INDONESIA: Indonesian Woman Wins Peace Award

An Indonesian woman has won a United Nations Development Program-sponsored peace award for helping to build peace and prevent conflict in North Maluku.

Electronita Duan, from Halmahera, was awarded the N-PEACE award along with fellow peace advocates Filomena Barros dos Reis of East Timor, Purna Shova Chitrakar of Nepal and Shreen Abdul Saroor of Sri Lanka.

The awards were presented during a ceremony in Bangkok on Wednesday, a UNDP news release said.

The N-PEACE Network Web site, according to its Web site, operates in four high-risk crisis countries "that face chronic emergencies due to high-risk of conflict and susceptibility to natural disasters."

Electronita is one of the founders of Politeknik Perdamaian Halamahera, an institute of higher education for those whose studies were interrupted by conflict and who could not afford to resume their educations, the news release said.

“Electronita knew that normalcy could never return to conflict zones without a skilled and educated population,” it said.

The Indonesian activist was quoted as saying that she “believes and trusts in the work done by women at any level.”

She said she believed in the power of networking and advocates for “creating economic opportunities and providing education, the best strategies to prevent conflicts and ensure sustainable peace.”

Some 225 women who are community leaders in conflict prevention, dispute resolution, post-crisis reconstruction and peace-building, participate in the N-PEACE network and communicate online and through face-to-face consultations to share experiences and strategies in advocating, promoting and keeping peace in their countries, the release said.

The N-PEACE Network was launched in 2010 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security.