2009 Women PeaceMakers

Marta Benavides of El Salvador Marta Benavides of El Salvador is one of the surviving activists from the original group of human rights and peace advocates who began their work during the 1970s and the rising climate of repression. A leader of an ecumenical revolution focused on bringing peace to her country, the ordained pastor who chose “to live and not die for the revolution” has been bringing people at all levels – politics, the arts, law enforcement, agriculture and food security, environment, religion and labor – together to defend human rights and develop a culture of peace.

During the early 1980s, Benavides was head of the Ecumenical Committee for Humanitarian Aid, a group sponsored by her close friend Archbishop Oscar Romero to support victims of violence. With the committee, she established the first refugee centers for people displaced by the violence. Almost two years after Romero’s assassination, Benavides went into exile and worked for the next decade from Mexico and the United States to bring an end to the war in her home country. With Ecumenical Ministries for Development and Peace, she developed programs to promote understanding and reconciliation among peoples and groups and end intra- and inter-family violence. She also built networks of international solidarity for a negotiated peaceful political solution to the conflict in El Salvador.

In 1992 after the peace accords were signed, Benavides returned home and founded the International Institute for Cooperation Amongst Peoples, also known as the Institute for the 23rd Century, which promotes the values of a culture of peace through a variety of programs. She established community training centers and continues to travel throughout the country conducting workshops on, among other topics, sustainable agriculture, human rights and the prevention of community and family violence, particularly violence against women and children. Her efforts have led to extensive collaboration with the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, secular and ecumenical networks and numerous other partners, and in 2005 she was one of the 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Benavides has dedicated her life to rebuilding communities devastated by war and has brought renewal, both figurative and literal, to formerly scorched earth.

Rubina Feroze Bhatti of Pakistan Rubina Feroze Bhatti, born into a Christian family in the majority Muslim country of Pakistan, protects the rights of women who are targets of honor killings, acid attacks and other forms of violence. She is a founding member and general secretary of Taangh Wasaib Organization (TWO), a rights-based development group working for communal harmony and equality through its many programs addressing issues of violence against women, religious intolerance and sectarianism and discriminatory laws and policies against women and minorities. Bhatti trains women’s groups to

report on violence against women, supports victims with counseling and legal aid and works with media to bring attention to these issues.

Bhatti’s peacemaking story began when she wrote an article condemning the imprisonment and torture of a Christian Pakistani man unjustly accused of blasphemy. Her words inspired human rights activists all over the country to raise their voices against the sentence, and Bhatti joined them in creating a campaign that ultimately saved the man’s life. She has since devoted her energy to human rights activism in various forms.

With TWO, Bhatti works to abolish separate electorates which prevent non-Muslims from voting. In 2000 and 2001, the organization launched a massive campaign for religious minorities to boycott local elections. The campaign was successful and the government restored the joint electorate system. Bhatti also has established educational and healthcare facilities for children working in Pakistan’s carpet-weaving industry, written scripts for theater productions on human rights and peace issues that were performed throughout the Punjab and North West Frontier Provinces, and been selected as one of the 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. As a woman in the religious minority who lives in the rural and underdeveloped city of Sargodha, Bhatti and her work challenge the traditions and rituals shaped by a patriarchal society.

Zeinab Mohamed Blandia Tutu of Sudan Zeinab Blandia, a Muslim peacemaker from Sudan, has been described as a “point person” for creating community and maintaining peace in the Nuba Mountains, one of the most conflict-affected and neglected regions of the world. She is the founder and director of Ruya, or “Vision,” an organization based both in Kadugli in the south and Omdurman in the north, where she trains and cultivates fellow “women peace ambassadors.”

Uprooted from her home in the 1980s because of the war between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), Blandia lived among other displaced people in Omdurman, across the Nile River from Khartoum. There, the displaced from opposing sides of the conflict often became “next-door neighbors,” which prompted Blandia to establish the Tabag Alsalam, or “Tray of Peace,” where women from different regions and diverse cultures prepared traditional meals and invited other groups to eat and “debate peacefully” the issues that were being fought over in the distant battlefield. The initial small group of women grew to include 45 groups from across Sudan.

Blandia has since taken her skills in community conflict resolution and dialogue back to the Nuba Mountains and expanded the work of Ruya. Ruya’s Social Solidarity Fund develops the economic skills of women through traditional group activities and contemporary modes such as savings accounts. The solidarity groups include Trust Committees which identify conflict issues and engage in peacebuilding at the community level. Blandia also initiated the program “Women Bridging,” which involves exchange visits between communities in government-controlled Kadugli and those in SPLM-controlled Kauda in South Kordofan State. The latest Ruya project involves training illiterate women in solar engineering and transferring that technology to other regions of Sudan that are outside the reach of government electricity services. With other women and men in the rugged terrain of the Nuba Mountains, Blandia is leading the renewal of civil society and indigenous conflict resolution methods, as well as the quest for reconciliation.

 

Liza Llesis Saway of the Philippines Liza Llesis Saway is an indigenous peacemaker in Mindanao in the Philippines, where Moros (Muslims), Christian settlers and indigenous peoples co-exist amidst several armed groups fighting the government army. She is known as Bai Nanapnay, a name given to the woman leader of the Talaandig indigenous community; her work is based on “the understanding of the harmonious relationships of plants, animals, human beings and the spirits.”

A founder of Talaandig Mothers for Peace and the wife of a tribal chief, Saway has been leading the quest for the rights of the tribe to self-determination and self-governance in their ancestral domain, where their families have lived for centuries. Through her leadership, the Talaandig women are empowered and have equal opportunities in the decision-making processes of their tribe. The group documents indigenous methods of conflict resolution that have proved effective in settling family and intra-tribal discord. Saway also led the establishment of the Talaandig School for Living Traditions in Bukidnon Province, which promotes indigenous arts, music and dance and where children are taught the values and traditions of the tribe, thus preserving the culture heritage of the Talaandig people.

Saway has also emerged as one of the key leaders in the interfaith and multiethnic community efforts to move forward the peace processes in Mindanao. She is a council member of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus, composed of grassroots leaders from the Moro, Christian and indigenous communities who are working together for the peaceful resolution of the armed conflicts. As such, she has conducted dialogues with the major actors in the peace process and is an active partner in peace and development campaigns at the grassroots level. Saway bases her peace advocacy campaigns in the Talaandig doctrine of kinship as she represents her tribal community’s call for a genuine peace in Mindanao.