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.