24 May International Day of Women for Peace and Disarmament

 

TP Disarmament Camp Images 11th July 2017

This day has been commemorated since 1982 in remembrance of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp against the use of nuclear weapon.

Women in Black against War join this commemoration because we believe that wars are a crime against humanity, which harms mostly women. On this day, we encourage the citizenry to reflect on the causes of war. If we want to avoid wars, we must take action on the factors that are their breeding ground and work for a world that is safer and kinder in which we can live in peace and develop the human values of solidarity, justice and equality in duties and rights.

As recognized by the United Nations, and as we have learned from the current pandemic, safety is not provided by the armies or the forces of law and order. We should be talking about food security, environmental, community and economic security, etc. From our beginnings, Women in Black against wars have been working for a world without violence in order to remove wars from history and our lives, as our motto says.

Sexual violence has been recognized internationally as a war crime, but there are other sorts of violence that women suffer in wars and afterwards because of that violence. No justice is sought in any forum because the violence is not even given a name.

Women who have lived through wars in the Balkans and other places, supported by feminist organizations, have indeed named these sorts of violence in tribunals created for this purpose. An example is one that took place in Sarajevo, the so-called Women’s Court: A Feminist Approach to Justice.

There is a long list of types of violence that are not even taken into account as collateral effects: mental and physical pain; fear; stigmatization; a feeling of guilt that affects one’s health; separation of families; frustration over one’s expectations in life; loss of quality of life; impoverishment; loneliness; psychological traumas among those who return from the front; care giving for the physically or mentally mutilated; fracture of the social fabric; loss of home and community, which give us security and in whose absence we become stateless.

All this along with a deterioration of values, distrust of people from another country or one's immediate neighbor, exaltation of the force and violence of militarism instead of solidarity and compassion.

After wars, comes the recovery of this social fabric, recovery of values and care giving, which always fall on women.

There is no compensation (indemnity) for these harms and damages. Up to now, no peace process has included these effects of war. Women in Black believe that these sufferings must be recognized by society and that we should make the greatest effort to avoid them.

 

To that end:

♀     We call for the United Nations to amplify their resolutions to avoid sexual violence against women in war zones, including all the types of violence enumerated in the previous paragraph.

♀     We want to draw attention to the increase in violence in the language and attitudes of the politicians in our country, political representatives who plant hatred seeking only their own party interests. We ask of our politicians firmness and unity in not permitting the advance of these ideologies of hatred and inequality.

♀    We request protection for the refugee women fleeing from wars or situations of conflict and who also suffer from the violence of this propagandistic hatred.

♀      We ask that our government not invest in research or production in the weapons industry.

 

If war is the principal enemy of women, we will be safer if we manage to raise the consciousness of society to the fact that no government has the authority to declare war. (Women in Black against War)

 

 

Translation: Trisha Novak, USA and Yolanda Rouiller, Spain