Catégorie : 1000 women Peace Nobel 2005

Linked with Mother’s Day, and with KUKNALIM.

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

Neidonuo Angami (born 1950), one of the founding members and former president of the Naga Mothers Association (NMA), has never known a peaceful life. She realized that the fierce fighting between the Naga underground army and the Indian security forces directly impacts the lives of mothers who lose their children to violence and resort to substance abuse in reaction to the conflict. So, she and other Naga mothers launched the Shed No More Blood campaign, which has proved to be a crucial link in the Naga peace process.

She says: « Starting with resolving the issues of conflict-driven drug addiction and alcoholism, the NMA has inserted itself into the state-Naga peace process, with women finally having a say ».

Watch this videos:

• Naga ngashan, 4.07 min, March 22, 2007;
• Tangkhul Naga Ngashan, 4.31 min, March 26, 2007;
• Hornbill Festival 2007 in Nagaland (India), 1.04 min, Dec. 4, 2007;
• Folk solo Rengma Naga by Khwenbu from Sendenyu village, 6.36 min, 20th Feb 2008;
• Rock scene hits Nagaland, 2.16 min, October 08, 2007;
• NAGALAND, 5.38 min, September 13, 2007.

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Neidonuo Angami – India

She works for the Naga Mothers Association NMA, (named: in the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, page 627; on Nagalim.nl/news; on India Together).

NMA dismayed over Tadubi incident, Vol. 4 Issue 11-12, August 22 – September 6, 2001.

Neidonuo Angami was born in a village in Kohima, Nagaland, on 1st October 1950, at a time when Nagaland was ravaged by fierce hostilities between the Naga underground army and Indian security forces. She spent her early childhood hiding out in the dense, precarious jungles. When she was six years old, her father, an interpreter with the state administration, was captured and killed.

Her mother did her best for Neidonuo and her four siblings under strenuous economic conditions. The conflict, and its personal backwash, seared all of them.

Neidonuo started formal education only at the age of eight, studying at Kohima’s Cambridge School (now the Mezhur Higher Secondary School). She then went on to Baptist English School and the Government High School, from where she matriculated in 1968. She was active in extracurricular activities, often leading her school’s contingent during interschool parades and National Cadet Corps activities.

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Linked with Save a Family Plan SAFP.

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

Beena Sebastian’s life and work illustrate how an ordinary woman with no special qualification can change the lives of many people around her. Among her most creative efforts are gender sensitivity training for police and lawyers and instituting an annual award for public officials who have done the most to prevent violence against women. These efforts have helped break the silence surrounding sexual violence in Kerala. She has also set up a shelter for abused women, providing them with both protection and a friend to accompany them to the police and the courts.

It is said: Through her years of working with women victims of violence, Beena began to make the larger connection between conflict in the public sphere and violence in the private domain.

Watch Forusa.org’s slide show.

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Beena Sebastian – India

She works for the Cultural Academy for Peace CAP, and for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation IFR.

Beena Sebastian was born in 1959 in an ashram in Kottayam, Kerala. The ashram had been set up by her father, who had also founded the Indian chapter of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in the early 1950s. The ashram continues to serve as an orphanage and a shelter for battered women.

Beena, therefore, grew up with a sense of social responsibility towards the marginalized practically from infancy. Even after she married and moved to Kochi, where her husband’s home was, her focus in life remained unchanged – working to empower the poor, especially women, in Kochi.

In the early 1990s, she began classes in life skills for slum women and girls, many of them immigrants from Tamil Nadu, who came to Kerala seeking work. She also began a successful income-generation project, teaching women the nontraditional skill of making motorcycle batteries. She founded an NGO called the Cultural Academy for Peace (CAP), which also runs a shelter, Sakhi (literally, friend) for abused women and their children. The shelter provides emergency housing and food, legal counseling, and accompaniment to women to the police and court, if necessary. It also offers income-generating work.

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Linked with Articles for Indigenous Peoples on our blogs.

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

Stella Tamang (born 1948) is a member of the minority indigenous Lama community and, to boot, a Buddhist woman in the world’s only Hindu kingdom. Her situation has shaped her life and her values, making her a determined advocate for the rights of women, indigenous peoples, and religious minorities. The name of her organization, Milijuli Nepal, means « together », and that is her message indeed: that diverse groups in society can work together for their respective rights, with mutual toleration, without violence.

