Federation and Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights to help nurture and sustain the ceasefire between the Naga underground groups and the government. The NMA also took the initiative to collectively honour those who died in the conflict and whose bodies could not be identified. They worked alongside government agencies to prepare coffins and burial grounds. They collected Naga shawls from various churches and women’s bodies to cover the dead with full Naga honour and organised funerals with local pastors. This act of honouring human life even in the face of death gave NMA the space to appeal for peace. The most active member of the NMA Peace Team, Angami along with her colleagues made several visits to underground camps under very difficult situations to listen to the non-State armies and plea with them to come to the negotiating table. The NMA and its sister organisation, Naga Women Union of Manipur (NWUM) made personal visits to all the Northeastern states to meet civil societies and government leaders. These women played vital roles in trustbuilding and conflict prevention.
Recent Trend & Challenges of women involvement in Peace building in India
The case studies on women’s collective peace building movements, raise a question that whether women are inherently more peace oriented than men.
The case studies on women’s collective peace building movements, raise a question that whether women are inherently more peace oriented than men. In majority cases, it is seen that it is an inherent volunteering spirit in women that stimulate them to mobilize, get collective and act collectively for social stability and sustainability. Hence, women’s collectives in India have recently fostered a multitask approach to peace building/conflict resolution processes with a broad cross-section of civil society, including NGOs, media, the business community, educators, political leaders etc. Such approach plays a vital role in strengthening peace dialogue and holistic development for social stability and sustainability. For example, the Chetna Andolan and Phalenda Movement in Uttaranchal evolved from a process of creating awareness amongst the people and make them more politically and socially conscious about what was going on around them and spread peaceful protests against corruption and ill governance, to bring holistic development. The Indian women have proven themselves as successful peace builders so far despite facing lot of challenges.
Futures
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Though the paper we have seen how women’s role in peace-building in Kashmir, North-East region and other places have made significant influence in creating an inclusive platforms for multi-stakeholder dialogues but still there exists a lack of adequate recognition to the women efforts, perhaps because of their subsidiary position in society?