Conflict Prevention
Training Seminar for Camp Supervisors
Student Meeting - Social Sciences
Parliamentarians for Peace
In 2007, the cost of the war in Iraq hit $1.2 trillion—far more than the Pentagon’s original $50 billion estimate. In 2007, 11.4 million refugees crossed borders to escape conflict and persecution, more than half of whom fled Iraq or Afghanistan.
From 2004-2007, in post-conflict Congo, 45,000 people a month died of hunger and disease, despite an infusion of peacekeeping forces and billions of dollars in international aid. In 2007, the cost of war was easy to tally, but preventing future conflicts seemed as difficult as ever.
At the EastWest Institute, there was a growing sense that true international conflict prevention was prevented by a lack of political will. In 2007, under the direction of Ambassador Ortwin Hennig, EWI established the International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy, which in turn created something completely new: a network of lawmakers working across borders to make conflict prevention “real.”
On October 8, 2008, the task force launched the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention and Human Security. German MP Angelika Beer and Zimbabwe MP Kabwe Zitto were elected as the first co-chairs of the network, which initially included 50 parliamentarians from 25 countries. From the beginning, the Network worked to connect and empower parliamentarians to advocate in their own governments—and for each other.
“We will support our colleagues in countries across the world in their efforts to bring peace and stability to their region,” Beer and Zitto told the media.
In the years that followed, the Network worked to bring conflict prevention onto legislative floors, convening debates on conflict prevention at the German Bundestag and in the U.K. House of Lords, and played a vital role in the U.K. Parliament’s decision to annualize the conflict prevention debate. Keeping its promise to work across borders, the Network directed its efforts in 2010 to a group of lawmakers in in special need of support: Afghan women parliamentarians.
To help give women a voice in Afghanistan’s peace and security processes, the Network and EWI convened Afghan women parliamentarians and their peers from Pakistan, neighboring countries and the West in the European Parliament. At the conference, the highlight for many attendees was the rare chance of hearing Afghan lawmakers describe their experiences in person.
“The first time I met an Afghan female MP was in Brussels,” says Donia Aziz, a member of the Pakistani Parliament. “I didn't meet them in Islamabad because our female colleagues are never part of visiting delegations. That is something that the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention can do, provide the platform for us to get together, to share experience and work together.”
In 2011, the Parliamentarians will help facilitate a dialogue between Afghan and Pakistani lawmakers. This process will not only help women from both countries learn from each other, it will help build bilateral trust in this volatile region—one parliamentarian at time.
Bridging Ancient Divides
Founded in the lush Tisza River valley by EWI in 1994, as the next step in developing the Carpathian Euro-region, the Carpathian Foundation assists local institutions and governments by encouraging democratization and sustainable economic development.
The Foundation also promotes cross-border assistance programs and helps cement inner-ethnic partnerships. The Foundation operates out of its headquarters in Budapest, Hungary and has regional offices in provincial towns in Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine.
In its first six years of operation, the Foundation gave out more than $3.2 million to over 450 local governments and nongovernmental organizations in response to their needs and requests. In the past few years, the organization has worked on a diverse number of issues, including local development of the NGO sector in Hungary, decentralizing the post-communist bureaucracy in Poland, promoting youth group activities in Romania, resolving environmental problems in Slovakia and sponsoring programs for social, cultural and economic development in Ukraine. It is of significant credit to the Carpathian Foundation that it has achieved financial self-sufficiency, employs local staff and exhibits a remarkable sense of camaraderie.
The Carpathian Foundation presents the international community with a bold, proactive model for other troubled regions where long-term suspicions and hostilities have hindered peace, ethnic cooperation and economic progress. By ensuring a higher quality of life and a better standard of living for the inhabitants of the Carpathian Euro-region, the Foundation bestows hope to future generations for continuing peace and prosperity.
EWI spun off the Carpathian Foundation on December 31, 1999. This is part of an on-going commitment by the EWI Board to build local capacities and spin-off successful centers so that EWI can move into other areas that need it the most. There are independent centers today in Budapest and Warsaw as well as the Carpathian Foundation in Kosice that were once EWI centers. This "greenhouse" practice is an important part of the EWI mission.
Stabilizing New Frontiers
It began with an urgent phone call. Roman Kuzniar, then Director of Strategy and Policy Planning of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland, was attending an OSCE conference.
The caller informed him that demonstrations had broken out in front of the Hungarian Embassy in Bucharest, and that the protests were in response to the new "secret accords" Roman had drafted between Poland and Hungary. These "secret accords" were in actuality nothing more than an article in a scholarly journal promoting regional cooperation, but when a reporter published the article in the Hungarian press with additional commentary by media outlets in Budapest, a misperception was given that a tacit alliance had formed between Poland and Hungary to divide up the Carpathian Region—the mountainous border region of Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania.
The panicked feedback from some Romanian officials might seem curious in the West, but in a region whose borders have shifted to and fro over the centuries, often at the expense of minorities, such visceral reactions are not surprising. Out of this commotion and confusion, however, came an understanding that the post-socialist harmony was clearly fragile, and spontaneously Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Romanian officials started serious discussions.
By the late spring of 1992, EWI had already deployed staff in this border region and was serving as the Secretariat of the Carpathian Euroregion. That effort would later lead to a decision of the C.S. Mott Foundation to partner with EWI in creating the highly successful Carpathian Foundation.
