Extract "Peace Women – The eleven women who received the Nobel Peace Prize" by ruefferundrub

War is always the result of fear and violence. Conflict is supposed to resolve what was not resolved in dialogue and negotiations – for lack of good will to solve it. What remains are misery and destruction, anger and impotence, and last but not least breeding-grounds for renewed violence. Those who were conquered by force of arms want revenge, want justice for themselves and their cause – again, through violence. The examples of the eleven women who were awarded the Peace Nobel Prize up to 2003 show that other approaches are possible. They decided to stand up for their ideals without identifying with fear, violence, and brutality. Their motivation grew out of an attitude that gives life, an inner attitude that trusts life and will not give up.

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PEACE WOMEN

Peace Women Angelika U. Reutter, Anne Rüffer

Translated from the German original by Salomé Hangartner

PEACE WOMEN

Peace Women Contents 9

Introduction

On Peaceableness by Georg Kohler

From the human being to the “noble human being” who wants peace Bertha von Suttner, Nobel Peace Prize for 1905

To bring humanity forward through the dark night of the soul Jane Addams, Peace Nobel Prize for 1931 The spiritual structure of peace Emily Greene Balch, Nobel Peace Prize for 1946 Mothers acting for Peace Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Nobel Peace Prize for 1977 “God bless you” Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Prize for 1979

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“And to give up is unworthy of human beings” Alva Myrdal, Nobel Peace Prize for 1982

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Sentenced to silence, but not without a voice Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize for 1991

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The Song of the Earth Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Prize for 1992

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The killing will not stop when the war ends Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize for 1997

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To overcome fear Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize for 2003 7

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Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prizes

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Annex

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Condensed biographies

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Acknowledgments

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Bibliography

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Notes

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Pictures

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Further information

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Authors

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Introduction All human beings have rights simply by virtue of being human. It is this universality which gives human rights their strength, and it is this strength that moves people to stand up for their rights, even in the face of obstacles and hardship. There can be no peace without respect for human rights, and human rights can only be comprehensively protected if there is peace. This book presents the lives of eleven women who stood up for human rights with courage and perseverance and were rewarded for their commitment with the Nobel Peace Prize. These women believed in ideals and believed that these ideals could become reality. They fought for truth, justice, hope, reparation and for the recognition of the work of all those other women without whom their initiatives could never have been put into practice. Our experience has shown that, when representatives of civil society are involved in peace processes, discussions at the negotiating tables include different issues than when only official government representatives are involved. It is first and foremost women who raise questions of fundamental human rights, basic needs and social justice with great insistence and urgency, whether this is because of their roles and experience in conflicts, as heads of families and widows, as former fighters, as peace activists or as victims of sexual violence. However, the demand for women's participation in peace processes cannot simply be dismissed as a "women's issue". It is rather a necessity if lasting peace and social justice are to be achieved. I would also like to take this opportunity to mention all those women whose names we do not know but who nevertheless work day in, day out for a peaceful and equal future. The present book was translated into English for the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting 2004 in Warsaw. Every year representatives of the OSCE member states meet there for two weeks to discuss key issues of security, peace and human rights. The OSCE advocates that women should be more strongly involved in decisionmaking processes and that legal and political structures should be strengthened in order to ensure women's rights and equality of opportunity. I am convinced that the eleven biographies in this book are a valuable source of inspiration for the promotion of human rights and peace, that women can make decisive contributions to peace processes and that we are responsible for helping countless women to achieve their peacemaking potential. I hope that you will enjoy reading this book. Micheline Calmy-Rey Federal Councillor Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

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The killing will not stop when the war ends Jody Williams Nobel Peace Prize for 1997

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“Dear Mom and Dad: Sometimes, when we love someone and they get hurt and suffer, we are sure that we could change everything for the better for them – if only we knew the magic word! I wish I could find this magic word for you and Stephen. But after forty-three years, it is clear that there is no such magic word for him. He never was and never will be a Helen Keller, and unfortunately, nobody can tell what makes a Helen Keller and what makes a Stephen Williams. But my experience with my brother led me to my way of life and enabled me to help many, many human beings. Even though it did not help Stephen, his pain and his suffering has given rise to joy and life, something that would probably not have happened without him. Through him, the life of others, who do not even know him, was changed for the better – forever.257 With deepest love, Jody”

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While her neighbors let the engines of their tractors run warm to work their fields, Jody Williams switches on the computer in her farmhouse at Putney in the State of Vermont. From three in the morning until the sun sets, she is in touch with more than seven hundred humanitarian organizations in about forty countries. Since she heard of the devastating injuries caused by antipersonnel mines at the end of the eighties, she and her comrades-in-arms will not rest until the very last of all nations will have ratified the treaty initiated and launched by them to ban landmines worldwide. Her motto: “I have a concern to which I am totally committed.”258 And so she said once, after several years of her crusade against the silent killers: “It is breathtaking what you can achieve if you follow an objective and give it all your energy.”259

