Bangkok, October 28, 1999 -- International Alert, the human rights organisation based in London, is on the campaign trail once again - this time highlighting the issues of women and armed conflict and promoting the need as much for women's role in peacekeeping as for peace per se.
International Alert hopes to urge the United Nations Security Council to place these issues on the agenda for its next session. Towards this, it has begun mobilising women's organisations to launch a signature and awareness building campaign from the grassroots up. The Intergovernmental Asia-Pacific Meeting to review the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, organised by the Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific, offered the London-based organisation one such venue.
The venue also found a number of non-government organisations (NGOs) as well as some government delegates voicing concerns regarding the threat of armed conflict throughout the region.
South Asian NGOs presented a resolution which named the threat of armed conflict, development of nuclear capacity in the region and increased defence spending by their governments as an area of special concern. Alongside, NGOs from Southeast Asia expressed concern at the foreign military bases and the threat these present to the community, and especially to women. All highlighted the disastrous effects of the growing religious fundamentalism and ethnic strife on women through the region.
Governments of the Pacific islands also called on an end to nuclear capacity, and ratification by ESCAP member-countries of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Both at the July meeting of South Asian NGOs, organised by the Beyond Beijing Committee in Kathmandu, as well at the October Women for Peace meeting organised in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by UNIFEM with local NGOs, women's organisations pledged to form a South Asian network of women for peace. One of the primary tasks to be taken up is initiating an information-sharing system.
At the ESCAP meet, International Alert appealed to NGOs to take up the campaign, identify focal points, and propose concrete local issues. The broad focus of the campaign will be on cross-border as well as internal armed conflict, arising from these, the particular situation of widows, and internal displacement.
The campaign will demand an end to impunity for war crimes against women, and a commitment to increasing the role of women in peacekeeping exercises - with capacity building measures for this.
International Alert plans also to appeal to the Republic of Slovenia, which will be presiding over the next session of the Security Council, to raise the issue and support its concerns.
If the campaign is successful, an item on women in armed conflict would also be tabled at the September 2000 session of the United Nations General Assembly - the 'Millennium Assembly'. International Alert also hopes to win the support of the European Union for its campaign.
International Alert will depend on its mass signature campaign to impress on the urgency of the issues upon the UN.
Not for nothing is the campaign titled 'From Village Council to the Negotiating Table.'
* The Women's Media team for the High-level Intergovernmental Meeting to Review the Beijing Platform for Action in Asia and the Pacific is composed of Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Lorna Israel, Isis International-Manila; Suchita Vemuri, Women's Features Service; Babita Basnet, Sancharika Samuha-Nepal ; Adelle Khan, Fiji Women's Crisis Centre; Ung Vanna, Khmer Women's Voice Centre; Lim Siu Ching, All Women's Action Society-Malaysia; Fatmawati Salapuddin, Bangsa Moro Women and Development Foundation-Philippines; Rina Jimenez-David, Philippines; Chitraporn Vanaspong, Thailand. The women's media team is supported by UNIFEM.
