Women Leading for Peaceful Societies: A Recap of The Carter Center’s 2015 Human Rights Defenders Forum

From: https://www.facebook.com/cartercenter

The Carter Center convened the second Human Rights Defenders Forum (HDRF): “Beyond Violence: Women Leading for Peaceful Societies” on February 7-10, 2015. This annual forum presents itself as an “opportunity for leading human rights activists to raise and amplify their individual and collective voices on key issues in an international space.” More than 60 academics, human rights defenders and religious leaders gathered to discuss pertinent issues such as inclusive leadership, confronting violence against women and girls, and women leading to prevent and resolve violent conflict. This year’s distinguished array of participants included Bineta Diop, Special Envoy for Women, Peace and Security for the African Union; Dr. Alaa Murabit, Voice of Libyan Women; Wai Wai Nu, former political prisoner and founder of the Women’s Peace Network in Myanmar; and former extremist-turned-undercover counterterrorism operative, Mubin Shaikh.

Participants met in closed working group sessions during the first two days of the conference to deliberate drivers of conflict and violent extremism, best practices for transforming those drivers, and threats and challenges to successfully engendering peace. Many participants noted the effect of structural injustice, ingrained in institutional power relations, in fostering environments primed for violent extremism. Forum attendees also identified gender inequality, dearth of educational opportunities, lack of legal mechanisms to resolve disputes nonviolently, and human needs not being met, as specific drivers of violent extremism.

To create a peaceful society, participants recognized the benefit of addressing multiple drivers of violence simultaneously. Proposed actions included:

• Creating additional space for dialogue among stakeholders;
• Documenting and disseminating stories of violence shared by survivors;
• Framing human rights language within cultural and religious contexts so that the concepts resonate with diverse audiences;
• Providing training for the disempowered so that they could more effectively advocate for their rights;
• Instituting early education on human rights through a participatory pedagogy that empowers communities and individuals;
• Working with local NGOs who are trusted within their communities;
• Moving away from language that demonizes certain groups as a whole; and
• Meaningfully engaging female participation in efforts to counter violence.

From: https://www.facebook.com/cartercenter

Speakers at the public event included former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who began his remarks by acknowledging that gender-based violence is closer to home than many realize. President Carter reported that 60,000 people are living in bondage in the United States today and that Atlanta, where the forum took place, is a global hub for sex trafficking. U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also addressed the forum, discussing how the United States fails to protect and empower women and girls. She raised the timely example of bias surrounding rape in the military and on college campuses, noting that “institutions will protect the favored, not the survivor,” and also criticized the U.S. for not institutionalizing equal pay for equal work. Another forum participant admonished the United States for being one of the few countries – along with Somalia, Iran, and Sudan – that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

From: https://www.facebook.com/cartercenter

Gaynel Curry, the Gender and Women’s Rights Advisor of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), highlighted a challenge that has been on the forefront of advocates’ minds for the past decade: We have a strong international legal framework on women’s rights, but the challenge is, how do we implement this framework? Curry was hopeful that the upcoming review process for UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which seeks to increase women’s participation in peacebuilding and protect women from sexual violence, could be informed by this forum’s findings. Conference attendees resoundingly agreed that women’s participation and protection are paramount, warning, “If you’re not at the [peace] table, you end up on the menu” and “where there is impunity there will be continued violence.”

From: https://www.facebook.com/cartercenter

To continue this dialogue, the Carter Center launched The Forum on Women, Religion, Violence and Power at this year’s conference. This platform will serve as a safe medium for continued collaboration and consultation to promote equality for women everywhere and foster solutions for peaceful societies. As one participant fervently proclaimed, “Women cannot wait for change…we’ve waited for centuries. We need to push for it.”

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Ashley Binetti is the 2014-2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton Law Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 2014, specializing in human rights and transnational law.

An Interview with May Sabe Phyu, Women’s Activist in Myanmar

May Sabe Phyu, or Phyu Phyu as she is affectionately known, is a devoted advocate for women’s empowerment and peacebuilding in Myanmar.

She is a Director for the Gender Equality Network in Myanmar. In this role, Phyu Phyu facilitates dialogue between civil society, government stakeholders and parliamentarians through meetings and workshops on gender equality as a means of shifting policy.

When asked how she became an activist, Phyu Phyu said, “It’s a good question! I started my career as a humanitarian worker, a social worker.” She worked to provide care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS for more than 10 years. She states that before she considered herself an activist, she was “just an ordinary mother and housewife doing social work serving [her] own community.”

