Conflict Prevention - News

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the Palestinian female police's violent dispersal of a women's sit-in in front of the headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PPS) in Hebron. PCHR also condemns the detention of eight civilians participating yesterday in a peaceful sit-in organized by female activists by security services in Gaza; PCHR further condemns the assaulting of some of these civilians. PCHR calls upon the public prosecutors in Ramallah and Gaza to open serious investigations into these attacks and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi spoke to Sophie Claudet last week on the sidelines of the Women's Forum in Deauville, France. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi told Sophie Claudet in an interview that renewed protests against the Iranian government are imminent and that the opposition is working behind the scenes even if the state's crackdown has kept it off the streets. She also gave her views on Iran's nuclear program, Iranian politics, sanctions and the Arab revolutions.

As the sun set over Jerusalem, about one hundred women milled around tables covered with hand-made crafts. There were delicate earrings, hand-embroidered shawls, olive wood jewelry boxes and brightly colored ceramic bowls. There was chatter in Hebrew and Arabic and a lot of laughter. It was the third annual pre-holiday craft and jewelry sale sponsored by Joint Ventures for Peace, a group of Israeli and Palestinian women who have opened small businesses together. What is unique about this group is that each craft project is fashioned by a pair of women — one Israeli and one Palestinian. But each time they need to work together, it requires that a permit be obtained from Israeli officials: either for the Israeli partner to enter the Palestinian territories or for the Palestinian woman to enter Israel.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2012 (IPS) - When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the High-Level Forum on Culture of Peace later this week, he will transmit a message that underlines his political philosophy: all disputes need to be resolved by peaceful means, not through military might.

The Lebanese Council to Resist Violence against Women (LECORVAW) in Tripoli is working to support abused women and has also, together with other organizations, been assisting Syrian women, who fled to Lebanon, with counseling and medical care.

The most pressing global problems simply won't be solved without the participation of women. Seriously, guys. On a trip to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, not long after my appointment as the U.S. State Department's ambassador at large for global women's issues, I stopped for dinner with a group of Afghan women activists in Kabul. One woman opened our conversation with a plea: "Please don't see us as victims, but look to us as the leaders we are."

The involvement of women in anti-war actions and in support of peace activism worldwide is a critical part of modern history, yet the vulnerability of women in conflict situations to violence of all forms is perhaps the most brutal manifestation of patriarchy in modern times.

If one thing holds the overall movement of peace movements together it is the goal of violence reduction. There's a shared conviction that violence is a choice, that there exists, much more often than commonly supposed, a more violent and a less violent course of action. Can we justifiably speak of a global movement against war?

The United States has not had an easy couple of months in Afghanistan. With news of the kill teams in Kandahar, the recent killing of 16 unarmed civilians by a rogue American soldier, and the controversy surrounding Quran burnings, public sentiment on the war by Afghanis and Americans alike is at an all-time low.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become infamous in recent years as the “rape capital of the world,” known for its alarmingly high rates of sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) in its eastern region. I know it for the Congolese women and men with whom I work every day, guided by the hope that social and behavior change communication methodologies can contribute to the reduction of GBV in this conflict-affected country.