World People's Blog

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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