Women Resisting Violence

"Some two million people around the world are victims of trafficking, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said recently. She noted, “Reports today suggest that more people are being trafficked than ever before.”

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We begin this issue with an article on trafficking by Annelise Ebbe. Trafficking may not seem at first glance an obvious issue for peace activists. But it is. Profits from the illegal trade in guns, people (mostly but not exclusively women and girls) and drugs fuel many armed conflicts. In too many makeshift camps of refugees fleeing war, the first outsiders to arrive are not medical personnel or humanitarian aid workers—but traffickers with promises of desperately needed jobs.

In economies that have been destroyed by war, human trafficking and the smuggling of guns and drugs may be growth industries, and the best paid jobs available. They help sustain the culture of violence that created them. Any effort to interfere with these money makers—including organizing for peace and justice—is dangerous.

Because of this danger it can be difficult to get facts and figures on trafficking. It is known that in the US alone trafficking is a USD 9.5 billion business, with some 20,000 people trafficked into the United States each year. 80% of those trafficked are women and girls. Many of those trafficked come from Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States of the former USSR.
Both Ebbe and the article of Sandra Ljubinkovic point out an even deeper connection between war and the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation. Both war and trafficking are about domination and control by men, over other men and over women—key values of the mind set they label patriarchy. Promoting equality between men and women will undermine patriarchy and militarism, they argue—and free both women and men. Patriarchy, as the articles by the Russian Soldiers’ Mothers show, hurts men also.
Building a culture of peace does mean confronting violence. It means confronting even those who are supposed to be protecting war survivors, such as United Nations peacekeepers. A recent report by Refugees International claims that “A ‘boys will be boys’ attitude in peacekeeping missions breeds tolerance for exploiting and abusing local women.” It is not only local women and girls who may face abuse, but women and girls specifically brought into the country to cater to foreign peacekeepers. In one 20-month period, the United Nations peacekeeping department completed investigations on 221 peacekeepers accused of sexual misconduct.

The women whose work you will read about in the following pages are building a culture of peace. They, and their male allies, are confronting trafficking, teaching peace, opposing the spread of militarism. They are making a link between respect for women’s rights and peace. Women’s equality is being recognized as a cornerstone of any sustainable peace. Two indications of this recognition are mentioned in this issue: the 1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize and the new 1325 award from the Netherlands.

May 24 International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament began in Europe in the early 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of women organized against nuclear weapons and the arms race. Since the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and the International Peace Bureau have published this pack to raise awareness of and increase support for women’s peace initiatives.

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