Women's Views on News |
- Why we say no peace with no women
- The threat of the religious right
- Don’t mention the garment workers
- Stories of dissent and solidarity
| Why we say no peace with no women Posted: 12 Sep 2014 06:15 AM PDT
In October 2000 UNSCR resolution 1325 was passed by the UN Security Council. This extraordinary UN resolution recognises the devastating impact of conflict on women and states that women must be involved in building peace from the earliest stages. The resolution is generally understood by the '3 Ps': Equal participation of women in conflict prevention, peace building and reconstruction; Protection of the human rights of women and girls during times of conflict; and Prevention of gender-based violence. UNSCR 1325 was followed by resolutions 1820, 1888 and 1889 – all of which call for the protection and empowerment of women and girls in conflict and post-conflict contexts. And while the resolution is extraordinary in principle and on paper, more than thirteen years later, its real impact is yet to be felt by women affected by conflict. In the 16 peace processes undertaken from 2000 to 2010, for example, women's involvement has been minimal and in 5 cases no women were involved at all. Launched at the 10th anniversary of that groundbreaking UN resolution that calls for women’s inclusion in peacebuilding, No Women, No Peace is a campaign set up by Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS UK), a network of peace, human rights and development organisations. No Women No Peace has a simple premise; you cannot build peace by leaving half the people involved out. And women are potentially vital agents for peacebuilding. Their active involvement is a powerful force for change. So let’s make a few things clear: Why must women be included? Women have the right to be involved in decisions that shape their society. But there are also practical reasons why women must be included in all peacebuilding efforts. Women are essential to the building of stable societies. Research demonstrates links between gender inequality and increased levels of violence within a state. It suggests that where there is acute gender discrimination and abuses of human rights – specifically women's rights – countries are likely to be unstable. Women provide vital insights into community security, can advance dialogue and support national recovery. Women's inclusion in peacebuilding means the particular forms of violence they face during conflict, such as brutal sexual violence, can be addressed. Failing to address women's insecurities during and after conflict undermines longer-term national security. In Angola, for example, the peace process failed to address prominent issues such as rape and human trafficking and overlooked women's health and education. The peace agreement also forgave the parties for atrocities they committed against women during the conflict, effectively condoning violence against women. Peacebuilding that fails to recognise the different experiences of women and men also threatens to erode women's rights and put them at increased risk. When women are not consulted they risk increased levels of insecurity. Internally Displaced Person (IDP) and refugee camps designed without women being included in the designing can increase their vulnerability to violence. In Sudan, for example, failure to understand women's roles meant that they were forced to leave the camps to collect water where they experienced sexual violence and harassment. Women make up 70 per cent of the world's poorest people, and a significant proportion of these women live in countries affected by violent conflict. By failing to ensure women can engage in rebuilding conflict-affected countries we greatly undermine our ability to tackle global poverty. With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the international community recognised the importance of gender equality in efforts to reduce poverty (MDG 3). Investing in women's post conflict participation in countries like Afghanistan and DR Congo is vital to the achievement of the MDGs. It also just makes sense: you can't build peace leaving out half the people involved in the peace to be built. After the UK's high-profile summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict in June this year, there was hope among civil society organisations across the world that Women, Peace and Security issues were finally getting the profile they long deserved. Importantly, there was the acknowledgement that without women, peace cannot be achieved. It seems ironic then, that just months later Afghan women were not involved when Afghanistan's security situation was discussed at the recent NATO summit in Wales. In former Foreign Secretary William Hague's speech at the closing plenary of the Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict Summit he said he was 'saddened that women and women's groups still have to ask be included at the negotiating table, as if it were a concession to be granted … when in fact it is the only route to better decisions and stronger and safer societies'. He continued: 'We should not have to be reminded, as governments, that women must have a seat in every forum of decision-making'. Well, here we are; they need reminding. The No Women, No Peace campaign calls – again – for women's involvement in all aspects of post conflict development and reconstruction, so as to ensure that societies emerging from conflict are designed and – those designs implemented – for everyone.  |
| The threat of the religious right Posted: 12 Sep 2014 04:16 AM PDT
