North East Pasage

Original Source:http://www.womensurvivorsnetwork.org/articles.php?event=det&id=89&page=1


A campaign aims to correct a grievous omission in school textbooks - the near exclusion of the history of the North-East.

Binalakshmi Nepram, a 30-something activist from Manipur has traded guns for history. A noted disarmament activist (Nepram is the founder of the 'Manipur Women Gun Survivor Network' and convenor of the 'North-East India Women Initiative for Peace' ) she is presently canvassing the cause of the history of the North-East, which she feels isn't adequately represented in school and university textbooks across the country.

"Every child in India who goes to school knows about the Rani of Jhansi. Why not about the people from the eight states of the northeast who too did something worthwhile to be read about in school books? In our syllabus, the North-East is reduced to only trivia like Cherrapunji is one of the wettest places on earth, " she says, with some resentment.

Like so many other youth from the region Nepram went to college in the capital in the 1990s. She studied history at Delhi University (a bachelors and then a masters) but pursued it with some indignation - mostly because the history of her part of the country didn't manage even a chapter in her five years of study. "It surprised and even angered me. I confronted one of my professors, the renowned Sumit Sarkar, and he apologised on behalf of the entire fraternity for this miss, which was shocking to my mind, " she says.

But she was able to take up the issue only a yearand-a-half ago, and with a few like-minded friends from the region, founded the campaign called 'Weaving Histories of North-East India'. Much background research has been followed up by talks with local historians about the need for incorporating the region's history into mainstream Indian textbooks. "We have approached all those bodies that make school syllabus because that's where the change has to begin first, " says Nepram. The group has had meetings with the NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training), the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) and the ICHR (Indian Council for Historical Research). "We've also met Shashi Tharoor, the minister of state for human resources development, as his ministry is the final authority in approving any changes in the syllabus, " she elaborates, adding that she was greeted with positive responses.

While the CBSE has told them that it was already beginning to rectify its online courses, the NCERT has asked them to prepare suggestions for inclusion in mainstream textbooks by 2015, when it is likely to meet to evaluate school syllabi.

However, the NCERT's response to TOI-Crest is different. MVSV Prasad, of the NCERT's Department of Education in Social Sciences states that, "No specific proposal was sought from any particular group. However, NCERT takes account of representations, suggestions and feedback from various sources as and when the current syllabus and textbooks are revised. During the processes of designing curriculum and developing syllabi and textbooks, the concerned committees consider various issues that are to be incorporated at different levels. "

He adds, "It is unfair to say that the North-East has been ignored from our textbooks. Indeed, the latest NCERT textbooks, developed during 2006-2008, have made extensive references to the region. " Prasad also points out that the NCERT has to focus on the entire nation when developing textbooks. "The North-East region may be eight states but they make up only 4 per cent of the population of the country whereas the region's coverage in the textbooks - not just history but across subjects - is about 10 per cent. However, that doesn't imply that we can't have further coverage. "

It's such 'further coverage' that could pacify ruffled feathers on the subject. Priyam Goswami, a professor of history at Gauhati University and honorary director of the Northeast chapter of ICHR says, "Most of the historical references right now are Brahmaputra Valley-centric. Yet the region is not one homogeneous whole but highly diverse. At places where we can't have whole chapters, we could incorporate the history of the region in a way we do for South India. Since I'm from Assam I could point out certain instances of Assamese history that could be mentioned - reference to Assam in epics, pauranic and tantrik literature;Muslim invasions of Assam in 1206, 1226 and 1257, all of which were repulsed;Buranji literature or the historical chronicles of Ahom rulers (who ruled here for six centuries ); Maidams which were vaults with chambers to bury Ahom kings and nobility;Sankardeva, a Vaishnavite saint/scholar/reformer who had a tremendous impact on Assam and so much more. " She adds that even college books on India's freedom struggle hardly make references to Assam, creating an assumption that the region was not involved at all.

