AFRICA: African Women Fight Back

Yet as conflict continues to unfold, from the Ivory Coast to the ever-turbulent Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is still mostly a silent disaster.

It remains out of donors' reach and almost invisible in the media, increasing during and after disasters as already fragile structures of law and order break down.

But does this mean African women are always helpless, voiceless victims in places of conflict?

Some research seems to make that point. The Global Fund for Women reports that more than one million women were raped, mutilated and abused during and after the civil wars in Sierra Leone, the DRC and Rwanda.

It is important to understand that women, men, boys and girls experience and cope with violent conflict and disasters in different ways. Yet evidence proves that women and girls are disproportionately affected because of their low socio-economic and political status.

In their everyday lives, women and girls are often exposed to abuse when fetching water or gathering firewood. Women are restricted access to credit and are rarely allowed to inherit or own land. In disasters, women refugees are often forced to trade sex for survival, and relief policies typically favour male refugees. Despite the circumstances women find themselves in, evidence from the ground has started to dismantle the "women as victims" myth. Time and again, women continue to show resilience in the face of disasters. They help build shelters and soup kitchens, organise self-help groups, and mobilise communities to take action. Post-conflict, they play crucial roles in formal and informal peacekeeping initiatives.

In 2003, with the support of the Women in Peacebuilding Network, Liberian women mobilised and demanded an unconditional ceasefire, a negotiated settlement and international community presence in Liberia.

While Liberian women were markedly absent from formal peace negotiations in Ghana, a group of women held a parallel meeting resulting in the Golden Tulip Declaration, which articulated women's demands for peace.

The award-winning documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell follows the grassroots movement of women in Liberia who flout the "women as victims" myth. Despite the atrocities they experienced during the war and regardless of their exclusion from the peace talks, women were determined to take action for a safer Liberia.

Women physically barricaded the stalled peace talks using their bodies as human shields and demanded that an agreement be reached. The extent of their exclusion from the peace talks is evident when these women - older, respectable, devout women - threatened to remove their clothes when faced with eviction from the male-dominated space. Pray the Devil Back to Hell documents this remarkable moment, proving the tenacity of Liberian women.

Many similar stories of women's resilience exist and there is increasingly a need to document these accounts in support of research that could inform policies, programmes and the development agenda.