Towards effective role for Sudanese women in the implementation of peace
By Zeinab Osman al-Hussain
Nov 21, 2004 — The US-based Women Waging Peace Organization (WWP) issued an important document on the WWP peace recommendations for Sudan following a special meeting with 16 Sudanese women peace activists in Washington DC (October 5-18, 2004).
The significance of this women’s conference is intriguing: seldom do we hear about women conferences in the national or international media although the Sudanese women and the other women of the world never ceased to meet, discuss, or resolve in some workable recommendations that unfortunately stay on shelf and are rarely executed since women are not yet occupying the decision making positions to directly decide upon these important recommendations. Nor is there yet the kind of men who sincerely believe in the women’s rights or would voluntarily act for the sake of women, even if the women were not available to run their own businesses by themselves.
On the other side, we have to remind ourselves, as women, that we need to follow up our struggles in the arena, including the most recent WWP peace recommendations simply because the women would find themselves all alone, save for a few supporting men, in the front line, obliged, as always, and asked by the women population to pursue the implementation of their well-thought recommendations: “make it, yourself,” then, is the slogan of the stage!
It is, therefore, expedient to appreciate in the best terms possible the WWP hospitality and timely concerns for the situation of women in the Sudan when we all know that the national decision making groups of our country have not yet shown the least interest in the women’s role in national decision making. Indeed, it is painful to remind our selves as women that until this moment the Sudanese government and the opposition groups have not allowed a single opportunity for the women in any acceptable national level to share with them the concerns for the beleaguered Sudan, the Sudanese only non-specific gender entity!
There is hope that the WWF conference would move on the issues of peace, especially the top agenda of the DarFur Crisis, which deserves immediate attention in gender, familial, medical, judicial, financial, administrative, social, and political terms. I will give my attention, however, in this commentary to highlight some of the missing concerns in the WWP comprehensive recommendations, which are timely and are highly needed to ease the humanitarian crisis of our sisters, their children, and the other members of the family in DarFur, the South, and Eastern Sudan.
Addressed to the women of Sudan in all regions of the country, the governmental organizations, and the civil society associations and voluntary organizations, the WWP conference offered detailed recommendations to strengthen the women’s role in the peace process. The recommended measures aimed to boost the women’s vital contributions in the peace negotiations, the monitoring and evaluation committees, and the security and diplomatic activities.
Most important, the recommendations provided workable measures to enable the DarFuri and the Southerner women to perform administrative and financial responsibilities towards the required facilities to immediately help the women and their families run a decent life in the existing camps or in their homelands by well planned resettlement and rehabilitation programs. The planning and the expected decision making effort should be strongly based on the full realization of the women’s potentialities and competent abilities.
The WWP gender-specific recommendations constituted a significant breakthrough in the midst of the tight male-dominated hegemony of the Sudanese national decision making. Equally important, the call on the women to support the recommendations is a good start. There are, however, shortcomings in the WWP elaborated work for which I am suggesting certain remedies in the following manner:
– On the Return of refugees and displaced people: it is important to prepare the place of reception before return of these victimized citizens to their homes with community-based programs and efficient human services. Large consultations should be processed in light of the civil society experiences of the country. The preparation should be planned, implemented, and followed-up by the returnee women on equal terms with the men. The same preparations should embrace the post-settlement stage.
– The need to employ social workers in the resettlement and the rehabilitation programs: here, there is obvious need to implement the professional expertise of the social work and community work profession. There are thousands of social workers in the Sudan who are under-employed and are practically sidelined by the poor policies of the ministry of social affairs, the rehabilitation government agencies and party organizations to make use of the social work professionalism. It is time to make the right decisions in this respect by the new government bureaucracies in the regional and the national levels. The international agencies are equally required to adopt this recommendation.
– The handicapped refugees and displaced peoples: we all know there are high rates of disability and a large population of handicapped people among the women and the children who have been traumatized by the horrors of war all over the country. The WWP recommendations should include elaborated sections to care for these poor citizens, including sufficient legal and financial compensation to the victims and their families.
– The raped ones: these are thousands of women and girls. The WWP conference should be commended for the humanitarian attention it gave to these cases. But the WWP did not address the cases of boys who were raped, as sometimes relayed in reports not yet published in the international media.
– The combatant boys: these too need special attention since many of them have been used and abused by the recruiting armies, whether government’s or opposition’s. As mothers, we still recall in pain the armies of our children who were officially recruited by government laws and then savagely pulled out of their schools or homes only to be murdered in the Ailafoun and other conscription camps or in actual field operations in undisclosed numbers, perhaps tens of thousands considering the long years of civil war. Many children were also reportedly recruited by rebel groups for military activity; thus subjected to similar murders. Most likely, many children suffered gross violation of the internationally guaranteed right to enjoy conscientious objection to armed conflict in both camps. Correctly, the WWP recommendation insisted to have all combatant children returned to their families. This is fine. Much more is needed, however, to ensure the child rights of these young people in accordance with the International Agreement on the Children Rights. The recruiting armies of both government and opposition groups should be obligated by law to honor the prescribed international norms in this concern.
– National Council for Women Affairs: this writer has been repeatedly suggesting the establishment of this national body to supervise over the state policies and practices regarding the women’s rights in the Sudan. The Council is much more important than the WWP restricted recommendation to have a woman as minister of social affairs (which has been approved in the country since the early 1970s) or to create a post of a presidential woman adviser to take responsibilities of the women’s rights! We need to think and to act with the collective mind we are, the collective race we are, and the collective reality we are struggling to change.
The writer is the former president of the Sudanese Women’s Forum (SWF) in exile. SWF was established in 1994 composed of women representatives of the Sudanese Women’s Union, the Democratic Unionist Party, SPLM, the Umma, and other civil society groups.