Catégorie : 1000 women Peace Nobel 2005

Linked with Women Making Peace WMP.

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

Hyun-Sook Lee is the cofounder and former Executive Director of Women Making Peace, an organization established in 1997 with the goal of creating a culture of peace and reunification on the Korean peninsula. She helped open the door between North and South Korea by getting the first humanitarian aid to the North and encouraging the first people-to-people visits. Hyun-Sook is also cofounder of the Korea Women’s Hotline, which provides guidance and support to victims of domestic abuse, and which was instrumental in establishing domestic and sexual violence as criminal acts in South Korea.

She says: « We have suffered for over half a century. That is too much. We firmly believe it is now time to live together with parents, sisters, brothers, all our families, in a reunited, peaceful Korea ».

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Hyun-Sook Lee – South Korea.

She works for Women Making Peace WMP: in english, in korean; for the Council of Unification Education, and for the Global Partnership for Prevention of Armed Conflict, Northeast Asia Region GPPAC (people building peace).

Hyun-Sook Lee She seeks to open the door wider in this century and is challenging those who continue to rattle swords, both in her country and abroad. Women Making Peace is a multi-dimensional organization that views gender equality, demilitarization, denuclearization, respect for human rights, and the eventual reunification of North and South Korea as several of the necessary steps to making peace a reality. Like the organization she co-founded, Hyun-Sook is a multi-faceted and passionate activist for peace, devoted to building the women`s movement in South Korea.

This wife and mother is steadfast in her support of democratization efforts and helps to educate the international community about the plight of the Korean peninsula.

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Linked with The Afghan Independent Journalists Association, and with The price of free speech.

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

Shereen Maira Sazawar, born in Afghanistan, is a talented journalist. She writes regularly in the local newspapers on issues concerning women and human rights. She is an active member of the Women’s Council in Mazar-e-Sharif. For the past three decades Shereen has been active through the media and has also penned numerous poems in Dari and Uzbeki. She has recently written an article in a local newspaper about the grievous condition of women and the degrading attitude of the warlords towards them, thus risking her life and attracting accusations of blasphemy by the religious extremists.

She says: « Peace is the continuation of life … Peace is life ».

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Shereen Sazawar – Afghanistan

She works for the Journalist Association of Afghanistan JAA, for the Women’s Council in Mazar-e-Sharif, and for the Independent Writers Association IWA. No one of these associations was found, but see below some links for Afghan women and Afghan Journalists).

Maria Shereen Sazawar was born in 1956 in Emam Sahib Village of Sar-e-Pil province. She received her early education at Mirman Khatool girls’ school. Due to her family’s unstable financial conditions she could not pursue her higher education.

But, later she joined the work in a local newspaper and for 28 yaers she has been an eminent journalist and correspondent for the Balkh Print Media. She also wrote several poems in both Dari and Uzbeki languages. All her poems are about peace, love, patriotism, ending of violence against women and peaceful coexistence. Many of her poems and articles are printed in several local and national newspapers and magazines.

During the Taliban era, that banned the education of girls and women, she was involved in providing home schooling for girls and women, which put her life at grave risk from the Taliban guerrillas. She has been selected as representative of women from Balkh area to both the Emergency Loya Jriga and Constitution loya Jirga.

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

Ayse Düzkan, born in 1959, is one of the first feminist activists and writers in Turkey and has been active in various campaigns for women’s rights: in the peace struggle after 1990, as a journalist on war crimes and women’s issues among the Kurds, with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) on the Peace Train from Helsinki to Beijing, and the Peace Tent in the NGO Forum in 1995. She has been in and written about post-war Bosnia and Albania, as well as the Women in Black in Serbia and the Balkans. And she has also been active against the war in Iraq.

Listen her in turkish on the video: Sisli Direnis evi imza gunu, 9.05 min, December 27, 2006.

She is also a political heroe.

Ayse believes peace is possible only through struggle. She hopes to find a future where women are not oppressed and exploited, and she hopes to find equality, freedom, and justice in that future.

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Ayse Düzkan – Turkey

She works for the Women’s Foundation for Culture and Communication,
and for Pazartesi (Monday newspaper).

Ayse Duzkan started working in a trade union of health workers after she finished high school. The next year she started as a journalist on labor issues in a daily which was closed down after the coup d’etat in Turkey in 1980.

