Somehow, the Word ‘Peace’ Got Lost [View all]

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http://passblue.com/2012/03/09/somehow-talk-about-peace-has-been-lost/

UN WOMEN'S CONFERENCE 2012

Somehow, the Word ‘Peace’ Got Lost

by Cora Weiss • March 9, 2012

This essay was adapted from a speech that Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, a network of peace and justice groups, read as a panelist on the “Women, War and Peace” debate held during the 56th Commission on the Status of Women this month at the UN. The debate that Weiss spoke at, on March 1, showed a film, “Peace Unveiled,” about women in Afghanistan.

Who comes from a place where there has been violence or war?

I have enormous admiration and respect for the women of Afghanistan. I mourn with them for the loss of life, the wounded, the babies frozen to death in refugee camps, the destruction to their homes and communities. And I celebrate their determination to be at the peace table.

The question after so many years of war and waste is: When will we stop making war? When will the currency of foreign policy stop being weapons? When will be become exhausted from exhausting all nonlethal means of resolving conflict before resorting to violence? When will we implement the Charter of the United Nations, dedicated to preventing the scourge of war? When will women be at all the decision-making tables to prevent war and to design the peace?

Humanity has abolished slavery, colonialism, apartheid and the prohibition of women voting. Why can’t we abolish war?

We gather for the annual Commission on the Status of Women conference at this time of year because March 8 is International Women’s Day, voted by the General Assembly in 1975 to be the United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.

Somehow, peace has gotten lost.

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