Mois : août 2007

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

She says: « A world without women’s participation in decision-making processes at all levels has no future ».

She says also: « I have particularly fond memories of a conference of the Hague Appeal for Peace (HAP), which took place in May 1999. This big meeting of civil society organizations advocated the rejection of war as a tool of solving international and national conflicts. What was so special about this event?

Firstly, it celebrated the 100th anniversary of the First Hague Peace Conference, which was held in 1899 on the initiative of the Russian Tsar Nikolay II. And all of us – the members of the Russian delegation of about 150 people from different NGOs and regions of Russia – were proud of having such a vivid tradition of peace in the history of our country.

Secondly, we met with the HAP president and well-known peace activist Cora Weiss. We had already met this fascinating and charismatic woman-leader at previous peace meetings in Moscow, New-York, and Copenhagen. Her enthusiasm and hope that we can change the world and make it a better place always proves contagious ».

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Natalya Berezhnaya – Russian Federation

She works for Ravenstvo i mir–ARM (Equality and Peace),
for Zhenschiny Moskvy (Women of Moscow),
and for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF.

Dr. Natalya Berezhnaya was just twelve years old when she and her family were evacuated from Stalingrad to the small town of Krasny Kut during World II. Everyone was suffering from hunger. One day, her mother, whom she describes as a very kind and gentle person, gave a captured German soldier a piece of bread. Some women, who were witnessing this, exclaimed angrily: « They kill our husbands and sons! » Yet they were silenced and shamed when her mother replied calmly: « But they are also somebody’s husbands and children ».

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

She says: « Women should have the same rights as men. I teach the Koran to illiterate women, and I hope they will keep an open mind, and learn to think ».

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Meihua Jin – China

She works for ther Wunan Mosque, Wuzhong city, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Jin Meihua was born in 1964. She was able to complete only her primary school education. Her family was too poor to support her to go to high school, even though she got a good result. She was very disappointed at this injustice and kept asking why it was so. This power of questioning became the driving force behind her desire to be a learner and a teacher.

Jin got married when she was only eighteen. She has two daughters and one son. Jin worked very hard to be a responsible wife and mother. She did farm work, took care of the children, cooked meals and washed clothes. Yet, she found that women and men were not equal in reality, although women’s rights were laid down in the Chinese Constitution. The traditional patriarchal concepts still operated in daily life. For example, her husband required her to stay at home and to give up any plan for further studies, but Jin firmly made up her mind: “I want to learn and women should have the same rights as men.”

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Linked with The Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre.

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

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Lesley Ann Foster – South Africa

She works for the Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre.
Anu Pillay, Ashoka Representative, says about her: « I admire her for her perseverance and her capacity to keep this issue in the mainstream, in a society where too often women fall through the cracks”.

Lesley Ann Foster was born and raised in East London, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. She attended state-operated schools which, under the apartheid structure, were under-funded and academically inferior to those attended by privileged white students. Lesley began her career as a salesperson and design consultant for a firm in Cape Town. While doing marketing in another commercial firm, she pioneered the tele-sales concept, for which she received an award of excellence in 1990. She also earned national recognition as « Most Improved Sales Person of the Year » in 1991.

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

She says: « I dream of a world where we do not have plans for equality, because equality already exists, a world where each individual has rights, just for the sake of being born. I dream of a world where one is not judged by his or her sexual orientation, race or nationality ».

She says also: “You notice this reality that envelops you and one day you get up angry, seeing that, as a woman, you do not get same access to resources, your salary is smaller and you are relegated to the traditional role of housewife. At school nobody mentions women, there are no role models for women, and those that exist are usually transformed into stepmothers, fairies or witches, or we are saved by men, the so-called ‘real’ heroes”.

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Montserrat Sampere Martín – Spain

She works for the San Fermín Project Association.

And she says: “For a woman who is mistreated or for an unemployed immigrant the best kind of help comes from someone nearby, having a coffee with them and discussing calmly, rather than meeting with them in an office in front of a computer”.

In the global village there are thousands of examples of quiet work, like that accomplished by Montserrat Sampere. In the marginal neighborhood of San Fermín, she carries out her work in an effort romote equality and change her local environment.

In the slums of Madrid, there are strikes, a lack of public services, drugs and domestic violence.

The social friction is palpable and the members of the community are often marginalized and sent off into institutional oblivion.

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Linked with The Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis ISH.

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

She says: « The death penalty is a precondition for war in any country ».

She writes: « I came to stay as Fellow-in-Residence at NIAS for five months, and was then granted another semester in January. This made it possible for me to complete more work than originally planned and presented in my application. As one of the editors on the project of rewriting comparative histories of literary cultures in Central and Eastern Europe (section Figural Nodes), I was able to commission and edit a total of 22 studies and to write my own contributions to this and to the other three sections. During the first five months, I edited a collection of articles in the Anthropology of the Ancient Worlds, translated from French. On the initiative of the Dean of ISH (Ljubljana), the initially planned introduction grew into a book on the impact of historical anthropology on Ancient studies, its problems, history and reception in the region. The book was published in April 2000 … (full text).

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Svetlana Slapsak – Slovenia

She works for the Ljubljana Graduate School of Humanities: in english, and in slovenscina.
and for the ‘Balkan Women Against War’ (not found on the net).

Born in Belgrade on 18 January 1948, Svetlana Slapsak received her MA and PhD degrees in historical linguistics and classical studies at the University of Belgrade. Her political activism began during the 1968 student movement and she was subjected to beatings, police harassment. Her passport was confiscated for eight years.

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She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.She says: « The children of Kosovo need to move away from the constant violence. We will do what it takes to bring peace to our communities. We are the future, and the future is in our hands ».

She says also: « I wanted peace because…I never had peace in my life. That’s why I said I wanted something, and most of the children there also wanted something, but they didn’t know what they wanted because they didn’t know what peace, tolerance, reconciliation, children’s rights were. You know, they didn’t know what that means for them ». (full text).

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Fatmire Feka – Serbia

She works for ‘Kids for Peace’. In the internet you may find: Kids for Peace.com; KidsForPeace.org; KidsPeace.org; peace for kids.org; peace corps kids world; peace4kids; PeaceKids.com; teach kids peace; kids for peace camp; … etc.

Fatmire Feka (17) is a Muslim Albanian girl from an ethnically divided town. In 1999, she lost a brother and a sister in the war in Kosovo and her family’s house was set on fire. She is a member of her town’s Council for Peace and Tolerance.

Her family was temporarily relocated to a transit shelter for internally displaced people (IDPs), managed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) World Vision International, in the city of Mitrovica, where they lived for seven months.

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