She cites watching the documentary film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” as being a transformational experience. “This really made me change – it made me think and reflect on our situation for women [in Myanmar]. It made me want to work on women, peace and security issues.”

Phyu Phyu co-founded the Kachin Peace Network and the Kachin Women Peace Network to work toward inter-ethnic cooperation. She has worked to prioritize the needs of women through these networks, specifically focusing on security and protection issues, while advocating for greater inclusion of women in peace processes in Myanmar.

She states “the topic of gender was very sensitive in our country before.” But due to the progress made in the country and the efforts of the Gender Equality Network and others, groups working on issues related to gender are able to do so with less stigma. This allows the Network to advocate for policies in support of women’s rights.

For Phyu Phyu, making a difference in her own community was a key motivation for becoming an activist. “What made me become an activist was [wanting to] reduce conflict in Kachin State.” She notes that before she got involved, she thought of politics as dirty. “Politics seemed like a man’s game – like it has nothing to do with us women. But politics itself is not dirty at all. It is because of the people who are involved in the politics – they make politics seem dirty.”

As she got more involved, she realized that “outside of Yangon, they don’t have any idea what’s really happening in Kachin state.” She wanted to play a role in working to raise awareness about the needs of women and girls and the people of Kachin state, “otherwise our people will suffer violently.”

Phyu Phyu played an essential role in developing the country’s National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women. She says that prior to working on the Strategic Plan, there was no trust built between the civil society groups and the government. “Developing the National Strategic Plan was a starting point for seeing how we can work together.” They are now working to draft Myanmar’s first law on violence against women. “It will be the first law protecting women from different kinds of violence in our country. It will be a kind of model process for how government can involve civil society.”

Phyu Phyu shares that the process has not been quite so seamless for the Kachin Peace Network. “Because of the long conflict in Kachin State and the long suffering of the Kachin people, trust has been broken. There’s a lot of inter-ethnic tension for the Burmese people.”

An important piece of this work to build trust has been documenting the advocacy that is taking place. “We brought a lot of media with us for this peace advocacy trips so that the media can record and document the real situation on the ground.”

Phyu Phyu has also been working to advocate for the rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar. She says, “nearly half of the IDPs are in government-controlled areas and 50 percent are living under Kachin ethnic arms groups controlled areas. The difficulties and living conditions of those two areas are quite different.” She also noted the challenges for IDPs along the China border. She states, “the camps along the China border are not government-controlled, and there’s very little humanitarian assistance from the international community…they are running with very limited resources.”

The Kachin Women Peace Network worked with the Gender Equality Network to conduct an assessment of 17 camps and the specific needs of women living in those camps. “There are a lot of issues that are not addressed and are not getting any attention from humanitarian actors. Women have to live in tents with no privacy. Violence happens in the camps with no reporting mechanism. And there is no separated latrine or water source. There are a lot of women-specific issues there.”

Phyu Phyu has also been an advocate against the Interfaith Marriage Bill in Myanmar, which would impose restrictions on inter-faith marriages. If passed, the bill would require Buddhist women to seek permission from authorities before marrying outside their faith. “A few women leaders released the very first statement against the Interfaith Marriage Bill. We gather frequently and discuss how to address it before we submit it to the parliament.” She and other women’s rights activists have been vocal in their opposition of the bill because it limits women’s rights to make decisions.

The leaders of the 97 women’s and civil society groups who released a statement opposing this bill started receiving death threats and sexual harassment threats as a result of their advocacy. Despite these threats, 166 civil society groups have joined the coalition. Phyu Phyu also helped to organize a variety of workshops outlining reasons for opposing the Interfaith Marriage Bill, and these workshops included groups like the UN and international nongovernmental organizations.

She stresses the importance of including these groups, noting, “Without the international community’s support, we are under threat…we do not have any protection.” She also acknowledges the need to include the media in these workshops and in the movement. She credits the movement with positive outcomes for this Bill. “We strongly believe that, because of our movement and our mobilization…we may delay the process of the Interfaith Marriage Bill.”

In September 2012, Phyu Phyu was charged during a peaceful demonstration calling for an end to civil war in Myanmar. Over the 14 months that followed those charges, she and her fellow co-organizer made 124 appearances in six courts before their charges were dismissed under presidential amnesty. She says, “being charged in six different courts for peaceful demonstration has made us real activists.”

For Phyu Phyu, women’s rights and peace in Myanmar are intertwined. When asked how she defines peace and security, Phyu Phyu says, “To me, peace is equality and justice. If there is no equality and justice, there will not be peace. When I say equality, it’s across everything – it’s across women and men, it’s ethnic and religious differences, it’s across nationality – if we are able to live equally in our society with fairness and justice, this is what we call a peaceful society.”

