Women have a right to be involved in restoring and maintaining peace

Noeleen Heyzer of UNIFEM, speaking on 24th October 2000 at the United Nations Security Council Special Session on the role of women in maintaining international peace and security, said:

Of the 61 Special Envoys and Special Representatives of the UN Secretary General serving in peace at war functions not a single one is a woman.

I haven’t checked but I wonder how many there are today. I guarantee it won’t have changed very much.

She also said that unless a country’s constitutional, legal, judicial and electoral frameworks deal with gender equality, then no matter what happens after conflict, no matter how peaceful a transition, the entire country will never have a fair chance of development.

I couldn’t agree more.

On the same day she made this address at this most important session:

To the Honourable Members of the Security Council:

First of all my expressions of solidarity to our sisters who are partaking in this very special occasion. It saddens us that they are not to be beside you today. We have been advised that East Timorese women do not have a voice in today’s session and indeed have been effectively silenced, as the Honourable Members of the Security Council were not able to reach the required consensus as to East Timor’s participation.

From the invasion of 1975, Timorese women have contributed to all aspects of the resistance in the mountains. Timorese women were at once mothers, responsible for basic household duties and taking care of children. We assisted voluntarily the armed resistance of East Timor in the preparation of food and other natural resources for combat rations, in the making of backpacks from palm leaves for carrying munitions and washing the clothes, as well as being fighters ourselves.

Women functioned as a security watch in the free zones, taking combat rations in the free zones to be transported to the operational zones. As well as taking munitions out of the operational zones into the free zones. Women also developed literacy campaigns and cultural interchanges in the free zones.

They did lots more but these excerpts give an account of their experience at one of the most historic occasions of the UN and gives a glimpse of life under military occupation.

So where are we today and what do we need to do?

We need to survive and basic survival is still a challenge. We need to be economically independent as a nation, and then as women. First, we need a national budget that will boost our governance capacity to respond to the special needs of women and children. At present it is barely able to meet the most basic needs of the general populace.

You will have been listening to the debate about the maritime boundaries separating our two countries. Right now there are talks going on in Dili involving Dili and Canberra. Depending on the outcomes of those talks, East Timor might gain access to the resources which are rightly ours.

The government then would be able to respond to the huge needs of our people and respond to them on our own terms as a prosperous and dignified nation. Not as a poor, aid-dependent one. I invite everyone with an interest in East Timor, its women and children to visit wonderful Timor Leste to find out more about the issues that I and the Alola Foundation are grappling with, and to strengthen your commitment to working with us.