PRESS CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY SIERRA LEONE,

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY SIERRA LEONE,

‘Voices from War Zones: Women Speak Out’

Women were not just victims of armed conflict, but were also contributors to and agents of change and peace, Sanam Anderlini, a representative of International Alert, Women Building Peace Campaign, told correspondents Friday afternoon at a Headquarters press conference entitled “Voices from War Zones: Women Speak Out”. The press conference was sponsored by the Mission of Sierra Leone and moderated by Ms. Anderlini and Isha Dyfan, a representative from Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Women were not inherently or biologically better peacemakers, Ms. Anderlini continued, but women did have a right to be involved in all peace processes and conflict prevention at all levels. They had a right as victims, because nowadays they were strategically targeted. They also had specific needs as caretakers in refugee situations, and they brought a different perspective as they had seen the “underbelly of conflict”.

Gina Huong Lee, Coordinator of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, said the assumption that the Pacific area was a peaceful place was erroneous. In the Fiji Islands, conflict had been started by seven armed gunmen who had taken cabinet ministers and members from parliament hostage, four of whom were women, thereby throwing out the Constitution. After three weeks, that situation was still ongoing. A multi-ethnic group of women had started a vigil, calling for peace, for the restoration of democracy and release of the hostages.

Fiji had played an active role in the United Nations as peacekeepers, she said. Since the hostage takers had used the guns of peacekeepers, the guns of peace had now been turned into guns of war. She called on the Security Council to address the issue and take all measures to insure the safety of all parliamentarians and to establish an embargo on arms for Fiji.

Patricia Guerrero, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Programme Manager in Colombia, said that rather than drug trading, displaced people were the real problem in Colombia. There were 2 million internally displaced people, of whom 50 per cent were women, children and elderly. Nobody knew about this problem. The situation in Colombia was very complex, involving drug cartels, guerrilla groups and common criminals. The women’s main problem was poverty, as there was an unemployment rate of 20 per cent and the economy was collapsing. The United States had offered $1 billion for the war. Money for weapons was not needed, she said. There was a need for the international community to support the peace process. With more weapons coming into the country, the cycle of war would begin again.

Amy Smythe, former Minister for Gender and Children’s Affairs of Sierra Leone, drew attention to the fact that despite being a small country extremely wealthy in resources, Sierra Leone was the poorest country in the world. While in 1999 Sierra Leone had benefited from $1.5 million in diamonds, Liberia, which did not have any diamonds, had gotten $350 million out of diamonds. The war was

Sierra Leone Press Conference - 2 - 12 June 2000

affecting the people in Sierra Leone, but the dynamics of that war were being played outside of the country. Liberia was supporting the Sierra Leonean rebel group RUF, allowing them to smuggle diamonds from and arms into the country. In 1994, women of Sierra Leone had analysed the war, and similarly, now, some of the same women had been able to deduce that peace was impossible without first addressing the issue of diamond smuggling.

The image of Sierra Leone among the international community was very negative, Ms. Smythe said. Because of the problem in her country, the entire sub- region was in a state of destabilization. People outside the country, and outside West Africa, were benefiting from that war, however. On 6 May, women had marched to rebel leader Fodoy Sankoh’s house to tell him that enough was enough. Since then, civil society had come out with statements calling on the international community to address the root cause of the problem, namely diamond smuggling.

Anjana Shakya, representative of the South Asia Beijing +5 Committee, described the situation in her country, Nepal, where for three years a Maoist group had caused violence. Nepal was seen as a country of peacekeepers, and violence was very unusual. Not much attention had been given to gender specific violence, but in some parts of her country there were few young women who had not been molested or raped because they were suspected of having had dealings with the Maoists. Sometimes they had been burned alive after having been gang raped. There was one incident where teenage girls were raped in public. There were no known instances of Maoists having raped. The police involved had not been indicted.

There seemed to be a lot of ignorance among delegations to the special session of the General Assembly on Beijing +5 about gender specific violence as a strategy, one of the panelists said in response to a correspondent’s question. Although not much information had been forthcoming from the negotiations on the final document, it appeared that a lot had been taken out of the draft document concerning that issue.

Answering a question about the reason for targeting women, Ms. Smythe said that women kept the social fabric together. In a lot of communities, there was a culture of not speaking about things like rape. The rebels were using that tactic to fragment the community. In order to join the rebel forces, a man had to rape a woman his mother’s age and a child. That meant that he could never go back to his community, where he would not be accepted.

Ms. Shakya added that in Nepal women were raped in public, in front of their family, in order to create fear. Those families fled because they did not want another woman from their family raped. The strategy was to create fear in the opposing side.

Ms. Guerrero noted that in Colombia women were raped before their husbands and then they were killed. Rape was used as degradation to the enemy, and in that way, women had become a weapon in the war.

The level of education among delegates was far lower than assumed, was the response to another correspondent’s question. There was also a lack of understanding of the role women played in peace-building efforts.

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