The Transfrontier Cooperation Programme (TFCP) operated on the EWI philosophy that lasting peace and stability will only become possible when democratic principles and values are actively promoted and have successfully taken root throughout the region. By encouraging local development and the building of transnational institutions, TFCP helped provide common visions and strategies to facilitate economic development, nurture future leaders, and initiate cross-border networks. By working with local governments and NGOs, TFCP demonstrated that in even the most troubled settings, quantitative and qualitative measures can be taken to ensure a respect for human rights and improve transnational cooperation. At that time, Kaliningrad-Lithuania- Poland and Pskov-Estonia-Latvia were focal points for TFCP, along with additional projects in the Balkans.
Women and Post-2014 Afghanistan
Women and Post-2014 Afghanistan: Report on Afghanistan Parliamentarians’ Visit to Brussels, a new report from the EastWest Institute, highlights the importance of protecting the rights of women in Afghanistan after the pullout of foreign troops.
Under the auspices of EWI’s Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention and its work on women, peace and security, the delegation, two-thirds of them women, took part in high-level meetings in Brussels’ most prominent institutions. The Afghan delegation’s goal was to promote their role in international political bodies and to engage in discussions on peace and security with regard to the future of Afghanistan.
EWI’s Vice President and Ambassador-at-Large Beate Maeder-Metcalf declared: “With the planned troop withdrawal from Afghanistan coming up soon, it is vital that any political changes do not jeopardize the rights of women that are now mandated by the constitution.”
In their meetings, the visiting parliamentarians emphasized that even if the constitution were to be revised post-2014, the rights of women must continue to be explicitly guaranteed. “Women’s rights cannot be used as a bargaining chip with the Taliban,” the report asserted.
The visit of the parliamentarians took place from October 8-12, 2012. That same week, the Taliban tried to kill 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in the Swat Valley. Yousafzai was shot in the head simply because she was standing up for the right of all girls to get an education. The attack exemplifies the brutality girls and women face as they struggle to secure their most basic freedoms in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The release of this report coincides with the 5th Anniversary of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention, which mobilizes members in parliaments across the globe to find pioneering ways to prevent and end conflicts. For more information on the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention, please visit: www.parliamentariansforconflictprevention.net
Other reports in this series:
> Women, Peace and Security, 2012
> Forging New Ties, 2011
> A New Voice for Afghan Women, 2011
Women, Peace and Security
On April 14-16, 2012, the EastWest Institute, in partnership with the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus (WPC) of the National Assembly of Pakistan, arranged for the first official delegation of Pakistani women parliamentarians to visit Afghanistan. This ground-breaking visit is described in the publication Women, Peace and Security, released today in anticipation of the institute's annual awards dinner honoring two of the parliamentarians who took part in this dialogue. On September 27th, EWI will present its distinguished leadership award to Dr. Fehmida Mirza, the first woman speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan, and Ms. Shinkai Karokhail, a renowned women’s rights activist and member of the Afghan Parliament.
Over the course of their visit, the parliamentarians discussed issues related to reconciliation with the Taliban and regional economic cooperation with Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; Masoom Stanikzai, Advisor to the President on Internal Security and Head of the Secretariat for Afghanistan's High Peace Council; Zalmai Rassoul, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan; Haji Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, the Speaker of the Lower House; and members of the Wolesi Jirga Commission on Women’s Affairs, Civil Society and Human Rights.
In the meeting with President Karzai, the Afghan leader declared: “This initiative is of immense importance to both countries and a great sign of a better future.” He called for more contacts between women parliamentarians in both countries, saying that such visits are “instrumental in strengthening of trust-building between the two nations.”
Click here to read more coverage of the Kabul visit.
Forging New Ties
During their two-day visit to Islamabad in June 2011, the Afghan delegates and their Pakistani peers met with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Speaker of the House Dr. Fehmida Mirza. They also agreed on a plan for a regular, ongoing dialogue between Afghan and Pakistani women parliamentarians.
“Such a dialogue will open a new channel for building trust between the two countries,” said Guenter Overfeld, EWI Vice President and Director of Regional Security. “It will also give Afghan women politicians much-needed support at a crucial time.”
After being disenfranchised by the Taliban, Afghan women regained the right to hold office in 2004, but they still struggle to play a significant political role. Although women hold 68 seats in the Afghan Parliament, in part thanks to a constitutionally-mandated quota, they are often confined to “soft” issues like education and excluded from peace-and-security processes.
Participants called for women to take an active role in ongoing reconciliation efforts with the Taliban. “Women must be in the negotiations,” said Afghan MP and High Peace Council member Gulalei Nur Safi. “We do not want to lose the achievements that we’ve made in these ten years.”
Participants suggested that, to bolster their political position, Afghan women parliamentarians should revive the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, looking to the successful Pakistani model as an example of how this can be done effectively.
They also called for Afghan and Pakistani lawmakers to work closely on a range of security issues in the region, with an emphasis on fostering sustainable development and inviting private investment in the volatile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
In his meeting with the Afghan delegates, documented in the report, Zardari offered his full-fledged support for an ongoing dialogue. “Bringing together women of the region will make this region more tolerant, more peaceful and more secure,” he declared.
*
On October 3-5, 2011, EWI and the World Customs Organization will host the 8th Worldwide Security Conference in Brussels, which includes a session on Collective Security in Southwest Asia. Click here to learn more.
Pages
