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2-DAY WORKSHOP ON ROLE OF
WOMEN IN PEACE AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION, 8-9 JUNE 2011,
DON BOSCO NAVJEEVAN, RAMANTHPUR, HYDERABAD
(Funded by Ford Foundation)
A 2-day workshop was organised by the
CSSS on 8 and 9 June 2011 at Don Bosco Navjivan,
 Ramanthpur,
Hyderabad, in collaboration with Aman Vedika Biradari,
Hyderabad. The workshop was meant to explain to the
women the concepts of Peace and Conflict Resolution and
sensitise them to play a pro-active role in establishing
peace and social harmony in their own localities and
take active part in conflict resolution.
Concept
As
the worst sufferers in conflicts are women and children,
deploying more and more women in establishing peace and
conflict resolution has become important and relevant.
The Fourth World Conference on Women and
the
UN
Security Council have passed Resolutions emphasising the
importance of women's contribution to conflict
resolution and sustainable peace. The UN
Member States are urged “to ensure increased
representation of women at all decision-making levels in
national, regional and international institutions and
mechanisms for the prevention, management, and
resolution of conflict”.
The
role of women – or the absence of it – in formal peace
negotiations and conflict resolution has become
increasingly relevant and recognised during the last few
years. Equality between men and women has been a goal of
the UN since its inception, with the preamble to the
1945
 UN
Charter declaring its objective “to reaffirm faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of
the human persons, in the equal rights of men and women
and of nations large or small.”
With
women forming almost 50% of the population, both men and
women are essential for progress in social and economic
spheres of nations. For creating the world envisioned in
the Millennium Declaration and achieving progress in the
social and economic spheres, a world of peace, equality,
tolerance, security, freedom, respect for the
environment and shared responsibility, in which special
care is given to the most vulnerable people, especially
children, is essential. A critical component of this is
ensuring that women have a greater voice in conflict
resolution.
The
recognition that women are not merely victims of
conflict but critical actors whose contribution is
essential to the success of peace processes and to
long-term political stability is strikingly recent. Over
the past few years it has been increasingly felt and
recognized that in conflict situations characterized by
instability and weak application of the rule of law,
women’s participation in peace processes is essential to
ensure their long-term success. Peace agreements and
post-conflict reconstruction and governance will have a
better chance of success only when women are involved,
in part because women adopt a more inclusive approach
towards security and address key social and economic
issues that might otherwise
 be
ignored by an all-male team of negotiators. Yet women’s
role in peace processes remains, at best, informal.
Women rarely make it to the peace table. On the few
occasions that they do, their voices are rarely heard.
Women’s exclusion from peace negotiations
means that their rights and voices are not fully
represented in post-conflict reconstruction processes.
The
workshop was intended to make the participating women to
become aware of the important role that women can play
in preventing conflicts and ensuring sustainable peace.
Participants
As many as 73 women affiliated to various
NGOs not only in Hyderabad but also from Khammam,
Nizamabad, Kurnool, Medak and other districts
participated in the workshop. A list of the participants
is attached.
Resource
Persons
The workshop was addressed by the
following resource persons:
1. Dr
Asghar Ali Engineer, Chairman CSSS,
Dr. (Mrs.) Rama Melkote, former Professor, International
Relations and Political Science, Osmania University and
General Secretary, Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s
Studies, Hyderabad.
Dr.
Suneetha Achyuta, Social Activist, Anveshi, Hyderabad,
Dr Vasundhara Mohan, Executive Director,
CSSS
Proceedings
of the workshop
Ms. K.Anuradha of Aman Vedika, Hyderabad,
CSSS partner, welcomed the participants and explained
the context of the workshop and introduced the speakers.
She said that though
 women
and children are the main sufferers during any conflict,
women have hardly any say in conflict resolution and
post-conflict reconstruction. In spite women playing a
significant role in controlling conflicts at the
grassroots level, they do not find a place in official
peace-making committees. Women have to understand the
role that they can play in peace building and conflict
resolution.
Dr. Vasundhara Mohan, Executive Director,
CSSS said that the Centre was regularly organising a
series of workshops for women on capacity building and
empowerment in different parts of
 the
country to create awareness among women of their
importance in the socio-economic development of the
society, establishment of peace and conflict
transformation. The present workshop was one in such
series and is specifically meant to focus their
attention the crucial role they can play in preventing
conflicts. As the main sufferers of conflicts of any
kind, it is all the more necessary that women should
take the initiative to play a major role in sustaining
peace and prevent conflicts. They also need to involve
themselves in post-conflict reconstruction.