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Landmines cannot tell the difference between a soldier and a civilian; they know neither age nor gender; do not differentiate between innocence and evil intent. Every twenty minutes, somewhere on this planet a human being will step on a mine. Silent and deadly, the unobtrusive remnants of martial conflict wait for their victims, and the victims are numerous: twenty-five persons are killed every year by landmines; considerably more are severely injured and maimed. The mines look harmless, they are small – the smallest weighs barely one kilo and can be carried by a child – they are available at a cost of less than three dollars and can be manufactured without great effort by a technically reasonably versed person as a do-it-yourself project at home. In most cases, the victims are farmers or children playing in the fields, such as, for instance, Cheng, a Cambodian boy who herded a cow home and stepped on a mine. His father Nyeng says: “I ran towards him to save him and as I ran, I stepped on a second mine and lost my leg. As a widower with eight more children, I greatly fear for all my children, because I have no money and now I cannot till the field any more.”260 Cheng is only one of endless numbers of children in Cambodia – a country that, according to UNICEF, holds between four to six million nonexploded landmines, i.e. more of these death traps than there are children in Cambodia. The oldest mines date back to the French occupation, but the Americans as well as the Red Khmer and the Vietnamese have contributed to this situation where the whole country is genuinely infected with landmines. It is too difficult, too dangerous, and above all too expensive to remove the mines that were randomly dropped from helicopters or deposited by the artillery. Thus both winners and losers have left the population fields that cannot be cultivated, burned houses, and disconsolate landscapes strewn with debris, but also innumerable silent blasting charges. The UNO and the most diverse NGOs estimate that close to one hundred and ten million antipersonnel mines are buried worldwide in more than sixty countries – mostly in the third world; close to two hundred and fifty million are stockpiled in the military arsenals of approximately one hundred and five countries. To date, the UNICEF knows more than three hundred and fifty types of mines; they are manufactured in about fifty-five countries by one

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hundred companies, and this does not even seem to be a comprehensive survey. In their dreadful effects, however, the silent killers barely vary, even though they bear almost poetic names: the black widow, the Soviet PMN, contains two hundred and forty grams of TNT and has probably killed more human beings than any other type. It is pressure-activated, usually placed by hand, and was deployed in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Mozambique, and many other areas in crisis. Another type is called the butterfly and was “sown” by helicopters in Afghanistan. Over time, the children got so used to them that they called them green parrots. Michael Klaus of UNICEF: “When landmines become an everyday occurrence, they lose their menacing aspect.”261 Children become careless; in Afghanistan they compete in throwing stones at the butterfly mines to make them explode. One wing of this butterfly contains relatively little of a liquid explosive but it is enough to tear off a child’s hand. The so-called bar mines date back to the Second World War. The detonation triggered by tripping wires reliably kills everything within a radius of twenty-five meters – for instance in Cambodia where this type of mine was used in amounts beyond any imaginable reason. And let us not forget the plastic mines that are almost impossible to find, even with technical tools. Their effects are devastating. Prior to blowing up, they jump about one meter into the air to increase the range of dispersion of the fragments. Whosoever touches one of them will be torn apart. The “modern” versions can be triggered by a radio signal; others bend towards the approaching victim like sunflowers. There are also mines with an automatic control that will self-disarm and self-destroy after a set period of time. However, their manufacture is substantially more expensive, in particular if the self-destruction is to be reliably guaranteed. The latest version is a US invention: Mines that hop away when they are to be removed and find themselves a new, free site. “I was so excited, that there was finally peace; my family and I hoped to return to a peaceful life. We did not want any war memories any more. On the long march home, my brother stepped on a mine and lost a foot. What did we do that something like this could happen to us? They had told me that now there was peace!” narrates Alice Simbane, a refugee from Mozambique in Zimbabwe to representatives of Africa Watch in December 1992.262 Henning Mankell, the Swedish writer who has been living in this African country for years and has been running the Teatro Avenida in the capital of Maputo since the eighties, also comments with impressive words on the occasion of the flood catastrophe: “How many landmines that have been buried in the soil of Mozambique until recently will be flushed out? One million? Two? The water has carried away the topsoil. Mines that previously were buried in a safe depth, are now dangerously close to the surface and the feet of humans. Streets that were considered safe will again be torn open by exploding mines.”263 Strange marginal remark: Way more animals are victims of landmines every year than human beings, twenty elephants in Sri Lanka alone; in the Northwest of Ruanda, where the last one hundred and fifty mountain gorillas live, twenty year old silver back Mkono, among others; between 1991 and 1995 in Croatia fifty-seven of the about four hundred last brown bears still living there. Gazelles (Libya), snow leopards (IndianChinese border area), buffalo and antelopes – no living being is safe from mines.

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From Farmhouse to Fame When a young woman on her way to work leaves the subway in Washington D.C. in 1981, somebody presses a flyer into her hand which invites to attend an event on the involvement of the USA in the civil war in El Salvador. This is the start of a career as peace activist that has found its temporary peak in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1997.