It is said about her: Stella Tamang, a Buddhist in a Hindu nation, is a determined advocate for the rights of women, religious minorities, and indigenous groups. Nonviolence is central to her mission.

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Stella Tamang – Nepal

She works for Milijuli Nepal (named on women peacemakers program,
on DEZA.ch, and on UN.org/esa ), and she works also for Bikalpa Gyan Tatha Bikas Kendra Ashram BGTBKA (named on women peacemakers program).

She was always dismayed by the lowly status of women in Nepali society. She was equally moved by the plight of indigenous groups like her own Lama community (and the Tamang community she married into), which lacked access to education and jobs, and were far from the power structure. As a Buddhist in the world’s only Hindu kingdom, she also felt compelled to work for greater mutual respect for diverse religious traditions.

A teacher by training, Stella founded Bhrikuti School in 1975, when she was still a student, with five children from her own locality.

Today, it is a low-fee secondary school with about 900 students. Stella later started Milijuli Nepal (milijuli means « together »), an affiliate of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists based in Thailand, and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation based in the Netherlands. Milijuli’s goal is to work for justice and peace in non-violent ways.

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

Benedita da Silva (1942) began her political career in the 1980s with the foundation and presidency of the Association of Women from Chapéu Mangueira, a slum in Rio, where she was born and lived for 57 years. She was elected town councilor once and federal deputy twice. She was the first woman to be elected for the senate (1994) and the first woman to govern the state of Rio. She occupied the Ministry of Social Assistance for one year. (1000peacewomen)

She says: “Peace is individual and it is inside of each one of us”.

Benedita Souza da Silva Sampaio, (born in Rio de Janeiro, April 26, 1942-) is an Afro-Brazilian politician. During her life she faced a lot of prejudice for her humble origin, but she overcame the adversities and was Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro and, later, Minister of State in the Government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. (full text).

MINISTÉRIO DE ASSISTÊNCIA E PROMOÇÃO SOCIAL: Ministra Benedita da Silva.

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Benedita da Silva – Brazil

She works for the Partido dos Trabalhadores PT.

Daughter of a laundress and of a peasant, raised with 14 siblings, Benedita da Silva was the only one in her family to obtain a university degree. Her mother was a midwife in the community, and she was the inspiration for Benedita’s work as nursing assistant. She was able to conclude a course on social service in 1982, the same year she was elected for her first political term as a town councilor.

Her trajectory is marked by sexual abuse, which she suffered in her childhood; by the loss of a son, who died of starvation; and by the desire to have a different life. Several times, Benedita had to collect leftover food from the trash to feed her family.

Until she began her political mobilization, she was always a quiet woman.

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

Wang Xingjuan became a reporter at 20. She has been particularly concerned with the scale of problems – many of them new – that women are facing during the process of China’s reform and opening-up. She founded an organization, the Red Maple Women’s Consultation and Service Center, which launched the first of many hotlines for women. Retired since 1988, Wang continues to work for women.

She says: « I have realized that when one is in despair, a helping hand can light up new hope in the one who is in difficulty ».

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Xingjuan Wang – China

She works for the Red Maple Women’s Consultation and Service Center.

“The latter idea lingered in my mind and would not go.”This is what Wang Xingjuan said after she retired in 1988. There were two choices for her – she could have chosen the career of writing since she had been dealing with words for decades, becoming a reporter in Xihua Daily when she was 20, then working as one of the first youth reporters of China Youth in 1951, and finally for the Beijing Publishing Company after 1974, or she could choose “to do something for our sisters while China is in a phase of reform and is opening up”. This was the “latter idea” of Wang. For the first idea, Wang had experience, but for the latter one, she would have to start anew.

Wang saw that Chinese women were facing many new problems with the economic and political reform. In the increasingly severe social competition, few women could be independent, skilful and successful with the commodity-based economy. Many women needed some sort of support and help to stand up to the situation; this condition of women is contradictory to women’s emancipation reasoned Wang. “I think I have the desire as well as the time to do something for women,” she thought, and some intellectual women supported her ideas and activities.

