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The Gaiafield Project is a collaborative action research program of the Gaiafield Center for Subtle Activism at CIIS.
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Rene Wadlow
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed in Resolution A/61/L22, the year 2009 as the International Year of Reconciliation “recognizing that reconciliation processes are particularly necessary and urgent in countries and regions of the world which have suffered or are suffering situations of conflict that have affected and divided societies in their various internal, national, and international facets.” The Resolution was introduced by Nicaragua’s representative who stated that “reconciliation between those estranged by conflicts was the only way to confront today’s challenges and heal wherever fraternity and justice were absent from human relations.”
Yet we need to ask how can genuine reconciliation take place between people and groups with bitterly held beliefs and a violent history? How can the needs for national healing be reconciled with the demands for justice by the victims of terrible violence?
The General Assembly resolution gives a partial answer by stressing that “dialogue among opponents from positions of respect and tolerance is an essential element of peace and reconciliation.”
For there to be a respectful dialogue among opponents, certain barriers that prevent negotiations must be dismantled as a sign of a willingness to enter into a process of negotiations. Some barriers are physical, some psychological, others ideological. These barriers must be overcome if we are to progress on the long road to reconciliation. Let us, with the New Year, start now both as individuals and as members of movements in the spirit of the historian Howard Zinn’s “People are Practical”
They want change but feel powerless, alone,
do not want to be the blade of grass that
sticks up above the others and is cut down.
They wait for a sign from someone else
who will make the first move, or the second.
And at certain times in history
there are certain intrepid people who take the risk
that if they make that first move others will follow
quickly enough to prevent their being cut down.
And if we understand this, we
might make that first move.
…And if we do act, in however small a way,
we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.
The future is an infinite succession of presents,
and to live now as we think human beings should live,
in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself
a marvellous victory.
Rene Wadlow, Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
Rene Wadlow
November 25 is the UN-proclaimed International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Violence against women is a year-round occurrence and continues to an alarming degree. Violence against women is an attack upon their bodily integrity and their dignity. We need to place an emphasis on the universality of violence against women, the multiplicity of its forms, and the ways in which violence, discrimination against women, and the broader system of domination based on subordination and inequality are inter-related. The value of a special ‘Day’ is that it serves as a time of analysis of the issue and then of rededication to take both short-term and longer-range measures.
The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted by States in the General Assembly of 1993, gives a broad definition of violence as “ any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
The Declaration highlights violence within the family, violence within the broader community, and violence perpetrated or condoned by the State. We will deal briefly with these three areas of violence against women.
The Family: Although the family should be a safe haven with relations among its members guided by respect and love, it is often within the family where the most psychologically devastating forms of violence take place — devastating because such violence goes against the expectations of a safe and harmonious haven. We see battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women and violence related to exploitation carried out by family members and intimate partners.
Within this family setting, we also need to look at the conditions of domestic workers, often working under totally unregulated conditions. Live-in maids can be subjected to slave-like treatment at the hands of the members of the family employing them. They can encounter humiliation, work and sexual exploitation and violence, often with no access to justice.
The Wider Community: As the preamble to the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women states clearly “Violence against women is a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and to discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of women’s full advancement, and that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men.” This universal phenomenon is embedded in a patriarchal structure which legitimates mechanisms of enforcing and sustaining the system of domination.
As Adrienne Rich wrote in Of Women Born “Patriarchy is the power of the fathers; a familial-social ideological, political system in which men — by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male. It does not necessarily imply that no woman has power or that all women in a given culture may not have certain powers… The power of the fathers has been difficult to grasp because it permeates everything, even the language in which we try to describe it. It is diffuse and concrete; symbolic and literal; universal, and expressed with local variations which obscure its universality.”
Many of the tenets of patriarchal gender order concerns male power to control women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity. The honour and prestige of a man, in many instances, are intrinsically associated with the conduct of a women related to sexuality, leading in some cases to ‘crimes committed in the name of honour’.
