🚀 go-pugleaf

The ACTivist Volume 9 #1, January 1993.

The ACTivist is published monthly by the ACT for Disarmament
Coalition, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2R4, phone
416-531-6154, fax 416-531-5850, e-mail web:act. Hard copy
subscriptions are available with a donation of $10 or more to ACT for
Disarmament.  Reprint freely, but please credit us (and send us a copy!)

/** gen.newsletter: 129.12 **/
** Written 11:48 pm  Jan  9, 1993 by web:act in cdp:gen.newsletter **
WOMEN OVERCOMING VIOLENCE

The fourth War Resisters' International Women's Conference, 
'Women Overcoming Violence' took place in Thailand from November 
25 to December 1. Over 150 women from some 63 countries attended,
 including Maggie Helwig of ACT for Disarmament.

Much of the material on this and the preceding page was generated by 
the conference, which included four days of workshops and plenary 
sessions on violence against women, militarism, and development, as 
well as several days devoted to developing a series of resolutions, and 
a tour of some women's initiatives in Thailand.

The conference produced some 200 pages of papers and talks on a 
wide variety of topics; copies are available either from War Resisters
 International or from ACT for Disarmament. For more information or 
a list of papers, contact Maggie at ACT Toronto (736 Bathurst St., 
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2R4, phone 416-531-6154). Maggie is also available 
to speak to interested groups, schools, etc.

For more converage of the Women Overcoming Violence conference, 
we suggest you read forthcoming issues of Peace News (the WRI 
newspaper) and WRI Women (the newsletter of the WRI Women's 
Working Group). Write to WRI, 55 Dawes St., London SE17 1EL, 
ENGLAND for copies of either publication.

Following are words from some conference participants. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thalasingham Jeyanthy, 27 years old, was from 1989 to 1992 the 
director of the Suriya Women's Development Centre near Jaffna, part 
of the Tamil area of Sri Lanka. The Centre is an shelter and training 
institute for poor rural women, wives who have been thrown out by 
their husbands, and women whose relatives have been killed in the war. 
The Center also runs a nursery for the nearst village, in which they look
 after 85 children.

"Whatever we need, we do it all ourselves, no men. We need a house 
painted, we do it ourselves. We need a roof fixed, we do it ourselves. 
We need to build a bunker, when the government drops bombs from
 helicopters, we do it ourselves, no men ... We don't have big people
 educating little people. At the Centre we are all equal. Women learn
 whatever they want to learn, and if there's something they don't like, 
no problem."
***************
Sumlit Bunprakorp, 49 years old, is a farmer and village health care
 volunteer in northeastern Thailand. She was active in a successful 
campaign against the government's resettlement project for her area, 
where they intended to cut down the forests and make way for a 
eucalyptus plantation.

"When we have a march, the men are always afraid of trouble from 
some local official, so they make the women march in front in case 
they encounter any trouble. And once they decided to write a letter 
to the local government in blood, and then they made us, the women, 
give all the blood ...

"The men think that they are stronger, but from their actions, it seems 
to me they don't have strength or perseverance."
******************
The survival and well-being of every person concerns us. Women are 
the first environment, the innovators, drawing on their talents and 
ingenuity to find ways and means to do more than survive.

So why are women left out of development planning? Are we 
invisible? There are so many cases where government and funding 
agencies have failed in their projects because women were not 
consulted.

It is women who suffer from Structural Adjustment Policies, yet 
the negotiations with the World Bank andthe IMF in no way reflect 
this suffering or its alleviation.

In organizations like SEWA in India, Gabriela in the Philippines ... 
women came to the forefront and drastic changes occurred. Women 
and development go hand in hand.

It takes stength to live and survive a battering. Government and 
NGO programmes designed for women can reinforce and utilize that 
strength, helping women to redirect this strength from trying just to 
survive and to cope with a life of violence to redesigning their lives 
and the lives of their families and society.

-- Elaine Hewitt, Women and Development Unit, UWI, Barbados
****************
The current world situation cannot continue. It is moving to destruction. 
But there are alternatives, coming up from the poor, the marginalized 
-- like the noise of the sea before a storm, the noise of the earth before 
an earthquake. This is very urgent, and we must feel this urgency ...

We must come up with another concept of human needs, emphasize 
self-development, happiness, pleasure in creation and work ... a concept 
of democracy which includes all living things .. an economic model
 emphasizing basic needs, self-sufficiency, which does not exploit, use 
too many machines, exhaust resources ...

Justice is the historical verification of love, we cannot love without
 justice. We must be at the forefront of the struggle criticizing 
militarism which uses the resources of the poor world.

We must begin to dream. When we dream, we take actions to make 
our dreams a reality. A people without dreams is dead.

We women, we have the ability to dream dreams that bring life.

-- Nelsa Curbelo, SERPAJ-Latin America
** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **