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"A Woman's Place Is at the Peace Table"SAIS Review--Gender and International RelationsSummer-Fall 2000, Vol. XX, Number 2 By Jill Benderly In a world of accelerating violence and political crises, women are the best investment in peace. Yet traditional diplomacy continues to ignore or marginalize women. Women are viewed as victims who need rescue and humanitarian aid, not as civil society leaders, peace negotiators, or political decision-makers who can bring strength and experience to the peace table. Because women have historically been excluded from most forms of power, women often have a different view of power. They are less entrenched in structures and are thus more willing to reorganize hierarchies of political or institutional affiliation, to cross ethnic or national boundaries and borders, and to foster alliances that decrease conflict and increase stability. For example, women in the Balkans, Rwanda, and the Horn of Africa have often been the first to work across volatile ethnic and political borders in those tinderbox zones of crisis. The global campaign to recognize women's contributions to international relations began long before the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Nevertheless, the conference was an important step because it produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action, a set of international mechanisms to increase gender equality and women's human rights. While most of the world's nations ratified the Beijing platform, their actual commitment to creating effective national machinery for gender equality has been inadequate. Although national gender equality commissions produce progress reports for the United Nations, actual transformation of gender issues into national and international political and economic policies is still sorely lacking. The June 2000 review of progress, called the "Beijing Plus Five Process," will no doubt underline how much further women have to go. Examples of policymaking gains exist, as is evident in Croatia and Serbia where women's sections of political parties and trade unions are beginning to reflect independence and generate serious political influence. But when women who lead these subgroups contend for leading positions in the party or union, men have a hard time making room for them at the top of the electoral lists. In economic development, the situation is similar. The latest recipe for combating the feminization of poverty is microcredit and small business development. But when women want access to larger credits or to become managers of significant firms, suddenly they are viewed as stepping out of their league. How can the international community support local women's efforts to hasten peace and positive social change in societies in conflict and crisis? The STAR Network for Women's Leadership in the Yugoslav successor states, the organization that I co-founded and lead, constitutes a new approach to answer this question. STAR, which stands for Strategies, Training, Advocacy and Resources, was created in 1994 in response to the needs and requests of women leaders of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Women in the former Yugoslavia were picking up the pieces left by the war, for instance by counseling war rape survivors and sheltering refugees. Beyond addressing immediate needs, these brave local leaders have gone farther in attempting to address systemic problems. Specifically, leaders of local NGOs wanted to play a role in shifting their societies away from nationalist conflict to tolerance and peace. Enter STAR, which began as a cluster of U.S. women with experience in Yugoslavia and its successor states, trained in conflict transformation, organizational development, and public policy advocacy. STAR received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to set up programs in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Thanks to funds from private foundations and individuals, STAR was able to also include women from Serbia and Kosovo, which at the time were under international sanctions. The promotion of women into leadership positions has taken a variety of paths. One such effort included the procurement of grant monies to bring together women from conflicting ethnic groups in Croatia to grow and market organic vegetables. Ethnic Serbs, Croats, and Hungarians formed a multiethnic producer cooperative in a first step toward refugee reintegration. STAR funded a national campaign to make visible the issue of post-war increases in domestic violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where frustrated soldiers bring violent behavior home. STAR also supported the first independent women's health centers in Kosovo and Bosnia and helped a Roma (gypsy) women's group in Macedonia to obtain their first computers and space for an office and community center. Finally, we funded the first projects in Serbia for women's self-employment. STAR organized the first conference of NGO women on the actual territory of the Yugoslav successor states (in Macedonia) while the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was still raging in 1995. Women traveled by bus from all over the region to hold serious conversations on peacemaking and social change. Pervasive ethnic tensions complicated the process, and facilitators had to help the women through difficult encounters. But women found that they had more in common than in conflict and built lasting communication links. It became clear to the conference participants that they needed to learn how to systematically advocate for change in their countries and region. With STAR support, eighteen women from the region trained in public policy advocacy at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. As a group, they produced a workbook on public policy advocacy that STAR published in four languages. The book looks at how to conduct step-by-step advocacy