Female activists on mission for peace
By: media for freedom By James Hohmann
(The Dallas Morning News) Banning land mines, fighting exploitation of women and halting the trafficking of children are all interconnected and key elements in the ongoing struggle for world peace.
Coming up with action plans to fight against these and a host of other issues is the goal for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams and 1,000 women from 43 countries who will be in Dallas this week for the International Women’s Peace Conference.
“Wonderful organizations all over the world are doing great things,” said Ms. Williams. “But it’s never enough. It’s just like we’re putting a little Band-Aid on a big weeping wound.”
Ms. Williams, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for creating a group that helped start peace talks in Northern Ireland, said that the world could learn a great deal from the compromises that brought Protestants and Catholics together in her country.
“We didn’t sweep the problem under the rug. You have to take every problem – economic, social and cultural – and tackle it head on,” she said, speaking by phone Friday from her home in Ireland. “I have a difficulty keeping my nonviolence in mind. When I see children dying, my natural reaction is to want to shoot someone that does that to a child. But I have to turn that around and use that anger for good and not for evil.”
She plans to also talk about the growing number of refugees, the continuing imprisonment of fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi by a military junta in Myanmar and the importance of protecting the environment.
For Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner, “peace takes hard work every day.”
“Peace is not just the absence of armed conflict,” she said. “It is a world in which basic needs of the majority of the planet are met.”
“Violence is a choice,” she said. “Let’s stop pretending it isn’t and learn to make different choices.” [more]