She was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for several months. In 1984 she joined the first feminist group in Turkey and is one of the founders of the feminist movement there, always active in the movement and in various related campaigns.

She is one of the founders and writers of the first feminist magazine in Turkish, Feminist. She was also founder of Pazartesi, a feminist monthly that has been published for ten years. Ayse has also worked in the women’s peace movement in Turkey, and on building contacts with women who work for peace in other countries.

In 1995, she went to the NGO Forum in Beijing via the Peace Train organized by the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom. She participated in many conferences for peace in Turkey, many organized by women.

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

Pervin Buldan’s political life began when her husband was murdered on 3 June 1994. This killing alerted her to the dirty war waged in Turkey. She first joined the Saturday Mothers, the relatives of those who had disappeared. She then worked at Mag-der, an association to assist these relatives, which was subsequently closed by the state. In spite of many difficulties, Yakay-der, the Center of Support and Solidarity for the Family Members of Forcibly Disappeared People was founded in 2002, and Pervin became president. She is also the mother of two children.

She says: « Our struggle is hard and full of sorrow. But there are instances that give so much power and hope. These moments let us stand up again after having fallen down ».

Listen her speak on this turkish video: DTP’li vekilin arabasıyla uyuşturucu ticareti, 3.03 min, January 02, 2008.

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Pervin Buldan – Turkey

She works for The Center of Support and Solidarity for the Family Members of Forcibly Disappeared People (named on Amnesty International),
/Yakay-der.

She was born on 6 November 1967 in the southeastern province of Hakkari, Turkey. There she grew up, went to school and started to work as an official in the local government administration department. At the age of 19, she married her cousin Savas Buldan. The couple moved from the eastern part of the country to the western metropolis of Istanbul in 1990, where Pervin Buldan was a full-time housewife. There, Pervin’s husband became a well-known Kurdish businessman, who was well liked because of his willingness to help oppressed people. One year later, Pervin’s first child, Necirvan, was born.

In 1993, her life turned into chaos after the former Prime Minister of Turkey, Tansu Ciller, made a speech declaring that the government had a list of businessmen supporting the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) whom they would hold accountable. After that speech, Savas received a series of threatening telephone calls. The period of “killings by unidentified murderers” against businessmen, including Savas Buldan, began.

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Lucía Willis Paau was battling against cancer, she has passed away. Sorry, I found no where indicated any date.

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

She was a Guatemalan woman, the worthy heiress of two great ancestral cultures: the Maya Q’eqchi (direct descendents of the Mayans) and the Garífuna (descendents of former African slaves). During her life, Lucía Willis Paau (46) had played many roles: nurse’s aide, researcher, social worker, mother, and defender of human rights. From her mother, she learned to fight. She had faced poverty, discrimination and marginalization, but she never forgot her origins. Lucía had an unbreakable fighting spirit. She weaved her life with threads of work and hope.

She said: « My life is hope ».

She said also: “If one wants to overcome adversity, one must make sacrifices”.

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Lucía Willis Paau – Guatemala (1959 – x)

She worked for Foundation of the Mayan Woman of the North (Funmmayan).

Forged through constant effort, persistence and sharing an interest in women’s causes, Lucia Willis Paau was a blend of two ancestral cultures: the Maya-q’eqchí’ (direct descendents of the Mayans) and the Garífuna (descendents of former African slaves that lived on the island of San Vicente in the Lower Antilles, during the 17th and 18th centuries; afterwards, they populated the Atlantic coast of Central America).

She went through many difficulties during her childhood. Her father, Stanley Willis, died when she was very young; her mother, Josefa Paau, had a great influence on Lucia’s development. From her mother, Lucia learned the responsibilities of managing a household, how to care for the animals and the crops, how to gather firewood, carry water, make tortillas, wash clothes, and cook. She also learned how to weave the cloth that she sold in the market.

The Mayan-q’eqchí’ culture was prevalent in her development. Her grandmother and her mother passed on the values that are reflected in all aspects of her life – organizational, philosophical, spiritual, and social; the respect for sacred places, for older people, for women and for harmony with nature and the universe. “She told me that when a woman could not make tortillas, she had to make tortillas at night, in front of grandmother moon and ask for help to make round tortillas. From the stars, one can ask them to guide us to find our gifts: our talents and our destiny.”