In order to help women find themselves vis a vis the new trend in China, in October 1988, Wang Xingjuan initiated a civil organization – Women’s Research Institute under the School of Management Science of China; later it was renamed The Red Maple Women’s Consultation and Service Centre.

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

Oddom Van Syvorn (born 1962) is a Cambodian woman who has dedicated her life to promoting peace and non-violence through the annual peace walk to war-ravaged areas in Cambodia. She joined the first Dhammayietra, which literally means walking with dharma, in 1992 and has coordinated the pilgrimage since 1999. In her work, she teaches Buddhist precepts to the young, blesses and plants trees to raise awareness about environmental preservation and promotes compassion for people living with HIV/Aids.

She says: « The Dhammayietra is not waiting for the next war to begin but comes to spread information everywhere and to call all to a change of heart, a Khmer heart, a soft, kind, gentle heart ».

She says also: “Before the war, my father wanted us to leave for Thailand, his motherland. He said we will face difficulties in this country (Cambodia) when communists come. My mother refused to leave. They lived separately for three months before they reunited. I remember my father said ‘I would die without you seeing the smoke » (not having a funeral rite).

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Oddom Van Syvorn – Cambodia

She works for the Dhammayietra Center for Peace and Non-violence.

Oddom Van Syvorn, a small, quiet and humble Cambodian woman is an engaged Buddhist. She practices dharma in her daily life. She dresses simply – a long-sleeved plain shirt and a sarong. Her offices are temples, schools, and prisons. The soft-spoken Syvorn can be seen negotiating bad roads, pedaling her way to the villages to teach villagers about meditation. At other times, she meditates with older traditional midwives, visits the sick in her community, and plants trees to raise awareness about the environment.

But Syvorn is not an ordinary woman.

Underneath her smiling face and soft voice is a determined woman who won’t allow any hurdle to get in the way of her quest for peace. In contrast to her humility, Syvorn is fearless in her encounters with powerful figures when she seeks explanations for the delays in the approval of her requests to hold a peace walk.

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Linked with Yvonne Ryakiye – Burundi.

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

She says: … « I decided to come back. I came and stayed at Musaga. By then my daughter-in-law was dead. Only my uncles were there. I stayed with them. I met Yvonne again in the Association. She helped me once more. She is like a parent to me. She persuaded the Association to assist in rehabilitating my home. They built a house for me. They put on doors. I am very grateful … (full text, testimonies).
A student, adopted by Pélagie, says: « Nous sommes qui nous sommes grâce à elle » … « We are who we are, thanks to her ».

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Pélagie Nduwayo-Ndikuriyo -Burundi

She works for Solidarité pour Aider les Sinisterés Burundais SASB (no mention found).

Pélagie Nduwayo-Ndikuriyo works with women, students, girls and the disabled. She supports disadvantaged people in different ways with the aim of reducing poverty. She offers sewing courses for women and girls, provides seeds to ensure the survival of families, and pays for children to receive an education. She works with people of different ethnic groups.

In a refugee camp, she once met a woman who owned nothing except a paigne, the brightly coloured piece of cloth that is commonly worn in Africa, wrapped around the waist. The woman had her menstruation and was crouched in a corner. Without a change of clothes or another piece of cloth, she was messed up and could not move from that spot.

Uprooted from her relatively sheltered life as a Tutsi and wife of a former Burundi prime minister, Pélagie Nduwayo began to support individual women in the camp by distributing clothes, food and sometimes also money. This was at first merely a drop in the ocean, but eventually picked momentum. The women organized themselves into a group as they realized that this help might one day cease. So they asked Pélagie Nduwayo to assist become self-reliant.

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Linked with Pélagie Nduwayo-Ndikuriyo – Burundi, with Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, and with Twishakira amahoro.

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

She says: « It makes me incredibly happy when I see people alive who I saved from death ».

… Mais Léonie refusa d’accepter la situation de tension montante, et avec son ex-voisine Yvonne Ryakiye elle osèrent traverser la rivière pour se rendre visite. Comme elles étaient sans armes d’autres personnes suivirent leur exemple … (full text).

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Yvonne Ryakiye – Burundi

She works for Twishakira amahoro (published on Africa Recovery, copied by UN.org), and for Search for Common Ground Burundi.