Dr Asghar Ali Engineer, Chairman of the
CSSS highlighted the exclusive characters of women, like
strong will power, patience, compassion, endurance,
forgivingness etc., that make them most suitable to
handle peace negotiations. In fact, the basic qualities
in her make a woman
 capable
of even preventing conflicts. But, there are several
factors that make a woman adopt a complacent attitude
towards conflict resolution. Chief among them were the
patriarchal forces that discourage women from taking any
active part in the affairs of the society, leave alone
conflict resolution. Instead of ignoring women or their
capacity to usher in peace in the society, the men have
to respect their abilities and the specific capacities
that they can bring to bear on conflict resolution. At
the same time, women should fight for their rightful
place in the establishment of peace and conflict
resolution, as it is in their own interest and that of
their families to ensure that peace is established. He
exhorted women not to yield to pressures and fight for
their rights, including the right to education, which
cannot be denied at the instance of self-styled
religious leaders.
Dr. Suneetha Achyuta,
a Senior Fellow and Coordinator of
Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies in
Hyderabad, who has investigated how older women dealt
with familial violence and institutional responses to
domestic violence, spoke about internal reform among
 Muslim
communities in the Indian context. However, not
restricting her presentation to Muslim women alone, Dr
Achyuta emphasised that women should first get educated
if they were to be empowered.
Dr. Rama Melkote referred to the role
that women have played in the Naxalite problem,
especially when the Naxalites were recruiting young boys
and girls.
In her presentation Dr Vasundhara Mohan
pointed out that in a man’s society it is difficult for
women to claim their rights and in spite of women
proving their mettle in conflict situations all over the
globe, like in the North Eastern States of India, in
Sierra Leone, Jammu and Kashmir etc., women still are
not given a space in the official negotiations. Although
education was not essential to act as peace negotiators,
even educated women are ignored. She drew attention to
the fact that it took a long time for a woman to become
the Foreign Secretary in India after the last incumbent
(Ms. Chokila Iyer) retired. When women form 50% of the
population of the country, it is absurd that the
government is unable to find competent women to sit on
the official negotiations on peace and conflict
resolution.
 After
listening to the resource persons, the participants
wanted to know the specific steps that women could take
in establishing peace and work for conflict resolution.
They were told that a woman has to:
1.
First ensure that their men and children are busy with
their respective occupations i.e., work/business and
studies;
.
Ensure that their men do not fall into bad company or
engage themselves in unacceptable activities;
3.
Ensure that the children get the right type of education
and spend their time either in studies or on the
play-ground and keep track of the type of friends with
whom they move;
4. Establish
good-neighbourly relations within the society and across
the religion linkages with women of other religions,
castes, sub-castes etc. so as to develop a healthy
atmosphere;
5. Through
such linkages, watch out for rumblings within the
immediate neighbourhood that may have the potential to
turn into conflict;
6. Use
the networkof women to work out ways and means of
quenching the rising dissatisfaction in a given section
of the society through dialogue-based discussions and
assessing the causes for dissatisfaction etc., to find a
workable solution to the satisfaction of all concerned
parties;
7. Women
could also act as the eyes and ears of the police by
keeping a close watch on the trouble mongers in the
society.
Feed
back
The participants were unanimous in saying
that they were returning from the workshop an
enlightened lot. They were unaware of several aspects,
including their rights under Quran. Of particular
interest to the participants was the various types of
assistance available under the various programmes of the
government. However, they complained that they hardly
receive any help from the bureaucracy when they approach
them seeking assistance. Some women
 narrated
that their children were either refused or discouraged
seeking admission in secular schools; for the simple
reason that they were Muslim children. As stated above,
such complaints were looked into by Mr. Shaikh Nemat and
solved on the spot.
In concluding, Dr Mohan asked the
participating women not to lose heart and keep fighting
for their rights with the help of NGOs and officials
like Mr. Shaikh Nemat. She said that it is a fallacy
that Muslims are discriminated against in the matter of
education and employment. Even if there is an occasional
case of such discrimination, the community, especially
women, should keep fighting for their rights, both
religious and civic, which, once again, calls for
education so that they should know what to fight for and
with whom they should take up their issues.
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