by Marieme Helie Lucas. Ahead of a conference on the Religious-Right, Secularism and Civil Rights in London this October, Algerian secularist, Marieme Helie Lucas calls on secularists everywhere to mobilise to counter the rise of the Religious-Right – and to urge the elements of the left that support them to reconsider their stance. Secularism is probably the one big issue for our century. This century is not, as many still think, marked by a religious or spiritual revival. What we are actually witnessing is the rise of extreme-Right political movements, working under the cover of religion. Everywhere. No one is spared, neither Buddhism or Hinduism which still enjoy outside their boundaries an undue reputation of being peaceful, nor the notorious Christian-Right, or Muslim, Sikh or Jewish fundamentalisms. All of them, when given a chance, behave like any extreme-Right movement: they suppress dissent through brute force and they physically eliminate those deemed infra-humans. In the name of their gods. Secularists are being attacked in many places in the world today: they are jailed, killed, tortured, their very existence is considered an offense to believers in many non-secular states. The terrible crimes committed right now by ISIS in Iraq, against dissenters, religious minorities and women in general, are far from exceptional: all areas of countries that were momentarily under the boot of armed Muslim fundamentalists experienced similar ferocious repression, be it Algeria in the nineties, Mali, Afghanistan, etc… Fundamentalist extreme-Right forces manage to get more and more countries to ‘accommodate’ parallel religiously-inspired legal systems that are a denial of democracy; supposedly divine rules, as interpreted by old reactionary male clerics are given equal status – and sometimes prominence over – hard-won democratically-voted laws. They are supported at UN and international levels by powerful coalitions (from the Vatican to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and even by the Non-Aligned – alas! – in the name of anti-imperialism) that assert so-called religious rights over and above any other fundamental human rights. Europe, which has seen parallel legal systems sanctioned by state authorities in the name of multiculturalism, i.e. the promotion of unequal rights for different categories of citizens, has not been spared. There is a need for secularists around the world to come together and examine their situations, to exchange information, to strategize and to join hands. This is the purpose of the upcoming International Conference on the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights, which is to take place in London during 11-12 October 2014. Speakers from countries or the diaspora as diverse as Algeria, Bangladesh, Canada, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Senegal, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, UK, USA and Yemen will reflect on the struggle for secularism in both regional and thematic ways and will discuss how to counter the specific forms that attacks on secularism take in various parts of the world, and how to more efficiently mobilize in the defence of threatened secularists. A number of victims of state repression for having declared their atheism will be present and will testify. Participants will also discuss how to counter the rise of the religious-Right in countries of emigration such as Europe and North America, and how to help both the Left and human rights organisations, which have been blindly supporting fundamentalist demands – assuming they were the true and legitimate voice of minorities – re-evaluate the politics behind those demands, reconsider their support for extreme-Right political forces and shift their concern to endangered secularists. To find out more about this conference, click here. Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist, founder and former international coordinator of the ‘Women Living Under Muslim Laws’ international solidarity network, and founder of ‘Secularism Is A Women’s Issue’ (siawi.org). She is a member of this conference's Organising Committee. A version of this post appeared on the National Secular Society’s website on 4 September 2014.  |
| Don’t mention the garment workers Posted: 12 Sep 2014 03:14 AM PDT
Protesters are taking action today to mark the opening of London Fashion week with the message "Don't mention the garment workers". Activists are highlighting an event which, they say, promotes the creativity of the UK's fashion industry, but is silent over the millions of workers who produce clothes for high street chains, often working long hours on poverty pay in unsafe conditions. The demonstration, organised by the anti-poverty charity War on Want, is taking place in view of London Fashion Week's opening nearby at Somerset House. Just before the catwalk shows begin, campaigners are sending the message to London Fashion Week "Don't Mention The Garment Workers". All major the UK brands who are members of the Ethical Trading Initiative have signed a pledge to pay workers a living wage. Not one currently does so. London Fashion Week is promoting itself as big business, stating that orders estimated at £100 million will be placed during the event. This is enough to pay a month's wages for 2.4 million Bangladeshi garment workers who earn a mere £42 each month. The minimum wage for clothing factory staff in Bangladesh – where brands such as Primark and Next source clothes – is only £42 a month. The protest comes only days after Primark's parent company, Associated