Goswami, however, points out that the coverage of the North-East should not be restricted to just history but should extend to other subjects as well.

The NCERT counters by saying that many such references already exist and suggests that the exercise begin at the state level. "Besides, we get such grouses from all over the country. Whichever part of the country you go to they feel they have not been adequately represented. Certain districts too have similar complaints about not getting enough representation in the state books!"

Even as the debate about what makes for adequate representation goes on Nepram's group plods on with creating its proposal for the next NCERT meet, which may take place in 2015. "It's not a difficult task as we don't have to begin from scratch. There are quite a few good books only on the history of the region and along with the historians, we have to figure out what is important enough from each state to be given a national platform, " she says.

More tiresome for Nepram's team is, perhaps, handling detractors who, surprisingly, also hail from the same region. "I was shocked that instead of supporting us, some historians are actually decrying our work. Why do they then blame India (sic) for their problems when they themselves don't want any resolution?" she asks.
Some of her critics have even questioned the right of Nepram's team to undertake this exercise. "We are not historians, " she responds to her critics, adding, "we are only facilitating an exercise as a catalyst. "

Promoting Peace Through Art: Laajverd's workshops in Pakistan Schools

Original Source:http://www.insightonconflict.org/2013/07/pakistan-peace-schools/

Zahid Shahab Ahmed shares his insights on Laajverd’s peacebuilding work in Pakistan. Laajverd is a group of young artists who run awareness raising projects and promote peace using art and culture.

In the last week of January 2013, I visited some members of the youth organisationLaajverd, to gain an insight into their peacebuilding activities in Pakistan. Laajverd is a group of young artists who run awareness raising projects and promote peace using art and culture.

The war on terror has significantly changed the lives of the people in the area Laajverd works, but cultural activities can help heal their wounds, according to the organanisation.

Their initiatives bring people together and help them make sense of the society they live in. Terrorist attacks are frequent in this area and children talk often about war, drone attacks, blasts and killings.

Laajverd is trying to develop an alternative, creative discourse around this context and it is making children reflect on their own environment and society.

How Laajverd works

I first met a team of three passionate artists – Zahra, Fatima and Abdullah -, who were holding a four-day workshop at the Vanguard School in Lohari Gate, a private school in Old Lahore. They were working with a group of nine children aged between eight and ten years old.

During the workshop, the pupils shared their experiences about the conflict affecting their neighbourhood, reporting stories of crime, terrorism, drone attacks, collapsing buildings, and more. They learned how to communicate these stories through drawing and acting. By the end of January, over 100 children had participated in the Laajverd workshops in Lahore.

I also visited Sanjan Nagar School, where Laajverd’s artists conducted a ten-day workshop as part of the school’s summer programme. The participants were 20 students, from grade four to six. The workshop had an interesting focus on photojournalism and the children were given digital cameras to capture their surroundings.

Laajverd also runs the Bacha Bulletin project, funded by the Commonwealth Foundation under its Culture and Conflict programme. The aim of this innovative project is to bridge the communication gap between the younger and older generations, by promoting a culture of storytelling. Young people are invited to share their stories through the Bacha Bulletin, which is published in a local newspaper, the Express Tribune.

In the video below, Zahra and Fatima talk in depth about Laajverd and highlight one of the successful stories of their organisation.

The first project Laajverd launched with children involved creating a series of comics. Children were shown photos of their local area and they were invited to imagine stories, characters and scenarios. Laajverd artists then drew the comic strips and posted copies in the area where the children lived.

Laajverd also organises Chai tea sessions with children, inviting them to gather and share stories. Storytelling is an important aspect of South Asian culture but it is usually the elders who tell children stories from their past. For this reason the young participants were really keen to share their stories too and they were curious about the project.

Laajvers also worked in a school in Saidpur Village, a tourist area in Islamadad. Here they addressed some local issues, such as the impact of tourism on the traditional culture. During the workshops, run over ten Sundays, children turned into tourist guides. In this way, the pupils learned about the history and culture of their village, while tourists had the opportunity to listen to local stories.