Aha Moments: Feminism and Faith

Originally posted in Huffington Post here.

It was a puzzle: intellectual discussions about theological matters rarely engaged issues centered on women, while feminist discussions skirted spiritual dimensions of women’s lives. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary, found faith and feminism intertwined in her own life but sharply segregated in her professional encounters. An “aha” moment came during an encounter with Egyptian women activists (who on the surface were not especially religious). Rocky communications were explained in good measure by the fact that for the Egyptians the whole area of religion affected everything they did, while for their North American counterparts, religious dimensions were completely absent from the conversation. Meaningful communication was impossible without appreciating how far religion and women’s daily lives and thus faith and feminism were linked.

Serene’s realization points to an urgent need to find ways to bridge these divides, whether it is to understand better the way that the world’s poorest women see the daily challenges that face them, or to support an American college student’s reflections about her future work and family life.

The beginnings of the feminist movement in the US were led by faith communities. Today, however, faith and feminism often seem to be in opposition. Several religious figures are prominent denigrators of feminism, seeing an assault on age-old values that honor families and hold them together. Meanwhile a religiously inspired passion for equality and care is often behind women’s struggles for equal rights. But many feminists are wary even of speaking about religion because they perceive religious values and teachings as holding back women’s progress or turning a blind eye to or even condoning egregious abuse within a family setting. Women are acknowledged as the backbone of religious institutions and the earliest stories they tell their children often draw on their faith traditions. But women’s roles and leadership are often invisible in the ranks of formal religious leadership. “Culture wars” come back again and again to relationships between men and women or, sadly, center on women as objects to be controlled.

Modern social norms are shifting, nowhere more prominently than in expectations about gender roles. Religious beliefs and practices are an important part of how these norms and expectations are shaped. This is most obvious in the public square but it is also important in private spheres, especially in families, where religious beliefs can shape gender dynamics in many ways, some readily apparent (like beliefs in differing gender roles or the relative importance of education for girls and boys), some much less so, for example the impact of stories with subservient female roles that echo religious traditions and beliefs. What’s needed, urgently, is a thoughtful conversation about how faith and feminism are linked. It needs to honor and respects feminism’s central commitment to true equal rights and women’s spiritual heritage and commitment to their central religious values.

Exploring the tensions, complementarities, and puzzles in private realms where men and women interact demands that we unpack important social challenges. This weekend actress and UN Ambassador Emma Watson gave a powerful speech at the United Nations. Her challenge: “If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.” Where do religious teachings address or inform these issues? Surely they play a large part. Jill Lepore in the New Yorker explores the journey of Wonder Woman (an early feminist icon since she was born in 1941), as the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the woman-suffrage campaigns of the 1910s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later. Religion does not appear in the article but the reflections about backlash and politics around feminism highlight how much the issues matter and their deep complexity. Religion is a silent part of Lepore’s story.

Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the World Faiths Development Dialogue WFDD (which I lead) have launched an exploration of pressing issues where faith and gender intersect. We are looking primarily at the private realm, above all within families, across different cultures and religious traditions. We have found perspectives that range from pretty radical reinterpretation of traditional teachings to views that celebrate the lasting strength and insight in a religious heritage. The first step was to seek thought pieces, hopefully setting out both provocative views and reflections about paths we should pursue. Essays and interviews are online and we welcome comments. This is a continuing conversation and next steps will include discussions of the key topics that emerge.

And a conference on September 24 in Washington DC was cosponsored by the new web magazine altFem (from the founders of altMuslimah.com and altCatholicah.com), the Berkley Center, and WFDD.

Feminism and faith should be allies, not enemies. And contrary to many current conversations they are linked in important ways: both part of the problem and part of the solution. Feminism is commonly misunderstood as anti-men, anti-religion, and anti-family. That’s far from the spirit and the truth of the matter. Feminists care deeply about families even as they seek to understand or redefine family values so that they are consistent with a robust understanding of equal rights. For many women, faith gives meaning to life and strength to confront its challenges and savor its joys and women’s religiosity is too often ignored. In many parts of the world it seems downright odd that the two topics are so separate, since culture and religious heritage and wisdom are an integral to many people’s experience. The “aha” challenge is to find ways to engage different perspectives in ways that avoid the sting of preconceived and denigrating views and offer ways to build on positive visions of a world where equality is a reality.

Katherine Marshall is a faculty adviser to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and a Senior Fellow for Georgetown’s Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.