Catégorie : 1000 women Peace Nobel 2005

Linked with our presentation of the Fondation pour l’innovation politique, and RAFET – Senegal, and also Finding the Law: Islamic Law.

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

Goes with ‘Assuming Authority‘.

She says: « Nothing lasting can be built without peace. »

Amsatou Sow Sidibé – Senegal

She works for the ‘Réseau Africain pour la Promotion de la Femme Travailleuse’ RAFET.

First/d’abord: Amsatou Sow Sidibe, professeur à l’Université de Dakar et membre correspondant de la Fondation pour l’innovation politique, revient sur les récents débats sur l’immigration en France et leur perception en Afrique subsaharienne / about immigration, listen to her video-interview – in french / interview en français. Téléchargez la vidéo (format mp4).

Amsatou Amsatou Sow Sidibé (52) has a doctorate in law and political science from the Université Paris II. She is a full professor and holds the Chair of Private Law at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in Dakar; she also heads the university’s Institute for Human Rights and Peace.

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Linked with our presentation of Conavigua, the ‘Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala’. And linked with our Humanitarian Text: ‘Linking Gender, Food Security and the Environment‘.

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

She says: «  »In order to guarantee the achievement of food security, it is necessary to combat the current disparities, since there are a lot of people who get sick or die because they eat a lot, and on the other hand there are millions who die because they do not have enough food. » (see FAO.org, 2002).

She says also: “My place will always be at the side of the widows, the women who carry the weight of racism on their shoulders.”

Rosalina Tuyuc Velásquez – Guatemala

She works for Conavigua, Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala.

Rosalina Tuyuc Velásquez (49) belongs to the Maya-Kaqchikel ethnic group. Orphan, wife, mother and widow, displaced and persecuted. She fights so that the Guatemalan State will admit its responsibility for the arrest, disappearance and death of thousands of Guatemalan people. She tries to overcome her terror and embraces life. She demands justice, dreams of peace, respect towards women, the well being of the indigenous people.Rosalina Tuyuc Velásquez is « a woman of maize, oak and fire. A member of the Maya-Kaqchikel ethnic group, she speaks Spanish and Kiché. She belongs to a religious agricultural family. She lives with the spirituality of the Mayans “thanks to the wisdom of the elders”.

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Linked with our NGO presentations of ‘L’APEM – Mauritanie‘, and of ‘A.D.D.F.E. – Mauritanie‘, and also of ‘AIFF / APEM – Mauritanie‘. And also linked with our presentation of the Humanitarian Text ‘Mauritania: Low HIV prevalence, widespread AIDS stigma‘, and with Economy of Mauritania.

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

Goes with ‘Assuming Authority‘.

She says: « Old age should not hinder women from helping to build their country, rather it should be seen as an asset because of all the experience that comes with it. »

Aïssata Kane – Mauritania

She works for the ‘Association pour la Protection de l’Environnement en Mauritanie (APEM)‘, and for the ‘Association Mauritanienne pour la Protection de l’Enfant et de la Femme‘, and also for the ‘Association Internationale des Femmes Francophones’.

Read some texts out of different Google Groups: Mauritania gets to grips with Aids education (March 2005); again about AIDS (February 2006); also on ‘les inégalités entre les sexes‘ (Juin 2005); and ‘sommet interréligieux sur la paix en Afrique‘ (Avril 2006); and also ‘APPEL POUR LE CHANGEMENT EN MAURITANIE‘ (Juin 2005).

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Linked with our presentation of The Medical Network for Social Reconstruction in the Former Yugoslavia, and of The Scope and Benefits of Youth Volunteering.

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

She says: « The role of mental health professionals in war-related situations is to transfer knowledge and experience to parents, teachers, and others who are working to improve the quality of a child’s life. »

Anica Mikus Kos – Slovenia

She works for the Foundation « Together, » a Regional Center for the Psychosocial Well-Being of Children.

Read first this text about Community based approaches to mental health protection in the post war situation from Anica Mikus Kos.

Read also Case Study: Therapeutic Activities in Schools for Refugee Children in Slovenia (1992-1995).

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Linked with our presentation of the Fundacion Ninez y Vida, and linked with our presentation of Ecuador’s NGOs.

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

She says: “We can only contribute to the peace in the world with human qualities.”

Blanca Campoverde – Ecuador

She works for the ‘Fundación Niñez y Vida–Tierra de Hombres Ecuador‘.

This year, she will complete 50 years of life. Thirty of them were spent educating the children of underprivileged classes. Blanca Campoverde, early orphan and adolescent mother, came from a poor family. Now she is one of the most important figures in the education sector in her country. She directs the Fundación Niñez y Vida (Childhood and Life Foundation), an organization that takes care of the education and health of children and youth.“Blanca is a very special person with a great intelligence. She has taught herself so well that people even ask her in what university she has studied. And she is so dynamic that Edmond Kaiser, the founder of the non-governmental organization Tierra de Hombres (Terre des Hommes), immediately accepted her application and made her director of the day care center he founded in Quito.”, says Florence de Goumoëns, a Swiss educator, about the Ecuadorian educator Blanca Campoverde.

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

She says: “A just peace is not achievable, nor is it sustainable without the energies, dreams, imagination and inspiration of women.”

Irene Morada Santiago – Philippines

She works for the Mindanao Commission on Women; the Mothers for Peace Movement; and the Institute for Women’s Leadership.