Challenges facing Laajverd’s work

A major challenge was designing workshops where children were asked to use their imagination through theatre. In some schools the Laajverd team had to do only two exercises, while in others, where children were used to a more traditional and authoritarian way of teaching, the team did nine theatre exercises to achieve the same outcome.

Another challenge was the time allowed for the project, as in most of the schools Laajverd could only run only two-hour workshops. The team felt that the time was not enough to fully engage with the children, to build a relationship with them, and teach them drawing techniques.

Finally, another improvement could be the inclusion of the teachers in the project and the organisation of some training for them too. In one of the six schools, the teachers were interested in replicating the workshop and implementing the Laajverd model. Although the team is not sure about the future of this project, they are considering spending some time with the teachers in each school.

In conclusion, this case study of Laajverd highlights the importance of using culture and art as a tool to build sustainable peace. Projects like these should be encouraged and promoted.

The Plight of the Female Refugees: Breaking Barriers

Original Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/senator-mobina-jaffer/female-refugee_b_3806308.html

We have learned from Bebe that the spirit of female refugees all over the world is unwavering. Every day more than 7.3 million women live and work, regardless of setbacks, to provide for their families. Women, who like all people, want nothing more than to have a better life for themselves and for those they love.

It is women like Bebe who would thrive, given the opportunity to do so. So why is it that although more than 48% of refugees are women, compared to their male counterparts, refugee women have not been engaged in the refugee resettlement process in countries like Canada? It was not until the last decade that refugee women and children even began to be considered refugees in their own right, as opposed to only part of a "family package." Gender considerations, including the possibility that women might be especially at risk, are relatively new.

In March 1993, Canada became the first country in the world to introduce a comprehensive set of guidelines on the inclusion of gender as a "social group" under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Guidelines, which became effective November 1996, allow for an interpretation of the refugee definition in a way that incorporates gender-related claims of refugee women and stand today as an example for other countries addressing this issue.

While this is an immense accomplishment for our nation, it is not the end of the story for female refugees like Bebe who continue to struggle in many areas of the world. Many barriers persist which make it difficult for female refugees to resettle in safe countries - countries like Canada. Restricted access to the funds needed to complete the refugee application process, limited mobility especially where female refugees are also mothers accounting for their children, minimal education and language skills, as well as an inability to recount traumatic experiences for religious, cultural, or personal reasons in an interview setting are all factors which make it difficult for female refugees to become involved in the refugee determination process.

The vast majority of those who flee do not choose to willingly live under burlap tents or behind barbed-wire fences, unless they are fleeing for their safety. Women who flee do so to escape bombardments, inevitable starvation, and widespread oppression. We cannot allow barriers in the Canadian refugee system to deny many women and young girls the chance of living a life free of conflict and fear.

Syria’s Women Face Violence, ‘Survival Sex’ Abroad

Original Source:http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/07/24/syria-s-female-refugees-turn-to-prostitution-forced-marriages-to-survive.html

