Nobel Women’s Initiative blog

by Maggie Baxter, Green Belt Movement International

I came to the conference as a trustee of Green Belt Movement International whose founding director received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 – Wangari Maathai. Having been the Executive Director of WOMANKIND Worldwide, a UK international women’s rights and development agency, and now working on stopping the trafficking of women into the UK, developing a women’s resource and fund in the UK and supporting a small agency called Women for refugee women, the opportunity of attending the conference was an opportunity to listen and reflect. To listen to women who were tackling the complexities of peace building both as academics and practitioners, to test my knowledge and assumptions on women’s rights around the world, and begin to see where and how my experience could be used in the future.

I was particularly interested in hearing how outside agencies, whether individuals or organisations, could assist in other people’s crises. After all I had spent nearly 20 years working for funding organisations. What was appropriate? What was legitimate? What was asked for?

It would also throw light on how the women Nobel Laureates could collectively bring their influence to bear in changing things on the ground for communities suffering as a result of conflict. Conflicts which were often not of their making and deeply rooted in a number of conflicting arenas: global power-mongering; corporate supremacy; the market economy; international and national government policies – and the victims of most conflicts being women and children.

Day 1 –

The day was one of setting the scene with insights of the role the USA played on the world stage both politically and economically and how their instability and fear had set the world on a possible path to a third world war. By the end of the day my head was spinning from the many concepts that had been thrown out and chewed over: fundamentalism; identity politics; power mapping; the ‘weaponisation of women’s bodies’, capitalism and market economy and many more.

But what of the role of outsiders to the situations? It was mentioned that we need to think of what kind of interventions were appropriate for donor agencies, governments, civil society activists acknowledging that support and resources are needed - but support needs to be sure that it is not doing more damage or harm than the help it brings.

The messages: be careful who you partner with, there may be conflicting agendas; through these partners continue to make the connections and linkages and a collective movement and strength can be achieved; always use the media with individual powerful stories – each story should add strength to the other.

But beware! International not for profits are feeding on women in areas of conflict – they take a third of the budget back to their own countries, they don’t listen to local voices who know what needs doing, they are arrogant thinking they know better. This message came across loud and clear on the second day…

Day 2 -

The power of the Northern Ireland experience was profound and made more so when hearing the traumatic stories of women who had lost their immediate families in Israel and Palestine. The positive energy Ann & Bronagh brought to the conference was palpable and their messages clear: ‘violence does not work’, ‘there could never be a winner’, ‘dialogue is crucial’, ‘keep hope alive’, ‘it is all about inclusion, human rights and equality’, ‘peace building is hard hard work’. Hopefully their experience will have an impact on the Middle East – it would seem they are about ten years behind Northern Ireland in the negotiations. Their experience can and should help all conflicts around the world and resources must be made available for this to happen.

So here is something outsiders can bring – resources to make sure experience is shared. However frustration with external intervention was expressed in an outburst of ‘Get out of the way, stop gate keeping, listen more productively’. So having felt momentarily that there was a positive contribution an outsider could bring I was back in my box! Also we had heard quite rightly that outsiders should be encouraged to ‘study the culture of the countries before intervening, use national expertise at all times – they know the issues and the solutions’. However it was stated that nationals working for international agencies are always treated as a ‘lower’ person and never with the same degree of knowledge and respect as those who think they know better based outside the country. I wish international agencies would hear this.

Day 3-

It wasn’t until I reached the airport at 8.30 p.m. thinking of my three day old friends settling in to celebrate the conference, sadly missing Wangari’s promised Irish jigs, that the full impact of the three days hit me. The face of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi came to mind. I read the pamphlet entitled ‘Still licensed to rape’ highlighting the systematic rape of women -the youngest being only 8 years old- by the military as a strategy to subjugate the peoples of Shan State in Burma. The same stories, slightly different, had come from Northern Uganda, from Darfur, from Kosova, Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. Stories of rape used as a weapon of war, so called ‘honour killings’ to save the reputations of families, the denial of access to information and justice – the many forms of violence against women flooded back. Violence against women does not only occur within conflict situations, it’s all pervasive trafficking of women into the sex industry, female genital mutilation, early and forced marriage, domestic violence – the list seems endless.

So sitting waiting to be called at Shannon Airport to leave for London Heathrow, I resolved to continue the struggle to get resources to women and women’s organisations so strategies and experiences can be shared – tomorrow I chair a meeting to push forward a women’s resource agency and fund in the UK to support women there and around the world. Do I have a choice? In the words of Ghandhi one has to ‘be the change you want to be’.

Thank you Nobel Women’s Initiative for the time in Galway; it was inspirational.