For 30 years, Irene Morada Santiago has been at the forefront of efforts to improve the status of women in the Philippines and the world. Starting as a grassroots organizer of minority Muslim women in southern Philippines, she has worked on issues of poverty, peace and conflict, politics and governance, empowering women so they are taken seriously and are placed in major decision-making positions. She was the executive director of the highly successful NGO Forum on Women 1995 in China, which will be remembered for its impact on the issues that confronted women at the end of the 20th century. Irene Morada Santiago still remembers the day two drunken soldiers broke into the seminar hall and opened fire with their M-16 rifles. In front of her, about 20 women and 23 children cowered for safety, terrified. “I had never seen so many scared women and children in my life,” says Irene. “And I felt responsible.” It was in the mid-1970s and at the height of the secessionist rebellion waged by the Moro National Liberation Front against the Philippine government. Martial law had been declared in 1972.

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

She says: « Considering the disastrous situation of care when I first started working here, we have made progress and to me the future looks optimistic. »

Erzsebet Turos – Romania

She is working in the Psychiatric Hospital Borsa.

Erzsebet Turos has worked as a general practitioner in a psychiatric hospital in Borsa in Cluj county, Romania, for several years. When Dr. Turos arrived, the hospital was pure horror and passive euthanasia was repeatedly taking place. Dr. Turos is highly appreciated by the 230 patients for her care and help. She has instituted occupational therapy and social activities where before there were none. Since December 2002, she has been cooperating with the German association Beclean e.V, which was founded by the staff of a psychiatric hospital in southern Germany to provide help to Romania.Erzsebet Turos has been working in the psychiatric hospital in Borsa for the past nine years. When she started to work, there were 215 chronic psychiatric patients with different diagnoses: schizophrenia, alcoholism, epilepsy and dementia. For these patients there were only two doctors: a psychiatrist who is also the general director of the hospital and another general physician, a woman who left the hospital shortly after Dr. Turos arrived. Since then, no other physician has come to work in Borsa.
The hospital is in an old castle, which belonged before the Communist era to a family of barons. It is the only chronic psychiatric hospital in Cluj county.

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Linked with our presentation of A Petition.

She says: « I told myself I had to do my best because I was the voice of the people and their suffering. I almost cried during the presentation, and time was so short, and my voice was shaking … » (Read on UNPO).

Read here about the World Pace Forum 2006 in Vancouver.

Nang Charm Tong – Burma

At age 16, Nang Charm Tong began working with human rights groups, interviewing sex workers, illegal migrants, HIV patients and rape victims. The following year, she spoke in Geneva on their behalf—and still speaks, in four languages, with the poise and confidence of a mature woman. (Read this long article on TIME).

Forum aims to give peace a chance – Thousands of delegates to spend five days in Vancouver discussing global challenges. (Read this article on NATIONAL).

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

Nang Charm Tong’s parents were so concerned for her safety in Burma that they sent their daughter across the border into Thailand at the age of 6, where she grew up in an orphanage – never to return home to Shan State. Over the years, atrocities against the Shan and other ethnic minorities by the Burmese military regime have produced a steady flow of refugees across the border. Nang Charm Tong, as witness to these women and children, began to advocate for their rights as a teenager. Now, at 23, she is a veteran activist and a winner of the 2005 Reebok Human Rights Award. (Read more on Christian Science Monitor).

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

She says: « The main objective of femLINKpacific is to bring the stories of our women and their communities to the forefront, to help promote peace and reconciliation in multi-ethnic Fiji ».

Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls – Fiji

She works for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the National Council of Women (NCW).

Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls (38) gained national prominence in Fiji by organizing, through the National Council of Women, a daily prayer vigil when government leaders were held hostage for 56 days during the 2000 coup. She now produces the monthly e-news bulletin « FemLINKpacific, » originally to give voice to women affected by the coup and a quarterly magazine « femTALK 1325 » covering women’s peace initiatives and post-conflict needs in the region and advocating for UN Security Council Resolution 1325 implementation. She also runs FemTALK 89.2FM, a monthly mobile women’s community radio service. Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls works to share Fiji women’s stories with the rest of society in the hope that her community-centered initiative, femLINKpacific, will not only increase awareness of critical social, political and economic issues, but also serve as a channel for promoting peace and national reconciliation. She takes a very hands-on approach in all aspects of the work, including developing and strengthening partnerships with other women’s organizations and like-minded NGO and civil society organizations.

Questions and Answers on Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls’s work:

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Linked with our presentation of FEDEFAM – Fighting Against Forced Disappearances.

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

She says: “Hope also feeds us. Not the hope of the foolish, but the other one”.

Guadalupe Mejía Delgado – El Salvador

She works for the Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de las Violaciones de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador Marianella Garcia Villas (Codefam).

She is a woman of the countryside, affable and sensible. Who could guess that behind her serene appearance there is a personal history of pain and loss? Defender of human rights for 22 years, her courage and determination have allowed her to open the doors of prisons and military barracks, achieving freedom for people who were opposed to the regime, during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). 13 years after the signing of the peace agreement, she still works for justice and truth, asking, “Where are the missing people?” She is Guadalupe Mejía, an untiring seeker of peace.

Guadalupe Mejía is a rural woman, born and raised in the canton of La Ceiba, in the municipality of Las Vueltas, in the administrative district of Chalatenango, in the North of El Salvador. She married Justo Mejía, when she was barely 17 years old. With him, she found love, and their nine sons and daughters were born as a product of that love.
Justo was a farmer, politically and socially aware, who taught her a way of life that she would never abandon: to defend life in the midst of a poor and repressed society. When he was murdered in November of 1977, Guadalupe continued the fight that he had begun. “Justo is my conscience”, she would say.

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