22
Oct
2010
By Kanya D’Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 21, 2010 (IPS) – Ten years after the Security Council issued its landmark resolution 1325, designed to address the “disproportionate and unique impact of war on women”, U.N. officials and international human rights advocates say it is high time the principles it espouses move from paper to reality.
Their press conference at U.N. headquarters Thursday was also the culmination of Global Open Day – a U.N. initiative to synthesise proposals and conversations held in 27 conflict-affected countries from June to September this year.
“The objective was to put in mind that it’s been a good decade now that we’ve been pushing for this,” said Anne Marie Goetz, chief advisor of Governance, Peace and Security at UNIFEM, “and it shouldn’t have to take a formal occasion to encourage women’s voices to be heard, at all times, in all decision-making. [We] must get straight to a new start in the new decade. Women count for peace.” More »
22
Oct
2010
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS) – As the United Nations commemorates the 10th anniversary of a landmark Security Council resolution (1325) on the protection of women in war zones, a new study details the successes and failures of a long-drawn-out effort to battle gender-based violence and provide women a key role in male-dominated peacekeeping and peace-building operations.
“Women rarely wage war, but they too often suffer the worst of its consequences,” says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which released Wednesday its 108-page annual ‘State of World Population’ on the impact of conflicts on women worldwide.
In many of today’s conflicts, women are disempowered by rape or the threat of it, and by the HIV infection, trauma and disabilities that often result from it, she said. More »
22
Oct
2010
Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund / Credit:UN Photo/Mark Garten
Sanjay Suri interviews THORAYA AHMED OBAID, executive director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund
LONDON, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS) – The U.S.-led invasion and then occupation of Iraq brought a sharp setback to the rights of women in that country, UNFPA head Thoraya Obaid tells IPS in an interview.
The view that Muslim societies are necessarily backward on the position of women arises from stereotyping, she says. And she speaks of herself as a Muslim woman who does not fit the stereotype. More »
22
Oct
2010
Chilean Captain Fuentes with children at a school in Haiti. / Credit:Courtesy of Chilean Army
By Daniela Estrada*
SANTIAGO, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – In June 2009, Chilean army captain Andrea Fuentes travelled to the city of Cap-Haïtien, in north Haiti, to serve for six months in her country’s contingent in the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).
She was the first female Chilean officer in the Civil-Military Coordination Unit, which works directly with the people of Haiti, the poorest country of the Americas. For Fuentes, a single 30-year old woman, a gender perspective has always been a priority in her work. More »
22
Oct
2010
March towards Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá / Credit:Courtesy of Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres
By Helda Martínez*
BOGOTÁ, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – “When we women speak out, without showing fear, we pay a high price: living with that fear,” says one peace activist in Colombia. “The threats will not stop us from working for peace and social justice,” says another.
Their voices echo those of the many Colombian women — peasant farmers, indigenous and black women, and mothers of victims of forced disappearance — who have mobilised for peace and to fight impunity in a country that has suffered a half-century of armed conflict between leftist guerrillas, government forces and the far-right paramilitary groups that joined the fray in the 1980s. More »
22
Oct
2010
Rebiya Kadeer. Credit:Erika Svensson
STOCKHOLM, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS) – Rebiya Kadeer has taken up a campaign for the rights of a people usually far from world headlines: the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority in China.
Before she was arrested and imprisoned for nearly six years for criticising the Chinese government, she was a top official in the National People’s Consultative Conference, an influential political body. She lives in exile in the U.S. since her release from jail in March 2005. More »
21
Oct
2010
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury. UN Photo/Evan Schneider
By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury*
[Launched at the working meeting on 1325 on 27 July 2010 at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC]
WASHINGTON DC– The credibility of the United Nations rests in a major way on its ability and capacity to get the decisions of the Security Council implemented in letter and spirit. When in March 2000, the Security Council expressed for the first time in its history of 55 years its conceptual acceptance that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men and affirmed that the equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for peace and security, the international community was charged with expectation.
The formal resolution followed this conceptual and political breakthrough in October of the same year through the Council’s unanimous agreement of all 15 members including the five permanent ones giving this issue the attention and recognition that it deserves. It was welcomed by one and all with considerable enthusiasm hoping that there would be progress in paying attention and respect to the unrecognized, under-utilized and under-valued contribution by women to preventing war, to building peace and to engaging individuals and societies live in harmony. More »
