CONFERENCE OF ASIAN WOMEN FOR A
CULTURE OF PEACE OPENS IN HANOI
Hanoi (Vietnam) December 6 (No.2000-133)
- The Conference of Asian Women for a Culture of Peace opened in Hanoi Wednesday
morning with a call to women in the region to co-ordinate their actions for
peace and speakers stressed that there can be no lasting peace without
sustainable development and gender equality, and that peace is closely linked to
women’s rights and to human rights.
Nearly 150 delegates - women
leaders, politicians, gender and peace researchers, educators and national and
community-based peace promoters - from 35 Asia-Pacific countries are attending
the 4-day Conference, organised by the Government of the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam with the support of UNESCO and the United Nations Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
In her opening address, the
Vice President of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Binh, spoke of the Conference as “significant
from both the strategic and the topical perspective. [...] After a long and
arduous struggle for the independence [...] of their fatherland,” she said,
“the Vietnamese people and women long for peace, and fully understand the
values of peace that are linked to [...] freedom.”
In his address, UNESCO
Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura called the event “one of the high points”
of the International Year for the Culture of Peace, and described the Year
itself as an “outstanding success.” Referring to the more than 72 million
people world-wide who have signed Manifesto 2000 for a Culture of Peace and
Non-violence, Mr. Matsuura declared that such “enthusiasm reflects a
growing global awareness of the need for a culture of peace in the deepest
sense. But”, he added, “a true international culture of peace may only take
root, and flourish, in civil society at large - of which all the world’s women
are an equal vital, essential part.”
Mr Matsuura declared that the
Year was “a beginning, not an end” as it heralds the year 2001 - dedicated
by the United Nations General Assembly to the Dialogue Among Civilizations - and
the United Nations Decade for Non-Violence and a Culture of Peace for the
Children of the World, in which UNESCO has been designated as the lead agency.
Mr Matsuura declared: “The General Assembly has indeed just passed a
resolution to this effect, which highlights two parallel approaches for us to
follow: to strengthen our partnerships within the global movement, and to
promote education on behalf of all the world’s children.”
He quoted the UN Resolution
which says that “priority should be given to education, including teaching of
the practice of peace and non-violence to children” and declared that the
United Nations Children’s Fund “will be closely associated with UNESCO’s
efforts to promote both formal and non-formal education, at all levels.”
Praising the Conference’s
host country, Mr. Matsuura observed that Vietnam today “boasts the highest
rate of political participation by women in all Asia”, with women occupying a
quarter of the seats in the National Parliament. Noting that “women make up
more than half of the world’s population,” the Director-General deplored
their exclusion from formal decision-making and declared: “The centuries-long
exclusion of half the human race from so many fields of self-expression, has
been a truly tragic waste of talent and imagination for humanity in general.”
Sonia Mendieta de Badaroux,
Chairperson of UNESCO’s Executive Board, highlighted the need “to develop
viable strategies for promoting a culture of peace and non-violence for
ourselves and for the children of the world, on the one hand, and for ending the
perennial violence against women, on the other.” She further insisted on “the
need to ensure that during the coming decade our children have equal access to
quality education that would promote mutual understanding, peace and tolerance.”
UNESCO’s position on a
culture of peace was explained by Ingeborg Breines, head of UNESCO’s Women and
Culture of Peace Programme. She spoke of the need to address issues such as the
“denial of fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms; acts and reflexes
of aggression in everyday life, in homes and in the street, the banalisation of
violence in the media and in games; the use of stereotyped images of ‘the
other’; the explicit glorification of war heroes and the implicit
glorification of war in the teaching of history.”
In her address on the role and
status of women in Asia-Pacific in building peace, Thelma Kay, Chief of the
Women in Development Section of ESCAP, spoke of the conflicts in the region as
“primarily internal struggles couched in various terms such as independence
movements and ethnic divisions, but which are fundamentally based on the reality
of relative deprivation, human rights violations and competition for goods, land
and other resources.” She also referred to the role played by NGOs and
advocacy groups in periods of internal violence.
Earlier, welcoming delegates,
Hoang Van Nghien, Chairman of Hanoi’s People’s Committee (Mayor) recalled
that Hanoi, one of the cities from where the International Year for the Culture
of Peace was launched, had been awarded UNESCO’s “City for Peace Prize”
last year.
Discussions at the Conference
are focussing on the role and status of women in peace-building and non-violence
in Asia five years after the Fourth World Conference on Women. Issues being
discussed include education and training, mass media and communication, economic
opportunities for women, decision-making and poverty reduction. Participants are
to draft a plan of action which is expected to spell out both strategic thinking
and concrete actions that governments, NGOs and inter-governmental organisations
can take to build a gender sensitive culture of peace in Asia.
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