They have escaped one war only to find themselves as casualties and combatants in another—a conflict waged against them less publicly and not with bullets or missiles. The weapons employed are sexual harassment and abuse, domestic violence, and the exploitation by the unscrupulous of economic distress, forcing some to agree to prostitution, others to sell off teenage daughters as child brides.
For many Syrian women who have sought sanctuary in neighboring Lebanon from a civil war that has left an estimated 100,000 dead since the conflict started in March 2011, their refuge is laden with new menace and suffering—compounding their grief over the deaths of family or friends or their depression at the loss of homes. Even within their families there’s sometimes no safety, with jobless husbands frustrated with the stress and indignity of living as refugees lashing out, beating wives and hitting kids.
Maryam, a 31-year-old mother of five from Damascus, says she’s afraid the whole time and living in fear in Lebanon. She says there’s no safety for her. Outside the three-room apartment that she and her husband and children share with another six relatives there’s virtual nonstop sexual harassment, she says—from mild forms of uninvited verbal flirtation to groping and forceful demands for sexual favors by storeowners or officials. And even male aid workers aren’t beyond wanting to trade sex for help.
A divorced relative, a mother of two kids, experienced that recently, says Maryam. “One of the men at an NGO told her that if you accept to sleep with me, if we can have a sexual relations, every time I have any kind of access to assistance, it will be yours. It will have your name on it.”
Inside the overcrowded apartment there’s little relief either. As she talked, Maryam frequently wrung her hands. “My relationship with me and my husband has changed a lot since we arrived in Lebanon. Because of all of this stress and fearful situations we are living in. My husband never used to hit any of the children now he’ll hit them, he’ll scream at me, shout at me,” she said during an interview at a community center that The Daily Beast was asked not to identify, to protect the identities of the women seeking help there.
Over three quarters of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are women and children, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and they make up a population that is highly vulnerable to exploitation and becoming more so as the refugee influx into Lebanon increases, straining the resources of the international and Lebanese aid community. Just over 600,000 refugees have registered with the U.N., but the Lebanese government estimates there are more than a million Syrian refugees now—a 25 percent growth in Lebanon’s population. Another million are predicted by year’s end.
Sixteen-year-old Ishtar is one of the casualties in what many social workers see as a war on women. She fled the Syrian town of Homs along with her mother and older sister last December after the death of her car-mechanic father, who was killed in an airstrike. She and her sister have been begging in the upscale Beirut districts of Hamra and Verdun to supplement what charity they scratch together from NGOs. In the last few weeks both have succumbed to the aggressive sexual harassment they encounter daily on the streets and in desperation for cash engaged in what aid workers describe as survival sex.
Ishtar, a frail thing, made further waif-like in her black hijab and jilbab, says most of the men have treated her roughly in hurried encounters in cars, abandoned buildings or in wastelands surrounding the city. Most men don’t use a condom and she confides she averages about half-a-dozen men a week. They pay her about $20 or $30. (Social workers say prices are even lower outside Beirut and in parts of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley women are selling themselves for as little as $7.)
“They treat me like an animal,” she says through a Lebanese translator. “But then that is what I have become.” She flashes through different emotions—defiance, anger, and shame—as she justifies, as much to herself as to me, what she’s doing.
“There is a big problem of prostitution,” says Rima ZaaZaa of the Lebanese NGO Tadamun wa Tanmia (Solidarity and Development), who’s helping abused women. “There are certain group shelters that are known for prostitution. It is a final resort for some women. You have to look at it from the human side—I am not justifying it, but when the people are lacking the minimum standards of living what are they meant to do?”

“Reported cases of child-bride marriages, prostitution, sexual abuse, and gender-based violence are the tip of a large iceberg. We are seeing every kind of case.”