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At that time, Jody Williams, as the young woman from Vermont is called, works as a secretary for a temporary office help company in the US capital. For quite some time, she has been interested in social matters. At an early age she experienced what injustice means when she saw how school pals harassed her handicapped brother. Her mother came down with measles during the first three months of her pregnancy with Stephen and he was born deaf. Later, he became “difficult” and violent. It takes thirty years before the young man is diagnosed with schizophrenia. These difficult times and her brother’s hard fate hone her sense for every type of injustice: “I get very upset when a strong person is mean to a weak one” – a characteristic she shares with many Vermonters. In this State with about six hundred thousand inhabitants, there are three hundred basic activist groups. After reading the flyer, Jody begins to cooperate with various Human Rights campaigns in Central America which intend to change US policy in these regions. She works on a medical aid project for El Salvador, teaches English as a second language in Mexico, is co-coordinator of the Nicaragua-Honduras training project and leads several delegations gathering information on site in those countries. A call from Robert Muller, President of the Foundation of Vietnam Veterans in the fall of 1991 focuses her attention on a new topic, namely the devastating destructive power of landmines, long after the parties in the conflict have set their signatures on the peace treaty. Bobby Muller and his comrades want to do more than merely provide prostheses for the victims of mines. It is their objective to convince governments that the mines have to be cleared away before they can release their destructive force and maim innocent people. The acquaintance of Jody and Robert results in an exemplary campaign which soon has more than one thousand member organizations and which brings about a momentous change in the fight against landmines in a minimum of time (less than six years). The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) achieves

JODY WILLIAMS / PEACE WOMEN

a highly motivating partial victory in its first year of existence: the Democrat senator Patrick Leahy passes a bill that bans the export of US landmines.

Persuasion work When she hears the news of the Nobel Peace Prize which has been awarded in equal parts to her and the ICBL one day after her birthday, Jody Williams spontaneously comments that she would like nothing better than to take up the phone and call President Clinton. Clinton is said to be an advocate of the campaign, but he was unable to have the USA ratify the treaty to ban landmines. Even Boris Yelzin got carried away and stated on the day of the Nobel Prize announcement that Russia would sign the treaty – which has not happened so far. Jody Williams is untiring in her efforts to persuade people of her vision of a mine-free world. For instance in South Korea to which she appeals on a trip to the Olympic Summer Games that the country join the Ottawa Convention. Mines were not necessary for national security. The same as the USA, South Korea has refused to sign the agreement for a long time. The government alleges that mines are necessary to secure its borders to Communist North Korea with which it is still at war after the war of 1953. Some tender hope arises: According to Human Rights Watch, members of the Seoul government in conversations with Jody Williams hint at the possibility that South Korea might join the treaty some day. In response, the resolute fighter asks that South Korea publish a clear time schedule for signature if this statement was to be taken seriously. Russia and China also allege security concerns. The innumerable rebel groups in regional conflicts do not set forth any reasons at all. They use landmines wherever they can; for them, it is the cheapest and most destructive weapon. Jody Williams does not mince her words either vis-à-vis her own country. At every possible opportunity – and as a Nobel laureate she gets many of them – she points out that the USA is one of the last large powers not to have ratified the treaty of Ottawa. Neither does she shrink from naming nations that have accepted the treaty but are violating it repeatedly. Angola, for instance, is one of the one hundred and thirty contracting states, but continues to use mines; similar suspicious facts exist against Burundi and Sudan. Time and again, Williams refers to the shocking

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numbers hiding sickening fates: China stores close to one hundred and ten million mines, Russia sixty to seventy millions; in Bosnia and Croatia there are between one and two million live landmines. In Afghanistan, one of the most thoroughly mined countries of the world, eight of ten injured victims bleed to death before they receive medical help. In almost forty percent of the cases of mine victims recorded by the ICRC in 1991 and 1992, both legs had to be amputated. No country has as many amputees caused by mine accidents as Cambodia – about four thousand, or one of every two hundred and forty inhabitants. These weapons are cowardly and perfidious; some experts cynically call them “the world’s cheapest soldiers.” Mines need neither food nor sleep, nor do they claim any pay. The days from December 3 to 5, 1997 must have been especially exciting for Jody Williams. The nations prepared to sign the treaty are meeting in Ottawa. By signing, the heads of the delegations certify that they will destroy their stockpiles of landmines within four years, that they will clear mined areas within ten years, that they will no longer produce and/ or export mines, and that they will present a yearly report on the number of the remaining mines and the measures to destroy them. Jody and her comrades-at-arms are richly rewarded: One hundred and thirty nations sign, sixty of them ratify the treaty. In a speech immediately prior to the signing ceremony she says: “The course of history has been reversed; it is to be noted that we are also a superpower – a new form of superpower…”

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Appeals to the public conscience The partisans of the elimination of mines get an enormous boost of attention by the media-effective appearances of Diana Princess of Wales: In Angola, equipped like a professional minesweeper, and in Bosnia. This attention is necessary because: “People have this idea that mine fields are fenced in with barbed wire, as they know them from movies on the Second World War. But this is not so,” explains Jody Williams. “Mines are laid where the population moves, near waterholes, along river banks, in the fields. It is totally unrealistic to assume that people will stay away from these places.”264 Often, the mines are no longer used for military purposes but to sow terror among the civilians and to destroy the social and economic structure of entire regions long term. Mine wars are “dirty” because they always hit the weakest who are exposed to the “small eggs” lying in wait under the surface, not to be