Ending wars and gender violence

For Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee by Carol Urner

November is our month to concentrate on non-violence and on ending both war and gender violence. First comes November 11, ringing bells and joining Veterans for Peace in reclaiming Armistice Day http://www.vfpchapter27.org/sites/default/files/ABFP.pdf  Then comes November 25 to December 10 and WILPF participation in Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu

Yes, both of these are huge goals and many still dismiss them as utopian, idealistic and impossible. In WILPF we believe we must nonetheless strive for them, and that the only way to achieve them is to continue building the institutions needed to maintain peace, and ourselves growing and developing in the ways of of non-violence. That means we must continue improving in the ways we have already been building since our beginnings as an organization in April, 1915.

The reclaiming of Armistice Day on November 11 is proposed as a new project for WILPF US. If members of Disarm/ End Wars, and eventually WILPF US, embrace it we can utilize it – as our foremothers did – to continue efforts to put an end to war.

They, and the vital postwar US peace movement at the time, succeeded in getting the Kellogg-Briand Pact, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand_Pact  which outlawed war. Every WILPFer could learn much from reading David Swanson’s book When the World Outlawed War http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/when-the-world-outlawed-w_b_1199354.html.   Briand and our WILPF women, including our own Jane Addams and Emily Green Balche, were among those who labored diligently to make the treaty work. Most of our citizens have forgotten or never learned about it. However, the Kellogg Briand Pact, outlawing war, is still international law and can inspire us to keep building on it now, 100 years after our own founding.

In 1954, at the height of the Cold War, the US Congress renamed Armistice Day as Veterans Day http://www.calendar-12.com/holidays/veterans_day/1957.   WILPF, Veterans for Peace and other peace movement organizations deeply care for the healing of veterans, and want to support them in return to civilian life. In WILPF we want them to learn how to promote life rather than to cause destruction and death in other nations. However, we believe that Veterans’ Day has instead become another day to celebrate and promote the militarism that most of our citizens have previously rejected.

Here is a 2012 VFP report on nationwide Armistice Day memorials http://www.veteransforpeace.org/pressroom/news/2012/10/31/veterans-plan-armistice-day-events-over-50-us-cities.  In 2011 Portland, Oregon WILPF Branch had already joined Portland VFP chapter 72 in memorializing that day and ringing their bells in the city center. Portland WILPF plans to make this an annual event, and six organizations hare now joining them. VFP now hopes we can begin enlisting churches to ring their bells for 11 minutes starting at 11 am on that day, as they did before it became Veterans Day. Here was our national call to join the effort http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5372/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1269005 in 2013.

THE PARTICIPATION IN THE SIXTEEN DAYS OF ACTIVISM AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE was conceived by civil society women from around the world in 1991 http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/about/activist-origins-of-the-campaign. WILPF US Advancing Human Rights Issue Committee urged us all to join in the effort and WILPFUS Disarm! Dismantle the War Committee began small scale participation in 2011. We suggest that branches order the Take Action Kit online http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/2014-campaign/2014-take-action-kit  and begin planning for some kind of participation. We can all build on what we can do this year to expand our efforts in 2015.

Most of us can also use this time to deepen our understanding of gender issues and of UNSCRes 1325 http://www.peacewomen.org/themes_theme.php?id=15&subtheme=true.

Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will has just released a paper on gender issues for Pakistani, Afghani and other males identified as militants http://us3.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c9787c74933a00a9066ba32d5&id=b2f0e34a1e&e=79d4215bd6  in US drone strikes just because they are men.

Both of our WILPF UN web sites feature gender issues. Peace Women high lights Women, Peace and Security http://www.wilpfinternational.org/what-we-do/gender-peace-and-security  – or it could also be called Gender, Peace and Security. Reaching Critical Will includes gender in its work for nuclear disarmament and for the general and complete disarmament sought by the General Assembly and its First Committee http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/disarmament-fora/unga/2014, now in session.