in an environment where citizens do not see themselves as having power or even influence. Case studies analyze successful campaigns on environment, youth, interethnic reconciliation, and women's issues in local communities across the Yugoslav successor states. The eighteen women have trained many of their compatriots, women and men, to conduct successful issue action campaigns. At first, USAID considered STAR's work part of humanitarian and trauma assistance. Before long, it was clear that STAR was part of the effort to build democracy through civil society. After four years, we felt that the focus on NGO organizations was limiting and approached the thin line between development and dependency. We then designed a new project to build tri-sectoral alliances between women leaders in government/politics, civil society, and economics/business in the Yugoslav successor states. With the help of STAR, UNIFEM (the United Nations Development Fund for Women), and many Western European women's organizations, women have begun to work together across sectors and national borders to increase their political and economic power. Organizing by women in NGOs, political parties, and trade unions helped to increase the number of women in the Croatian parliament from 6 percent to 22 percent in the 2000 elections. Women convinced the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that there must be quotas ensuring the inclusion of 30 percent women on election lists in Bosnia-Herzegovina. STAR insisted that the U.S. Institute of Peace include women from NGOs and independent media in the Kosovo diplomatic process, and that the United Nations Mission in Kosovo appoint women to the transitional governing council. Arguments that societies were too patriarchal to accept women leaders were disproven by practice. Women from NGOs, trade unions, and opposition political parties have banded together to prepare for the upcoming Serbian elections. This coalition, which is pressing for gender quotas and women's issues in the campaign, is the best hope for uniting a splintered opposition; the women have declared a non-aggression pact under which they will not criticize one another's stands in the media or in public. Women from six countries in south Eastern Europe have formed a regional businesswomen's association. The Gender Task Force is arguably the most active part of the Stability Pact, because women from the ten signatory countries are enthusiastic about meeting to share effective methods of advocating gender equality and regional cooperation. In the past two years, gender programs have become very popular among international actors in the Balkans--evidence of the rhetorical success of the global women's movement. However, most of these programs fail because they do not empower the women they claim to serve. Work plans created in Washington or Geneva are imported to the region and local implementing partners are signed up to carry out the programs but not to consider how to make them meet local needs and enhance local capacity. Too often, Western trainers are flown in to teach women things they already know. Fortunes of money are poured into so-called community organizations that are created to suit the international structures, but once the foreign funding dries up, the groups shut down. Why has STAR succeeded where others have failed? STAR and kindred projects such as the Stability Pact Gender Task Force and Sweden's Kvinna til Kvinna start with a difference: the belief that local women know what is best for their communities. STAR and similar organizations help them make their work in communities sustainable. International organizations have the potential to do things local organizations and governments cannot. STAR helps women leaders advance from the local level to the national and regional policymaking arena. We provide opportunities for them to share lessons learned from relevant global experiences, be it women at the peace table in Northern Ireland, women planning the gender impact of economic development schemes in the Palestinian Authority, or women designing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Women get inspired to localize what they learn and to adapt it to the specific conditions they face at home. Perhaps the greatest compliment to STAR is the request by women in Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece to help them create a STAR affiliate for their conflict zone. When global institutions of international relations recognize women as vital and creative agents of positive social change and invest in assisting them to take their seats at the peace table, at the heads of businesses, and in parliament, then processes of reconciliation and stabilization will be accelerated. Women are serious about creating positive social change. They are undertaking new peace-building leadership for security and stability in the world's conflict zones. Women offer new strength, energy, and talent in conflict leadership where traditional diplomacy continues to stumble. It is time for women to be in equitable numbers at the peace table--to increase the prospects for peace for all of us. Jill Benderly has spent much of the past thirteen years living in Yugoslavia and its successor states. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she worked as a participant/observer/journalist covering movements for social change across Eastern Europe. She co-authored Independent Slovenia: Origins, Movements and Prospects (St. Martin's Press, 1994). She has also pioneered programs that build cooperation across ethnic and national borders in the United States and the Yugoslav successor states. Bi-annual journal of the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Insitute of the Foreign Policy Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Washington, DC. John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore. |
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