Syrian women have become prey, says Maryam: “A Lebanese neighbor told me, ‘You Syrian women and girls are tempting the men here in Lebanon and you are making these temptations and seductions for them.’ I told her that the men are approaching us. They are making use of the crisis and the bad conditions we are living in.”
That is why Ala, a 26-year-old mother of three small children, says she prefers to avoid mingling. “I try to keep myself separate, to stay in the apartment as much as possible and not to mingle. It makes me feel safer.” Although like Maryam there are dangers at home too; her husband also has become aggressive with her. “I can say our lives have changed a lot.”
Could she persuade him to go to counseling, if there were opportunities available? She laughs wryly. “I wouldn’t dare to do this, even if I want to, I wouldn’t dare. He would say, ‘I am the man. I know what is right and what is wrong.”
The dangers faced by Syrian refugee women and children in Jordan—from rape, and kidnapping to forced prostitution to sham marriages of underage girls to wealthy Gulf Arabs—have been well documented by the international media. In Jordan most refugees are housed in large camps—115,000 alone at the Zaatari camp, making it Jordan’s fifth-largest city—and digging out the abuse that women and young girls are enduring is in some ways easier, since it is more visible.
In Lebanon the government has refused to allow the building of camps. Refugees are scattered throughout the country—the biggest concentrations are in the Bekaa Valley and northern Lebanon—living where they can in shabby rental accommodation, makeshift shelters, and abandoned and incomplete buildings often without doors, windows and with no privacy. They pay exorbitant rents for over-crowded shelter. Some live with Lebanese relatives, but only a small proportion.
Widespread dispersal along with a shortage of funds and staff makes it harder for aid agencies and social-welfare NGOs to monitor what’s happening to refugee women, to detect abuse and to offer solutions except to a lucky few, according to Emmanuelle Compingt of the UNHCR, who is overseeing a coordination effort between the U.N. agency and 22 partner NGOs on sexual and gender-based violence. “I think reported cases of child-bride marriages, prostitution, sexual abuse, and gender-based violence are the tip of a large iceberg,” she says. “We are seeing every kind of case.”
While confirmed statistics are in short supply, anecdotal data isn’t. All the NGOs are reporting rising trends when it comes to the marrying-off of young girls, survival sex, rapes and sexual abuse and violence toward women within families by husbands or other male relatives. There are about 50 community centers and 20 safe-space facilities catering for women around the country and all are dealing with more cases than they can handle.
Naysayers about claims of widespread abuse of Syrian refugee women dismiss reports of rising prostitution, for example, or widespread sexual harassment as over-egged, claiming there are isolated cases. Raise the subject of prostitution or survival sex with the authorities and they immediately talk about the trafficking of women, saying there’s little evidence of extensive trafficking, pointing to figures from the Internal Security Forces showing there were 27 trafficked women in 2011 with exactly the same number reported last year.
The UNHCR’s Compingt thinks they are missing the point and that forced prostitution doesn’t necessarily mean women are being trafficked—rather, she says they are being forced by their desperate circumstances to resort to selling their bodies, and men are happy to exploit their plight. “The women may be on one level willing but it is a forced willingness. They are being exploited for everything—when trying to get jobs or accommodation or extra food for their families.”
They are unlikely to go to the ISF to lodge a complaint, says Compingt. “They are afraid to, ashamed.”
Most Syrian refugees remain tight-lipped about the problems they are facing—whether harassment from mainly Lebanese men or the violence or sexual abuse their husbands or male relatives may mete out to them. Conservative and traditional, they fear the taint or they worry about the Lebanese using it to heap ignominy on Syrians and to blame them.
“They are not accustomed to coming forward,” says women’s center director Rima ZaaZaa. “Of course it isn’t just Syrian women. We Arab women are not being raised to look out for ourselves. All the time we are raised to be submissive.” She says sometimes she gets depressed about the scale of the problems she perceives. But then she remembers what she is trying to achieve: “to provide the opportunities for women to think about themselves as human beings, who have needs, who have desires and who have rights that should be fulfilled.”

Women Refugees: The facts and statistics

Original Source:http://www.ivillage.co.uk/women-refugees-the-facts-and-statistics/80018

The following facts, supplied by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, illustrate the startling truth about the suffering of women
There are approximately 50 million uprooted people around the world - refugees who have sought safety in another country and people displaced within their own country. Between 75-80 per cent of them are women and children.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cares for 21.8 million of these people. Around half of them are women and girls.
The majority of people flee their homes because of war and the proportion of war victims who are civilians leaped in recent decades from five per cent to over 90 per cent of casualties. Eighty per cent of casualties by small arms are women and children, who far outnumber military casualties.
Domestic violence is the most widespread form of abuse against women, with between one quarter and one half of women having been abused by a partner. Only 44 countries specifically protect women against domestic violence.

