OPINION/FILM: What Women Really Want – a Negotiated Peace

Let us be crystal clear from the start. It's never ever more Tomahawk missles.

As the U.N. Women's War and Peace page reports:

While women remain a minority of combatants and perpetrators of war, they increasingly suffer the greatest harm.

In contemporary conflicts, as much as 90 percent of casualties are among civilians, most of whom are women and children. Women in war-torn societies can face specific and devastating forms of sexual violence, which are sometimes deployed systematically to achieve military or political objectives. Women are the first to be affected by infrastructure breakdown, as they struggle to keep families together and care for the wounded. And women may also be forced to turn to sexual exploitation in order to survive and support their families.

Negotiating Peace

If you haven't seen the gut-wrenching and inspiring film documenting the women's peace movement that ousted warlord turned President Charles Taylor from Liberia and ushered in a period of peace, find a way to see Pray the Devil Back to Hell at the earliest possible opportunity.

The kidnapping of children for use as soldiers, bloody attacks on the civilian population and the complete breakdown of civil society finally caused Liberian women to “snap.” They formed a peace movement supported by both Christian and Muslim women. They were not hindered by the scorn and derision that greeted their daily presence in the public square.

The teaching moment for women negotiators in this shattering film was the peace activists' refusal to appoint one of their number to sit at the negotiation table. Though I do not recall the precise dialogue, the gist of the women's response was this: one woman will be ignored or co-opted. We are more powerful among our sisters outside the building pressuring the men inside.

The strategy was successful. Taylor was dispossessed of power as a deal point brokered in the ensuing peace treaty.

On 23 November 2005, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President of Liberia.

That's powerful negotiation for change, ladies!

Directed by Gini Reticker; director of photography, Kirsten Johnson; produced by Abigail E. Disney; released by Balcony Releasing. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. This film is not rated.