Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Linked with The Bougainville Women for Peace and Freedom BWPF.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « Having lived and witnessed the suffering, I decided to do whatever I could to help our own unfortunate mothers and children ».

Read: Thinkin Peace, Making Peace, a 96 page pdf.

Read: Women taking action locally and globally, a 218 pages pdf.

Read: Can Rationality Embrace the Uncanny? New Ways to Manage Conflict in the South Pacific.

Josie Tankunani Sirivi – Papua New Guinea

She works for Bougainville Women for Peace and Freedom BWPF.

WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY RESOURCES, BOUGAINVILLE.

Read: Bougainville’s inspiring tribute to survival by women of peace.

Hunted by the Papua New Guinea Defense Force as bait to capture her husband, Josie Sirivi took to the jungle during the Bougainville crisis. She saw women and children suffering and organized local women to earn income and assist other families in need. She lobbied and obtained relief supplies from NGO agencies to distribute through women’s groups. She founded and was the first president of Bougainville Women for Peace and Freedom and led a women’s team to conduct a peace awareness campaign, and to explain the peace process, especially to outlying community groups. . She was a key negotiator representing women in the peace process that started in October 1997.

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Linked with Mothers and Daughters of Sri Lanka.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: “The most important thing actually is to give time for every one to participate in the discussion. Everybody’s voice must be heard and we have to respect all the ideas. We may be a great expert on some issues but giving others a chance will be greater”.

They say about her: « Even at 71, an indefatigable Dulcy traverses the country talking to people on both sides of the ethnic concertina, often risking life and limb ».

Dulcy de Silva – Sri Lanka

She works for Mothers and Daughters of Sri Lanka (see on WomenWarPeace.org).

She is the co-ordinator of National Anti-War Front Women’s Sectio, Cofounder of the Mothers and Daughters of Sri Lanka, Dulcy de Silva (born 1933) is convinced that because women are the most severely affected by conflict, they are also the key to peace efforts. She has founded a dynamic peace movement that has gained in influence and recognition. At 71, an indefatigable Dulcy continues to travel throughout the country, braving personal danger. She is known in all of Sri Lanka, respected by Tamils and Sinhalese alike as an honest negotiator, and talks to people on both sides of the ethnic divide. She has been politically active since her school and university days.

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Linked with Banchte Shekha – Bangladesh.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « They were my university. Every woman. Every life. I have learned everything I know from them », … and: « thousands of helpless women seemed to beckon me to them », … and: « the oppression and insults merely made me more determined to achieve my goal ».

She says also: « They were treated like house servants-underfed, beaten, and mentally tortured. No one respected them, not even themselves. They had no solutions to their problems. Life just went on » … and: « I wanted to find a solution for them, to work on the ‘woman problem’, but everyone-Father Ceci, the sisters, my family-thought I should go back to my own village and get married ».

Angela Gomes is a social worker from Bangladesh. She won the prestigious Magsaysay Award in 1999 for community leadership. She leads the organization Bachte Shekha (Learning to Live) in the Jessore region of the country. It teaches rural women a vast range of income-generating skills, including handicrafts, raising crops, poultry and livestock, fish farming, beekeeping and silk making. Her organization benefits some 20,000 women in at least 400 villages. (wikipedia).

Angela Gomes – Bangladesh

She works for Banchte Shekha.

Her Banchte Shekha organization offers female-empowerment programs to more than 25,000 women in nearly 430 Bangladeshi villages. IN THE EARLY DAYS, Angela Gomes used to borrow a bicycle and pedal alone through the dusty countryside near the Bangladeshi city of Jessore. She would talk to village women, listening to their problems and offering what little help she could. Indignant at this interference in their traditional ways, the menfolk would sometimes hurl rocks at her as she passed. For all the effect they had, they might as well have been throwing ping-pong balls. (full text).

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Linked with Genocide in Darfur.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « The studen organization ‘Action in Sudan’ has been very successful. Some of my pld students started it up last year. I occasionally give talks, but it’s their baby. I’m proud of my students … we have huge responsibility to give back to the place we study from ». And: « That’s the wonderful thing about anthropoogy, whatever I’m learning, it goes immediately into my life ».

She says also: « No one had gone back to this area for a very long time, partly because I think they were afraid to follow in the footsteps of this great Oxford anthropoplogist (Edward Evans-Pritchard). I decided that if I wanted to study cultural change that I would work there because I had a kind of baseline. I was interested in how these people (the Nur) saw their own world as changing and actively trying to figure things out. It’s a rough place to go ». (Both citations on news.wisc.edu/).

Sharon Hutchinson – USA

She works for the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and for the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team.

Listen: a Sharon Hutchinson Interview, conducted September 29, 2006 with progressiv radio.

For the past 25 years, Sharon Hutchinson has initiated grassroots efforts and focused international attention on human rights abuses in war-torn Sudan. An anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and a human rights consultant, her research has taken her to the frontlines.

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Linked with The World Can’t Wait, Won’t Wait, Isn’t Waiting.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « We are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other, when we celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together tear down the mighty walls of injustice ».

Cynthia McKinney is an outspoken leader for peace, human rights, and justice. As a result of questioning her congressional colleagues about the lack of full investigation after September 11 attacks, a retaliatory campaign successfully unseated her for one term, but in 2004 she was easily reelected. In her first term, she got legislation passed to extend health benefits for Vietnam War veteran victims of Agent Orange and sponsored legislation to end the use of depleted-uranium weapons. As a ranking member of the Human Rights Subcommittee, she prompted the UN to investigate the Rwanda genocide. (Read all on 1000peacewomen 2005).

Cynthia McKinney – USA

She worked for the US Congress, the US House of Repr., House Armed Services Committee.

Honors and recognition: McKinney has been featured in a full-length motion picture titled American Blackout. On April 14, 2006, she received the key to the city of Sarasota, Florida and was doubly honored when the city named April 8 as « Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney Day » in Sarasota. On June 14, 2000, Rep. McKinney was honored when part of Memorial Drive, a major thoroughfare running through her district, was renamed « Cynthia McKinney Parkway. » Memorial Drive leads from south Atlanta to Stone Mountain. Her father had previously been honored when a portion of Interstate 285 in Atlanta was dedicated as « Billy McKinney Parkway. »

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Linked with Mountain Spirit MS.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « I believe that it is important to contribute to the root of a tree for good fruits ».

She says also: “Appreciative Inquiry changed me. It has become a part of my life, my family, and everything I do. Once I started to say things positively, life has become comfortable and easy” … and: , “You must not only teach how to catch fish, but you must do things. You must act!”

Chhing Lamu Sherpa – Nepal

She works for Plan Nepal, and for Mountain Spirit.
She is member of ‘Imagine Nepal.org‘.

Read: ‘ … on PRA and Participation in Nepal‘, 52 p., March 24, 2000.

For the past two decades, Chhing Lamu Sherpa (born 1960) has played a pivotal role in empowering women and extremely marginalized groups in eastern Nepal. As an educated professional woman working to improve the lives of poor and deprived mountain communities, she is a role model for other members of Nepal’s Sherpa community, an ethnic minority living off the rural mountainous areas, often as expedition guides. She had to face ridicule when she started to go to school – Sherpa was an « old » 17 years of age.

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