What the World Looks Like

I wrote this post mid-July. Unfortunately, the bombardment of Gaza has resumed, violence continues to rage in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere; ISIS beheaded a colleague's friend last week. It is still relevant a month later.

Today was a bad day.

Last night four young boys--someone's babies--were blown up on a beach in Gaza. This morning a Malaysian Airways 777 passenger plane was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers on board. Buddhist extremists are killing Muslims in southern Sri Lanka. Iraq is descending into civil war after a decade of occupation and conflict that has cost upwards of half a million lives.

These are the news headlines these days. But to me, they are affecting the communities--for some the families--of women I know.

That is the result of the work I do, fostering personal relationships with 44 women from 35 conflict-affected countries. We have women peacebuilders and human rights defenders from many--maybe most--of the world's hot spots, and we just selected four more.

It means the numbers aren't dry statistics, they are friends' nations, and their families. I wrote once that issues of war and peace do not take place primarily in board rooms at the UN, they take place in people's living rooms, on their soccer fields, on a beach where their children like to play.

So my reaction isn't to change the channel, or let simplistic reporting drone in one ear and out the next. It's to get on Facebook or e-mail and make sure they're OK. To tune in to the discourse, what intervention will there be? Is anyone speaking sanely? Is violence simply going to beget violence yet again?

What would foreign policy look like if the majority of the world had friends in these conflict zones? Would anger rise hotter and faster? Would the desire for revenge flow freely between borders?

Or would more people cry out for calm? Demand that their political and military leaders be more creative in their diplomacy; work harder to seek solutions.

If everyone knew the women I know--and the tens of thousands like them--the peacebuilders who are finding and implementing non-violent ways to resolve these conflicts, they might have hope. Hope that military solutions aren't always, or even often, necessary. That amping up the violence only leads to more violence. Revenge only perpetuates a cycle. It is shortsighted. And it is cowardly.

The warhawks like to perpetuate a misconception that peacebuilding is "soft." In even mainstream circles, peace is equated with idealism. Those who seek dialogue are not as tough or courageous as those who turn to military solutions in the face of violence.

But if they knew the women I know...the women who are risking their lives, and that of their families not to end these conflicts from behind the barrel of a gun, but from the equally courageous approach of speaking to "the Other." Women who are just as likely to be raped, tortured or killed by holding a meeting with families of combatants, or the combatants themselves, or the military or political leaders ordering those attacks. Women who are vilified, ostracized, targeted, not only by the enemy they are willing to approach, but by their own communities, for doing so.

If you knew these women, knew the names if their children, spouses, parents; if you knew the activities they were engaged in, if you knew they were probably in the protest that was violently suppressed, they were in meetings in the villages the drones are targeting; you would see the news differently. You would see conflict differently. You would see peace differently. 

But not only because the stakes would be higher, touch closer to the familiar, but luckily, because within these tragedies you would know there were those fighting for justice; there were those mobilizing, now, for an alternative to further violence. And those women are powerful, capable, dedicated and strong.

Even in these dark times, there is reason to hope.