Within the wider community, we also see physical, sexual and psychological violence, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and intimidation at work and in educational institutions, trafficking in women and forced prostitution.
Education, psychological care and sociological change are important to combat violence within the family and the community.
The State and Armed Insurgencies: There is physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State. The State has a clear duty to control the behaviour of its police, prison, and other agents of justice. Victims of violence by the agents of the State should have clearly set out mechanisms by which they can appeal to the State for redress and compensation. Violence against women in custodial and prison conditions is still a widespread phenomenon which requires a review of national legislation but especially a real investigation of national practice. In many ways ‘law and order’ can be a ‘war on the poor’ and the misfits or a ‘war of segregation’ which can translate into arrests of members of specific social, ethnic or religious groups.
We see violence against women used as a systematic weapon in conflicts as these days in eastern Congo by both governmental forces and the armed insurgencies. Women, children and the elderly are the most vulnerable in war-torn societies.
There are also real but less visible psychological and personality disorders left by a conflict. Therefore the role and needs of women in post-war reconstruction and reconciliation require immediate special attention.
Thus, this November 25, we need to look carefully at the causes of violence against women and to develop further the policies and institutions leading to human dignity .
Drawing :Cecile Wadlow
René Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
I would like to highlight the growing conflict in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the area that shares a frontier with Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi — basically the administrative provinces of North and South Kivu, and ask for your help. The situation is growing ever more dangerous. There are many newly displaced persons since fighting started anew in late August 2008— some 250,000 persons uprooted by the violence. In addition, there are over a million persons who had already gone to refugee camps, often far from their original villages.
The United Nations has its most numerous peacekeeping force in the area — some 17,000 soldiers — but there is, alas, no peace to keep. There is a need, not so much for soldiers, as for peace bridge-builders, persons who are able to restore relations among the ethno-tribal people of the area, especially among the Hutu and the Tutsi, who also live in Rwanda and Burundi.
The Association of World Citizens is particularly interested in developing bridge-builders, persons who are able to begin the long process of restoring broken relations and setting in place a framework of reconciliation. The people in eastern Congo have lived together for many centuries and had developed techniques of conflict resolution, especially between the two chief agricultural lifestyles: agriculture and cattle herding. However, political considerations, a desire to control the wealth of the area — rich in gold, tin and tropical timber — all these factors have overburdened the local techniques of conflict resolution and have opened the door to new, negative forces interested only in making money and gaining political power.
The United Nations, national governments, and non-governmental organizations need to develop bridge-building groups which can help to strengthen local efforts at conflict resolution and re-establish community relations.
In the Congo, events are moving quickly, but largely in a negative, more conflict-driven direction. In the short run, it is difficult to know what is possible to transform the situation. But your interest in developing a corps of bridge-builders is welcome. World Citizens were among those in the early 1950s who stressed the need to create UN peacekeeping forces of soldiers especially trained for such a task. Today, we need to take the lead to press for the creation of a new type of world civil servant — those who in areas of tension and conflict can undertake the slow but important task of restoring confidence among peoples in conflict, establishing contacts and looking for ways to build upon common interests.
Your efforts in this effort are most welcome.
Rene Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
Dear Friend,
There are many efforts at healing individuals through the use of subtle energies, including efforts to heal from a distance. It may also be possible to heal a large number of people — a whole country — from a distance with the use of creative visualization and psychic energy.
Ethnic and racial tensions, hate, violence — all create a dark, negative energy field which continues to manifest itself in additional divisions and violence. Thus, there is a need for a Healing Light which will help scars to heal and divisions to be overcome through a knowledge of the unity of all life. Such Healing Light will give new energy to peacemakers who exist in all societies to build bridges and work for reconciliation.
There is a need for those of us who work with subtle energies to be active in projecting Healing Light to the many parts of our planet where tensions are strong and violence ever present. Your efforts are most welcome. Rene Wadlow
Our teachers are living in Pacific time zone USA for your reference.