Events

It Is Time to Invest in Peace Again

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini discusses war, human rights, women as peace actors, and the need to include women in peacebuilding processes

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science, gave the Queen’s Lecture at TU Berlin on 1 November 2021. The title of her lecture was: "Blueprint for Peace In the C21st: So little done, but it’s not too late”

Ms. Anderlini, you are known internationally as a peace strategist, and, as a lawyer, you campaign for human rights, particularly the rights of women around the world. You are also the founder and director of ICAN, the International Civil Society Action Network, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. What does ICAN stand for and what does it mean for you?

I set up this non-profit network to examine the basis for modern armed conflicts and to support the role of unarmed actors, mainly women. It is they who are largely instrumental in building peace all over the world. Today, we work with more than 40 independent, women-led organizations worldwide.

 

What lies at the heart of your research?

For many years, I have been observing the wars and conflicts that have occurred around the world in the wake of the Cold War. These conflicts differ substantially from previous wars. They are much more complex and multi-faceted, in terms of both the underlying conflicts themselves and the composition of the actors involved. Among these conflicts are the warlike genocide in Rwanda and the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. At first glance, they appear to be civil wars. However, a closer examination reveals just how many actors, civilian, political and military, both within the countries themselves and abroad, are involved. Syria is another such case. At first, it looked like a conflict between a dictator and the people. But in reality, it masks a number of disputes in the region, including with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Then Russia joined in from the outside, and later the USA with its major Iran conflict. In addition to state-backed organizations, there are now also criminal networks involved, some of which are in turn closely linked with state actors. The sources of violence are incredibly large and diverse. 

 

Queen's Lecture 2021 on Monday, 1 November 2021, 6 pm CET, digital livestream on TU Berlin’s YouTube channel

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How else do these conflicts differ from previous wars?

First and foremost, conflicts today encroach on civil society to a much greater extent. The First World War was fought mainly on battlefields. Today, it is the homes of people, their villages and schools which form the theater of war. The protagonists are also shaped by certain identities, by affiliations to clans, to tribes, to religions. So these are very complex social conflicts. One thing that can be observed everywhere is that it is often local, unarmed people who are now the true peace actors. And most of these are women. They are the ones left behind to deal with the consequences. Such as in Liberia, where the men were kidnapped and killed, or in Palestine, where they become embroiled in protests and street battles and are arrested. In these situations, it is women who have to deal with the reality of survival. They are invisible, and perceived as irrelevant and non-threatening. They use this invisibility to fight for survival, obtain food, and keep society going.  

 

Where does your particular interest in this issue stem from?

From 1996 on, I have been working in London together with women both from and in many different regions around the world. We work politically on the investigation and pacification of social conflicts with aid workers and organizations on the ground, as well as with politicians and journalists. The second aspect is a very personal one. I was eleven when the Iranian Revolution began in 1979. It became dangerous for people like my father and my uncles, intellectual and critical people, to be in public. In the end, they were arrested and I was able to observe over a period of seven years how the role of women in keeping life going changed. Finally, we were able to travel to Europe, where we then remained. This topic was always present throughout my political studies. A particular highlight was a major conference for women in 1998 in London attended by women from all over the world. They provided many new and very different perspectives on the roles played by different actors in social conflicts as well as how they influence the nature of conflicts. But more than anything, they showed how the curtailment of women's rights continues to negatively impact the peace process. We can see this in Israel, in Northern Ireland, and among the Tamils and Sinhalese, and now again very much so in Afghanistan. One insight I gained from this conference was particularly illuminating: When these women talked together, they realized that they had more in common than just their gender. No matter what their origin, skin color, or religion, they all shared a vision of peaceful co-existence. The desire for a universal peace table. It was clear to us that we needed a network.

Not long after, in 2000 in fact, the United Nations passed Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. You were the author of this resolution and it was celebrated as a major breakthrough for women's rights. What are its most important points?