 
Females are subjected to widespread sexual abuse. In Bosnia and Rwanda rape became a deliberate aim of war. More than 20,000 Muslim women were raped in Bosnia in a single year, 1992, and a great majority of the female survivors of Rwanda's 1994 genocide were assaulted.
One in five women worldwide are victims of rape, many by known attackers. Between 40-60 per cent of sexual assaults are committed against girls younger than 16.
More than 300,000 youngsters, many of them female refugees, are currently serving as child soldiers around the world. The girls are often forced into different forms of sexual slavery.
More than 16.4 million women today have HIV/AIDS and in the last few years the percentage of women infected has risen from 41 to 47 per cent of the affected population. In sub-Saharan Africa, teenage girls are five times more likely to be infected than boys.
The introduction of sex education and safety procedures can have dramatic results. In Uganda, the rates of sexual infection among educated women dropped by more than half between 1995 and 1997.
The majority of trafficked people are women, especially those bound for the world's sex industries. Females are particularly vulnerable to trafficking because many have little individual security, economic opportunity or property or land ownership. Many victims are kidnapped or sold into slavery by their own families.
An estimated 45,000 households in Rwanda are headed by children; 90 per cent of them girls.
An estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide, 70 per cent of them women, live in absolute poverty on less than $1 a day.

Refugee Women need sexual healthcare too

Original Source:http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/may/30/refugee-women-sexual-healthcare-lakshmi-puri

Lakshmi Puri, acting head of UN Women, says the organisation needs more funding if it is to build on its progress over the past two years. Photograph: Claudine Spera

Women and girls who have been displaced by conflict or disaster need to be offered the same sexual and reproductive healthcare available in other settings, the acting head of UN Women said on Wednesday.
Lakshmi Puri, who assumed temporary leadership of the organisation following the resignation of Michelle Bachelet in March, said women's right to access healthcare needed to be upheld "in all circumstances, in all settings, including for refugee[s]".
Family planning has been one of the three key themes of the Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur this week. Speakers have repeatedly highlighted the need for affordable, reliable, accessible services to satisfy the unmet need of more than 200 million women and girls in developing countries. But there has been little or no mention of ensuring family planning reaches women and girls in difficult settings, such as those in camps for refugees or internally displaced people (video).
According to the UN, at the beginning of 2012, more than 15 million people were registered as refugees globally. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said the number of people internally displaced by conflict, war or human rights abuses reached a record-high 28.8 million last year. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says refugees' demands for contraception should be met as soon as possible.
But a study of refugee camps in Djibouti, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia and Uganda – conducted in 2011 by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and the Women's Refugee Commission – found the use of contraceptives in camps was lower than in surrounding settlements. The report said more information about family planning should be made available to women in camps and called for a wider range of contraceptives to be offered.
An initiative expected to be launched on Thursday by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the UNFPA could boost family planning services among refugees and other hard-to-reach communities.
"You need to have accessible, affordable, sustainable, quality … sexual and reproductive health service delivery and this applies to women in refugee situations," Puri told the Guardian. "All three aspects of sexual and reproductive health-related services need to be provided – contraception, [the] maternal health aspect, and for sexually transmitted infections."
Women and girls can spend years in refugee camps. Access to family planning could reduce the need for other services. "In a refugee context, I think you need it to control the demand side," she said.
Family planning services are as much a priority provision in a refugee camp as any other services. "It's a human entitlement," she said.
Looking ahead to development after 2015, when the millennium development goals expire, Puri says UN Women has put forward a "prototype" of what should be included in a standalone gender equality goal – which she says "cannot but be there" in any new set of targets. Among the nine indicators included in a gender quality goal is one referencing the protection of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights, which would specifically include access to family planning services. Other indicators include prevention and protection against violence, reducing maternal mortality rates, and participation in all levels of decision-making.
A test of whether gender equality is considered a priority among the international community will be the publication on Friday of the UN high-level panel report, which is expected to contain illustrative goals that member states will either build on or reject over the coming 18 months.
"We've had MDG three and MDG five, which are off track, and effectively every other goals is a gender goal in some way. We have to carry all that forward into the new generation of development goals," says Puri.
The ability of UN Women to do its job to the full and drive progress on these issues is, she adds, affected by funding. UN Women was established two years ago as the world plunged deeper into economic crisis and donors began to shy away from committing funds to overseas development.
From the start, the agency has struggled for cash and has had to prove itself worthy of any money it has received. "We have been a child of hard times," says Puri.