Yvonne Ryakiye lives at the foothills of Bujumbura, where many Tutsi families were killed or driven away during the 1993/1994 genocide. Yvonne, a Hutu, started her organization by hiding Tutsi refugees.

With the Hutu and the Tutsi entrenched on either side of the Kanyosha River, she took the initiative to re-establish contact with her former Tutsi neighbor Léonie Barakomeza. The two women risked their lives as they crossed the river to visit one another. This began the warming-up of the relations between two hostile ethnic groups.“As women, we have done our best to make the Hutus and Tutsis live together peacefully again, because we do not want to lose our husbands and children,” says Yvonne Ryakije, a Hutu farmer who lives in Busoro village at the foothills of Bujumbura, where the river Kanyosha flows through a deep gorge.

During the 1993 – 1994 genocide the Tutsi were driven to the other side of the river, while the Hutus had to flee from the opposite bank to Busoro. In the beginning, Yvonne hid Tutsi refugees in her house, but this soon became too dangerous. The river was considered a natural boundary. Recalls Yvonne, “It was like a wall protecting us from being murdered, because nobody dared to cross it.”

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Linked with The Virtual Foundation.org.

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

Wang Yongchen is a journalist at China’s Central People’s Radio Station and convener of Green Earth Volunteers (GEV). She realizes the strength of the media in environmental protection, using her professional expertise to promote environmental protection. A pioneer of radio programs on environmental concerns, such as “Classroom on Wednesday” and “Journalist Salon”, she opens platforms for public education and debate, and aims to change and raise public awareness on the environment, the relationship between humans and nature, and social responsibility in the protection of nature.

She says: « I am often regarded as a woman who is building a grand environmental-protection project. But I think that I am part of nature. And I am only doing what everyone should be doing ».

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Yongchen Wang – China

She works for the Green Earth Volunteers GEV (named as member of The Virtual Foundation.org).

Wang Yongchen, native of Anhui Province, was born in Beijing in 1954. She graduated from the Library Department of Beijing University and is now a journalist for China’s Central People’s Radio Station and convener of Green Earth Volunteers (GEV), a non-governmental organization on environmental protection. Over the past 16 years, she has been active in China’s environmental protection movement in the capacity of a journalist.

It all began in 1988 after Wang worked on the stories on the hunting of wild Yaks in the Qinghai-Tibetan highland and a bird-loving primary school children in Jiangsu Province. She was deeply shocked by how people brought about the destruction of nature in the former and was impressed by the love and passion for nature in the later. This has served as the motive and the driving force for Wang’s dedication in her 16-year cause for environmental protection. She recalled, « I was really touched. From then on, environmental protection is to go to nature, to get to know nature, and make friends with nature. Only then can we live in harmony with our neighbors – animals in nature. » The children gave the lie to Wang’s belief that only rich and free undertook environmental protection. The students loved birds very much and they were very poor. The sight of some wild animals being killed in Tibet also inspired her to focus on environmental protection.

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

Born in Atar, in the mountainous region of Adrar, Azza Mint Moma (39) is well-known in her country for her struggle to liberate Mauritanian women. She claims the right of women to liberty and to freedom of choice in their life, especially in their choice of husband.

She says: « If only women united, we would be able to stop talking about injustices and human rights violations ».

She is noted as political heroe.

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sorry, no photo found (see also my comment ‘Brave women without photos‘).

Azza Mint Moma – Mauritania

Azza Mint Moma’s struggle is centered in the mountainous region of the Adrar within a very religious community that is closed to external influence and rigid in the face of world change.

Madame Azza Mint Moma was lucky enough to go to school; this was believed to be a big adventure and a great risk. Her mother, who was divorced from her father, removed her from her traditional family environment and placed her in a school against the will of the paternal family. After brilliant primary and secondary school studies, Azza specialised in computer science in Morocco.

She returned to Mauritania with her diploma and attempted to re-integrate herself into her family environment, but her reputation for an open-minded spirit and progress preceded her and she faced serious difficulties and a lack of understanding.

Azza faced resistance from traditionalist elements who saw her as a western woman trying to introduce a behavior that is foreign to them. Azza decided to take up a courageous fight against the closed minds and religious and social intolerance that, according to her, are the sources of many conflicts and injustices.

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