It is mainly about creating the conditions to prevent conflicts or to solve them without violence as well as the role women play in this. Achieving these goals requires the integration of women in key political negotiations and their direct involvement in peacebuilding processes. It is also about providing physical and legal protection for refugees and for women who were actively involved as combatants. Did they take part willingly or were they coerced? At that time, the United Nations talked about everything but women's issues! But we were able to demonstrate the need to involve a significant number of women in committees and processes, as it is women who are particularly affected by conflicts - by policing and economic measures, by economic and sexual exploitation, by diseases contracted when sexually exploited by victorious combatants, for example in Cambodia.

 

 

How successful has this been so far?

Well... 20 years after the passing of the resolution, which was signed by 163 countries let's remember, there are only a few states involved in conflicts that systematically include women in political processes. In Afghanistan, politically active women have achieved a great deal in recent years; they have changed the agendas of negotiations and opened up possibilities, particularly in the area of education. This has all been put in jeopardy by the Taliban, who are opposed to this diversity and inclusivity. Unfortunately, many intermediaries and negotiators are also unfamiliar with the benefits of inclusivity. Diplomats fob us off with the same excuse: "The Taliban just do not talk with women." Under these circumstances, the design of peace tables will never change! As such, peace talks are not really peace talks. Political enlightenment is also urgently needed among negotiators from western countries.

What chances does your alliance of more than 40 partner organizations worldwide have to help people in Afghanistan?

We have a number of partner organizations on the ground in Afghanistan. They work to prevent violence, to build peace, and protect human rights. Incidentally, they include both women and men; some of them highly respected people in their communities. My phone rings day and night and we are looking practically at what we can do. We can get very few people out - only a drop in the ocean in a population of 40 million. This is why we are mainly looking to negotiations. Also and particularly to convince those in power of the need for women to receive school education and become involved in society. We are also working on the banking system, as resources are urgently required. At the moment, it is in part a matter of pure survival, in other words getting hold of food. But we are also working with government organizations around the world to obtain visas and looking at which borders enable safe transport. There are still more than 900 people on our list of persons at particular risk. 

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), is director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is founder of ICAN (International Civil Society Action Network), where she spearheads the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) comprising independent, women-led organizations active in preventing violence and promoting peace, rights, and pluralism in 40 countries, among them Yemen, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Namibia, Syria, Cambodia, Nepal and Afghanistan. She is author of Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security passed by the United Nations Security Council in 2000. At the end of 2011, she became the first Senior Expert on Gender and Inclusion on the UN’s Mediation Standby Team, working on Somalia, Libya and Syria among other cases. She has set up and led a number of initiatives around the world, and working with UNFPA in Nepal, led the first assessment team into Maoist cantonments. She is a member of the Steering Board of the UK’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, the Commonwealth’s Panel of Experts on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), and an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini was the 2014 recipient of the UN Association Perdita Huston Award for human rights and the 2016 Greeley Peace Scholar at the University of Massachusetts. She is also the author of many articles and publications on peacebuilding, international women’s politics, and human rights, and is in much demand as a speaker and interview partner for academic institutions as well as the media.

Will the topic of Afghanistan also feature in this year's Queen's Lecture?

Oh, yes. Absolutely. The crisis in Afghanistan highlights the willingness and ability of the western world to assume its responsibility for establishing and safeguarding human rights. The Queen's Lecture was also born out of a desire in the 1960s to normalize British-German relations after World War II. It forms part of the attempts over the past 76 years to design a global architecture of human rights. Today, we have all the building blocks we need to achieve this. All the political statements have been made, all the values developed, and the commitment is there, too. But looking at conflict zones today, we have to ask: Who is fighting for human rights, who is staring down the barrels of the weapons of oppressors in the streets? Women. Their governments have abdicated on their responsibility to establish their rights. When put to the test, they fail. We have to change this. We have taken peace for granted for too long. Now it is time to invest in peace again - more than in war!

Many thanks.

Interviewer: Patricia Pätzold