KABUL - As Peace Day 21 September approaches UNAMA is featuring articles from UN agencies on the work the UN is doing for peace in Afghanistan. 6: The United Nations Development Fund for Women

In early 2009 UNIFEM-Afghanistan facilitated a gathering of 12 Afghan peace activists from around the country for dialogue and planning around peace and peace building in Afghanistan. The gathering brought together a multi ethnic, multi lingual and multi generational group of strong and courageous women peace activists, common in their desire for peace in Afghanistan.

Common to their understandings of peace were justice and access. These ideas punctuated their collective understandings of what peace would look like in Afghanistan. To these women, who lie outside the formal structures and processes of reconciliation and negotiation in Afghanistan, peace did not mean the absence of war and the absence of violence. Instead peace represents the presence of things - the presence of safe space, public and private, the presence of opportunities, the presence of rights and the presence of equality.

All too often the mainstream dialogue around the conflict in Afghanistan fails to give space to the voices of these women and their peers. All too often the international community committed to peace in Afghanistan equates peace with the cessation of violence between armed groups. All too often when world leaders talk about the incredible commitments and sacrifices their countries make, and continue to make, for peace in Afghanistan, the peace they refer to is the absence of overt warfare. Too regularly peace and security are used interchangeably, words confused, used to mean and represent the same outcome. Too rarely is the time taken to look at what the term peace as a goal could and should mean in Afghanistan - a long term approach to understanding peace through a human rights framework of inclusion, dialogue, justice, and dignity.

The growing acceptance of violence against women in Afghanistan, the lack of outcry when women’s human rights defenders are targeted and or killed, forms but one gauge as to the lack of peace the country currently faces. The silence is an indication of a society living in fear, a fear that strips all of those without power and voice of any form of peace. Peace will come with addressing the root causes of this fear and silence throughout all levels of society. In the context of programming, a central tenant of peace building is therefore giving a voice to the excluded and disenfranchised, and to encourage the participation of those who do not hold weapons nor the formal pockets of power to join the peace process.

Peace building centres on allowing all actors affected by conflict to have an equal voice in reconciliation and development. Peace building is about giving voice, opportunity and access to excluded groups, excluded by the formal actors of war. To this end, central to reconciliation and peace building both in Afghanistan and globally are UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and 1820. These frameworks offer guidelines for giving voice and equality to both women and men in their experiences of war and in their visions for reconstruction, development and sustainable peace.

Since the gathering of the 12 women peace activists in early 2009, one has been killed and many of the remaining 11 have receded into silence by the fear of her death. Within the current context of foreign policy and security in Afghanistan, these women are and were visionaries in their understanding of peace building and the struggle for peace in Afghanistan.

As the international community in Afghanistan, whether military or civilian, we have a responsibility to commit to go beyond understanding peace as political settlement, and beyond conflict resolution as a scenario where the players at the table are only those with the weapons. We must support the voices of all Afghan men and women peace activists to be part of the larger processes of reconciliation, development and unity - to ensure that the voices of all segments of society are included in the peace building process. Where this can be achieved, we can have much greater hope that the peace process being supported includes concepts of equality, dignity, dialogue and justice, creating the foundations for a lasting and sustainable peace in Afghanistan.

By Rachel Dore-Weeks, UNIFEM-Afghanistan

(Note: UNIFEM became part of UN Women in 2011.)

Website: UN Women Afghanistan

Website: Special UNAMA Peace Day website