla
Elworthy,
TFF Associate
One half of the population, here
and in the Middle East, is barely being used when it
comes either to causing terror or preventing it. Ninety
seven percent of bombers and suicide bombers are male, as
are over ninety percent of those conducting the so-called
'war on terror'.
Maybe it is time to consider what
women would do. In fact, most governments have signed up
to United Nations Resolution 1325, which is a worldwide
agreement that we will include women in preventing and
resolving violence. Why? Because all over the world women
have shown that they're good at it.
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi is a Muslim
woman from the borders of Kenya and Somalia. In 1992 she
managed to stop a clan war that had cost 1,500 lives, by
getting together with women from the opposing clan. This
was not sewing circle stuff. She said "If a member of my
clan kills a member of your family, will you still work
with me for peace? If you can't say yes, don't join."
They were so successful in solving disputes that the
Kenyan President gave her an office in Nairobi and she
now teaches her methods in other parts of
Africa.
In Northern Ireland the Women's
Peace Party played a significant part in the Good Friday
Agreement. Jo Berry, daughter of a Tory MP killed in the
Brighton bombing, sought out the man who planted the bomb
when he came out of jail in 1999, went through a gradual
process of reconciliation with him, and now works with
him to support victims and perpetrators of political
violence in finding peace.
Dr Sima Semar, now Minister for
Human Rights in Afghanistan, has for years systematically
set up education and health centres for Afghani women and
girls, knowing that they hold the key to peace. Her
offices have twice been blown up, but she says she's too
busy to be afraid and simply continues her
work.
When the five warring clans in
Somalia were unable to reach agreement, Somali women
asked to participate in the negotiations and were turned
down. So under the leadership of Asha Haji Elmi, and the
women's network Save Somali Women and Children, they
formed themselves into the sixth clan. They have since
made a significant contribution to building peace in
Somalia.
Women working
for peace..but made invisible
And so on, but invisibly. It is
thought that there are literally thousands of women's
peace initiatives springing up at grassroots level in the
world's tougher corners, and the London-based
organisation Peace Direct is setting out to document just
how many there are.
This is not to say that men are no
good at peace-building; many have been spectacularly
successful. It's simply that when it comes to terror, the
female way of doing things, which can be done effectively
by either sex, is under used. This way of doing things
tends to invest a lot of time in listening to human
needs, to value the making of connections, and to favour
the use of respect rather than the use of
force.
Measures such as training a
significant number of women for the police forces, and
supporting the role of women in development and education
can bring striking results in areas of conflict. The
first lady of Egypt has recently established an
international organisation to train women, especially in
the Middle East, in state-of-the-art conflict resolution
and peace-building techniques.
Special concern
for the Iraqi women
But in Iraq, life for women is
getting tougher. Just as Iraqi women were anticipating a
new era of democracy and freedom, a wave of intimidation
by extremist groups has arisen to crush their hopes. The
NGO Shevolution reports that insurgents and religious
fundamentalists are using rape, acid and assassination to
force Iraqi women to wear the veil &endash; the first
signal of further repression to come. Many Iraqi women
have never worn the scarf. Now, dead bodies of girls and
women are found in rivers and on waste ground with a veil
tied around the head, as a message.
Violent oppression of women is
spreading across Iraq, but there is silence from world
leaders, religious leaders, politicians and the media.
Yet Iraqi women could be the key to the country's future.
Due to decades of war, 62% of the adult population of
Iraq are female and most are well educated. What is
needed now is legislation to protect women's rights, a
national education programme to inform women of their
rights, and to raise awareness among men of the value of
including women in every walk of life, including
politics.
So what could
female power do in Britain to make us
safer?
Women could be chiefly responsible
for driving a powerful 'human security' or 'soft'
approach to tackling the threat from terrorism - based on
winning hearts and minds through addressing the real
human needs that, frustrated and ignored, fuel
violence.
In Britain it will mean adopting a
gender-aware approach to dealing with the underlying
causes of terrorism. For both policy makers and
communities, it is essential to fully involve Muslim
women in raising grievances and addressing problems
within their communities and more widely.
People habitually find it easier to
talk to women, and difficult to talk to the police.
Therefore it would make sense to set up a national free
hotline, where the caller remained anonymous and their
number unidentifiable, to enable people anxious about the
activities of people they know, to talk about it to
women. At the very least this would help to build up a
profile not only of how widespread are the preparations
for attacks, but also of the motives.
In order to prevent attacks it is
essential to understand why people are driving themselves
to such extremes as suicide bombing. Mothers, sisters and
girlfriends spend a lot of time listening, and what they
pick up could, again anonymously, form the basis for
profiles on the causes of fury. In the British cases it
seems that the bombers were not psychotic, but rather
ordinary young men who had become driven by intense fury,
fuelled no doubt by indoctrination. It is crucial that
that fury is understood, analysed and listened
to.
In the corporate world women are
actively sought out for middle management roles because
it is widely recognised that they are effective
communicators and have a natural talent for building
bridges. It is time for women to be not just allowed, but
actively encouraged, to introduce their particular ways
of doing things into all our efforts to deal with
terrorism.
Scilla Elworthy and Gabrielle
Rifkind are authors of 'Hearts
and Minds: human security approaches to
terrorism' published in
July 2005 by Demos. See also PeaceDirect.
1,103 words
Get
free articles & updates
Få
gratis artikler og info fra TFF
© TFF and the author 2005
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
You are welcome to
reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this item, but
please retain the source.
Would
you - or a friend - like to receive TFF PressInfo by
email?
 
|