Democratic Republic of Congo's Women hold key to lasting Peace

Original Source:http://allafrica.com/stories/201308210915.html


Women have suffered most as a result of conflict in DRC and the Great Lakes region - their voices must be heard
Not a week goes by without reports of fresh fighting in the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Violence and destruction have ravaged the Great Lakes region of Africa for two decades, claiming more than 5 million lives. Yet the situation rarely makes the headlines.
What strikes me is the lack of outrage and horror, particularly given the disproportionate impact the conflict is having on women and children. As I asked the UN security council last month, how can we accept a situation where rape and sexual violence - which, let us be clear, are war crimes - have become the norm?
When Ban Ki-moon asked me to become his special envoy for the Great Lakes in March, I felt a particular responsibility to the mothers, daughters and grandmothers who - since my first visit to the region, as president of Ireland in 1994 - have shared with me what they have suffered in Bujumbura, Bukavu, Goma, Kigali or Kinshasa.
In 20 years of killings, rape, destruction and displacement, these women have suffered most. Yet I believe they are the region's best hope for building lasting peace. My job now, and the job of the international community, is to support them in every way we can.
Women's voices should not only be heard because they are the victims of the war. Their active participation in peace efforts is essential, because they are the most effective peace builders. As men take up arms, women hold communities together in times of war. This makes them stronger and better equipped to play a key role in securing real peace, as we have seen in Northern Ireland, Liberia and elsewhere.
My approach to peace-building involves not just political leaders, but all of civil society, including women. Without their full support and participation, no peace agreement can succeed. How many secret deals have been negotiated in the Great Lakes region, only to be ignored or forgotten by the signatories for lack of transparency and accountability?
I believe the peace, security and co-operation framework for the DRC and the region, signed in Addis Ababa in February 2013 by 11 African countries, provides an opportunity to do things differently. That is why I have called it a framework of hope. I have started to work on its implementation top-down, with the 11 heads of state who signed the agreement, and bottom-up, with the people of the region who will be its real beneficiaries.
As the first woman to be appointed UN special envoy, I have promised to ensure that women's voices are heard at the negotiating table. Last month, with Femmes Africa Solidarité and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, we brought together more than 100 women from across the region - including the gender ministers of the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi - in Bujumbura. One upshot of the meeting has been to ensure the consequences of sexual violence are included in the benchmarks we are developing to measure progress in the implementation of the peace agreement.
I feel energised by the leadership shown by the women I met in Bujumbura.
They are taking full responsibility for peace, security and development in the region. Reaching across national borders, they are innovative, collegial and practical. I rely on them to hold their leaders to account for the full implementation of the framework of hope.
As special envoy, I will continue to support female-led initiatives. I am pleased the World Bank has allocated $150m (£98m) to finance gender-based projects, in addition to the $1bn already pledged for the region. I encourage the donor community to be even more strategic in its support of the framework of hope. It is crucial to demonstrate the economic benefits of a lasting peace based on development - what I call the peace dividend.
Almost six months after the signing of the peace agreement, armed groups are still roaming in eastern Congo, sowing terror and destruction. This is not acceptable. I have heard the region's people voice their frustration and anger at the slow pace of change. However, I am confident that, with the support of civil society - including women - we can succeed in bringing peace to the region.
I have often heard my friend Desmond Tutu, a fellow member of the Elders, say: "I am not an optimist, I am a prisoner of hope." The women of the Great Lakes are keeping my hope alive.