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

Zuleikhan Bagalova is a leading actress of the Chechen theater. She holds the titles People’s Actress of Checheno-Ingushetia and Distinguished Actress of the Russian Federation. For her theatrical achievements, she was awarded the order Symbol of Honor. Zuleikhan already began her social activities in Soviet times. She was three times elected to the Supreme Council of Chechen-Ingushetia. Since 1995, she has been directing the LAM Center which focuses on reviving Chechen culture, providing humanitarian aid, and taking a stand against the war in Chechnya.

She says: « Those trying to conceal the truth about Chechnya do their best also to conceal the fact that the activities of the human rights organizations are anti-war rather than anti-Russian ».

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Sorry, I can not find any photo of Zuleikhan Bagalova in the internet.

She works for the LAM–Center for Complex Research and Popularization of Chechen Culture.

Zuleikhan Bagalova was born on 2 June 1945 in Kara-Balta in Kazakhstan. Her father Mutush Ginaevich Bagalov was a veteran of World War II, who, after having been seriously wounded, was demobilized from the army in 1943. He then worked in the military procurement service.

Zuleikhan has three children. The daughter with her two children is currently permanently living in Norway. Her eldest son is working in the Theater-Museum “Bakhrushin” in Moscow. The youngest son is a student.

After having finished secondary school in 1961, Zuleikhan Bagalova enrolled in the Grozny Theater Studio, which she finished in 1963.

She worked in the Chechen Drama Theater “Kh.Nuradilov” from 1961 to 1997. She completed a distant learning course as actress at Moscow Lunacharskiy State Institute of Drama Art.

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also called: Yoon, Keum-Soon

Linked with Via Campesina.org, International Peasant Movement,
with Ha-Joon Chang, South Korea & England, with Heisoo Shin, South Korea, and with Sook-Im Kim, South Korea.

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

One of the founders of the Korea Women Farmers Association KWFA, Geum-Soon Yoon has helped to place women and farmers in the forefront of her country’s reunification movement. Educated as an environmental engineer, Geum-Soon worked within the farmers’ movement to improve the lives of the poor farmers. As vice-president of KWFA, she was instrumental in making the historic first reunification conference between North and South Korean farmers a success. Geum-Soon is a sharp critic of globalization policies that negatively affect farmers’ rights and the environment.

She says: « Most women neither possess land nor have the right of joint possession. They are excluded from education and training, buying machinery, financial support. Only their husbands have these rights ».

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Geum-Soon Yoon, also called: Yoon, Keum-Soon – South Korea

She works for Reunification Solidarity; for the Korea Women Farmers Association KWFA: also named on Wiser Earth, address: Korea Women Farmers Association KWFA, Sambo Building 303, Yanjae-Dong, 247-4, Seocho-ku, Seoul, Korea 137 130; and for Via Campasina. (See also: Members of La Via Campesina).

She writes: She told she was extremely happy when she picked up green peppers which was going to be her own name product. Changes in the farming area encourage her to work pleasedly. When the plants got desease or when the products were sold at a very cheap price, she had a broken heart. Nevertheless, the heart-breaking incident reversed a courage to her. She asked other women farmers to put her own name as a producer, but it caused to a couple-quarreling in such a conservative agricultural society. Even the women farmers’ meeting was often blocked by their husbands. Generally speaking, the main female farmers’ issue to be solved is a welfare thing. However, the most important problem raised by Yoon, Keum-soon is that women should be regarded as major farmers. Of course, the welfare issue is also important. Because of lack of child-care facilities, children are ignored and mothers are easily tired by double day works. Most of female farmers suffer in a poor health condition … (full text).

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Linked with Religious Ideology and Social Control: Abortion and the Catholic Church., and with PLANetWIRE.org.

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

Maria José Rosado Nunes (1945) was the first Brazilian nun to publicly criticize the sexist attitudes of the Catholic church’s progressive wing. In the beginning of the 1980s, she contested left-wing religious authorities who “used to fight against poverty and for social justice, but not against the prohibition of women’s right to become priests and not for women’s sexual and reproductive rights.” After leaving the church, she founded in Brazil an organization called Católicas pelo Direito de Decidir (Catholics for the Right to Decide).

