Nepali Women And Reconciliation Strategy
By Kamala Sarup
For the first time since the insurgency started, a women-led anti-Maoist uprising has spread across Dailekh and in
Baglung and some part of the country. Women have been organising small village gatherings in open defiance of the
Maoists since 9 November in Dullu and thousands marched in Baglung Saturday .
"Down with Maoism," "Down with Prachanda." the demonstrators shouted at a big rally in Dullu and in Baglung.
"If we want to see these women move further in local level politics, they need training and support programs to develop
their self-esteem, potential, and economic power. With this type of capacity-building, women will have the financial
ability and self-confidence to pursue politics supportive of women". Puja argued.
"If injustice against the people continues, mass fury will not be contained. We are taking part in this rally because we
are troubled by the Maoists. This campaign will definitely teach a lesson to the Maoists". She argued.
Gender analysis shows that women are greatly affected by armed conflict and conflict arises for many reasons: political,
economic and psychological, religious, ethnic or other kinds of intolerance, socio-economic despair, injustice and
oppression. In Nepal, the opportunities for women to exchange views and forge a common policy against violence is
minimal even women are often the main victims in situations of conflict, suffering human rights abuses.
Now we have a question How to reduce conflict from women's perspective; that is, how do women see the world? How do
women deal with their difficulties during conflict? Nepalese women should be in position to know how conflict has
affected their family life, including child development and psychological impact on children among others. This is a
very complicated issue because women's responses depend on a number of factors, including: whether they are from the
aggressor or victim communities, their level of political consciousness, the degree to which the conflict has affected
their personal and family life and the role they play in the socio-political and economic life of their societies. We
should see women development as their fundamental freedom.
The reality is that many Nepalese women are living a miserable life, they are not educated, do not have facilities to
health and safe drinking water. So, we should seriously consider how women can play a catalytic role in resolving
conflict and bring peace and how the Nepalese civic society, and women's organizations should use this resolution to
press for greater involvement and how they should monitor and evaluate the actions of negotiators. Nepalese women can
not forget how women with political power does not mean improvement overall in women's political, economic or social
status. There is a real need to educate women about their rights and obligations. Women's rights is a relevant social
issue in a pluralistic society.
The question of women themselves is in urgent need to be addressed with sufficient clarity and precision. Of the so many
unfortunate developments in our country the uneducated rural girls became the hapless victims of scrupulous urban and
semi-urban thugs and power brokers. As a result, thousands of innocent Nepalese young women end up in the red light
districts of big Indian cities and elsewhere every year and ultimately return home in shame with the life-taking disease
of AIDS.
Women are often the first victims of armed conflict, but they can be powerful forces for peace, for the reconciliation
and they can provide to the peace processes by forming women's associations and non-governmental organizations. We
should start with a policy dialogue that facilitate cross fertilization of ideas in respect of gender streaming issues,
be it developmental, economical or political. Even, national and foreign problems and agendas, often seem to preoccupy
women's agendas.
Women working in NGOs cannot be called truly the representatives of ordinary women in Nepal, though they are trying to
bring the awareness campaigns to rural villages in a modest scale. On the whole, we cannot confidently assert that all
Nepalese women are in a position to make up their mind to react to contemporary violence facing the country. Today two
thirds of the population of Nepalese are women, so more women must be involved and engaged in peace processes and
development programmes.
Nepalese women should not forget how in Somalia, women challenged civil society to play a more active role for peace and
how they helped create the Peace and Human Rights Network? How in Kenya, women in the Wajir Peace Group successfully
intervened in conflicts between ethnic groups, partially by keeping careful track of tensions in the market place. How
the Sudanese Women's Voice for Peace promotes dialogue and reconciliation among different ethnic groups and guerilla
factions in Sudan? How in Northern Ireland two women, the Roman Catholic Mairead Maguire and the Protestant Betty
Williams, reached across sectarian lines to establish the Peace People movement. How women from Sierra Leone, Guinea and
Liberia got together and went to the bush to persuade the young child soldiers to lay down their arms?
Nepalese women believe, if they are given an opportunity to make their voice heard, if they can bring their own
perspective to the table, the chances for lasting peace and reconciliation will improve immeasurably.
Women can play as peacekeepers, in peace accords and the rebuilding of society because Nepalese women have suffered the
loss of family, houses, and they have faced extreme poverty and majority of internal refugees are women and children.
While Nepalese women's organizations can play key roles in information gathering, peace building, and can help the
government and the civil society to move from simply responding to crises to preventing their occurrence. Since 1991,
hundreds of local NGOs have been established in Nepal, so civil society and women's organizations need to create special
educational and employment opportunities for women and they need to initiate a massive awareness building campaign
throughout the country to sensitize people, politicians, administrators, social activists etc.
Nepalese women see peace as a holistic concept, because peace and security must be considered in the truest sense of the
word: access to education, health, personal security and general freedom to live a life. If we talk on women's human
rights, we have to talk first of those violated women who are suffering from armed struggle. There are a number of
violence where women are more likely to be victims because they are women.
The Nepalese women abroad remain deeply concerned about how on October 31st, the UN Security Council unanimously passed
Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and the resolution calls upon the Council, the UN Secretary General, member
states, and all other parties to take action in four inter-related areas, participation of women in decision-making and
peace processes, gender perspectives and training in peacekeeping, the protection of Women; and gender mainstreaming in
United Nations reporting systems and programmatic implementation mechanisms.
Nepalese women must have a right to be involved in all peace processes because displaced women are the real problem in
Nepal. Women are in a unique position to effect reconciliation and to promote values which lead to the prevention of
violent conflict because women's strengths for this role in reconciliation are many. Nepalese Women are silent invisible
and disproportionately represented majority a Nepalese polities.
Nepalese women's organization should mobilize and build capacity of women and civil society at large to contribute to
peace because for women interested in reconciliation, the challenge is to develop an integrated gender approach". She
argued.
"Nepalese political parties should seek to help to defuse tensions and build sustainable peace through promoting the
targeted conflict reduction strategies like through good governance programmes, encouraging protection of the rights of
minority groups expanding the use of the media to provide objective information, promoting international co-operation to
curb illicit trafficking in small arms. Nepalese leaders should have a responsibility to help reduce human suffering and
they should work closely with humanitarian organisations, they should seek to rebuild livelihoods and communities, and
build capacity so that communities will be less vulnerable to future crises. It is sad to know, the major political
parties cannot find any political solution to these problems faced by the people of Nepal". women activist Sudha argued.
She further argued "The government-Maoists talks should be in the interest of the nation or else the country would have
to be bear huge damages. Peacemaking, whether in personal, group, or international relations, requires a variety of
capacities for self-transcendence: transcendence of one's own interests and perspectives for the sake of understanding
the interests and perspectives of the other side, which calls for the virtue of empathy; transcendence of one's pride
and defensiveness, which inhibit the acknowledgment of injuries done to others capacity for repentance and perhaps
restitution; transcendence of one's own grievances and desire for vengeance over injuries inflicted by others capacity
for forgiveness.
Negotiation is only one of many ways that organizations and societies deal with conflicts so how interest-based
negotiation can be combined creatively with other rights-based and power-based procedures such as arbitration,
adjudication, voting, and third-party intervention in order to constitute a "dispute resolution system. Negotiation
means that you not only set your Objectives for a negotiation, you also understand why those are your Objectives. It is
a humanistic approach to negotiation that utilizes the strategies and tactical tools of successful negotiating to
achieve optimal results". She argued.
*************
(Kamala Sarup is editor to http://peacejournalism.com/ )