British Foods, announced over £600 million operating profit for the fashion chain in the year to 13 September. It also follows hard on the heels of Next reporting £324 million profit in the six months to the end of July. The demonstration will also raise concerns over garment workers in developing countries toiling away for up to 14 hours a day, the large numbers of them suffering physical and verbal abuse, and living in slum housing. War on Want senior campaigner Owen Espley said: "London Fashion Week is a glittering showcase for the fashion industry. But fashion's dark side is kept in the shadows. "The British Fashion Council would rather we all forget about those who often work long hours, on poverty pay, in unsafe conditions to produce the clothes we love. "We can love fashion, but hate sweatshops and want a fashion week that lives up to its responsibility to all the workers who make the fashion we buy. "The time has come for London Fashion Week to mention the garment workers."  |
| Stories of dissent and solidarity Posted: 12 Sep 2014 01:10 AM PDT
Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF) was formed in 1989, partly in response to the controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, but also with the aim of challenging fundamentalism in all religions. It sees fundamentalism as a modern political movement that uses religion to consolidate authoritarian and repressive forms of power. WAF's members were drawn from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds, and from around the world. This book maps the development of the organisation over the past 25 years, through the life stories and political reflections of some of its members, focusing on the ways in which lived contradictions have been reflected in their politics. Their stories describe the pathways that led them to WAF, and the role WAF has played in their lives and in the forms of political activism in which they have engaged. Discussing feminist activism from different ethnic and religious back-grounds, contributors highlight the complex relationships of belonging that are at the heart of contemporary social life – including the problems of exclusionary political projects of belonging. They explore the ways in which anti-fundamentalism relates to broader feminist, anti-racist and other emancipatory political ideologies and movements. The personal stories at the centre of this book are those of women whose lives enact the complexities of multiple (if shifting and contingent) mutually constitutive axes of power and difference. Many of their concerns therefore relate to crossing the boundaries of collectivity and practising a 'dialogical transversal politics' that has developed as an alternative to identity politics. Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters’ contribution is: Flying by the nets of racism, patriarchy and religion; Clara Connolly’s Confessions of an Anti-Clerical Feminist; Gita Sahgal’s is Knowing My Place – The Secular Tradition and Universal Values; Ruth Pearson’s Linking the local with the global: the legacy of migrant grandparents; Shakila Taranum Maan’s is Gods and Daughters; Nira Yuval-Davis’s is Intersectional Contestations; Hannana Siddiqui’s My Life as an Activist; Julia Bard’s Learning to Question; Georgie Wemyss’s is Activist Listening; Nadje Al-Ali’s From Germany to Iraq via WAF: A Political Journey; Sukhwant Dhaliwal’s Made in 'Little India'; along with Cassandra Balchin’s Making myself through difference; and Rashmi Varma’s Telling Lives; Sue O'Sullivan on Change, Chance, and Contradictions; Eva Turner’s One of My CVs; Jane Lane’s No clear pathway, just a lifelong zigzag; Ritu Mahendru on Sexual and Gender Based Violence Against Women; Natalie Bennett on Anti-fundamentalist feminism and green politics and Judy Greenway on The Spirit of Resistance: Helen Lowe 1944-2011. It was edited by Sukhwant Dhaliwal and Nira Yuval-Davis. For more information about the contributors, click here Sukhwant Dhaliwal joined WAF in 1995. She has worked with Asian women’s organisations challenging domestic violence in both Newham and Manchester and has worked with Southall Black Sisters. Over the last ten years she has completed research projects encompassing a number of equality strands including racism and racist violence; disability; age; religion and belief; and gender. Nira Yuval-Davis was a founding member of WAF. She is the director of the Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London and has been the President of an ISA Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations. Her written and edited books include Racialized Boundaries; Gender and Nation and The Politics of Belonging. She is currently leading a research team on Everyday Situated Bordering as part of an EU research programme. Remarking on the book for publishers Laurent and Wishart, Molly Andrews, professor of Political Psychology and co-director at the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London, said: ‘There is much to learn from, and much to celebrate, in these pages: a feminist, anti-racist politics which supports religious freedom and expression but which challenges fundamentalism in all its forms, combined with compelling testaments to the intermingling of the personal and the political in private and public life. 'As individual accounts and as the documentation of an important social movement, these inspiring political narratives provide insight into one of the most complex and persistent challenges of our time.’  |
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