She says: « Mass is an offense against women since a man, to celebrate it, has to be apart from them. It constantly shows women as Eve, the one who brought disgrace, sin ».

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Maria José Rosado Nunes /Sister Zeca – Brazil

She works for Católicas pelo Direito de Decidir CDD /Catholics for the Right to Decide (named in the Letter to President Hu Jintao, and on Popline.org).

She says also: « For me, Beijing was deeply moving. I experienced that meeting as a singular historic moment. Thousands of women from all over the world, gathered in a distant Asian country—distant at least relative to Brazil, where I come from. The variety of colors, faces, languages, ways of dressing and behaving—Should we hug? Should we kiss? Should we put our hands together as if in prayer and bow our heads? Countless ways of greeting one another. We were different. Even in our ways of thinking and expressing our ideas and dreams about feminism ». (full text).

Prostitutes of Barra do Mendes, a city in the hinterland of Bahia, used to live on Palha Street. To go from her house to the school where she would give classes, the newly arrived nun Maria José Rosado Nunes had two options: walking down that street or going all the way round the church square. The advice was pretty obvious: take the longer way.

Sister Zeca, as she was known, took a decision upon which she has based her life and that made her, years later, leave the Church: saying “no” to any kind of discrimination against women: Zeca made friends among the women of Palha Street.

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

Jeanne Gacoreke (49) is a teacher in Bujumbura. She helps orphans and widows of war and sexually abused women, fights poverty and reintegrates refugees within the country and those from abroad. In her Maison d’écoute, victims of war and sexual violence receive physical and psychological help and legal advice. Thanks to her initiative, the local radio has been presenting women’s personal stories about rape, thereby raising the public awareness on their plight. Jeanne is trained in psycho-pedagogy, peaceful conflict resolution and modern communication technology.

She says: « My dream is slowly becoming reality. At last rape victims are finding a way out of shame and silence. They are speaking up ».

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Sorry, I can not find any photo of Jeanne M. Gacoreke, Burundi in the internet (see also my comment ‘Brave women without photos‘).

She works for Union des Groupements et Association pour la Promotion de la Femme (named on Urgent Action Fund, scroll down).

Her village, a poor quarter on the outskirts of Bujumbura, has been destroyed four times in the last ten years. Each time the village has been rebuilt. Twice she had to take a bank loan to rebuild her own house. After the fourth attack, she remained in exile in order to spare her children the sight of dead bodies. But she helped the women of the village to rebuild their homes and eventually returned.

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

Xie Lihua was born in 1951 in Chanyi County, Shandong Province. In 1969, she served in the military before she began to move towards a career as a journalist and development worker. In 1985, she became editor and reporter for China Women’s Daily and, eight years later, its deputy editor-in-chief. The same year, she founded China’s first magazine for rural women, Rural Women Know All. Alongside, she developed a series of programs for rural women that included literacy courses, micro financing and reproductive health.

She says: « I hope for the day when the whole nation will be mobilized to support the survival and development of rural women and they will no longer be on the margins ».

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Lihua Xie – China

She works for the (All-) China’s Women’s Federation, the China daily and Chinese women on DANWEI, and the Rural Women Know All magazine (on informa wolrd).

Even before she turned forty, the fabric of Xie Lihua’s life was woven with words. During her eight years at China Women’s Daily, she rose through the ranks from reporter to editor, to department director, to editorial board member, to deputy editor-in-chief. After forty, Rural Women Know All seeped into her veins. She worked on this magazine day and night, as if obsessed.

In the summer of 1992, Xie Lihua visited her hometown in Shandong where she had lived until the age of five. She felt a renewed sense of connection with her “roots” and she said, “In my adulthood, I have become one of Beijing’s residents, but the moment I set foot on the soil of my hometown, I hear the rich village sounds and taste our local food, I truly feel that my roots are still deep in the earth of the village”.

China remains an agricultural nation and 70 per cent of its women live in rural areas. After fourteen years of military life and eight years in the media, Xie Lihua came to the sudden realization that she did not understand her country or her countrywomen. Therefore, at a time when everyone was fighting to join the wave of commercialism and partner with the corporate world, Xie opened herself a door to the villages.

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