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Fellows > Blogging for Peace > 2003 > From the Field, J...

From the Field, July 1-July 7, 2003

Highlights:


A Historic Opportunity: But Can the Roma Capitalize on it?

Kim Birdsall (Georgetown University, working with the Dzeno Association) describes the historic opportunity presented to the Roma in the Czech Republic, but fears they may not be able to take advantage of it:

‘The Velvet Revolution provides a good comparison for the current political situation of the Roma. The fall of communism and the political changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 brought opportunities to the Romany leaders, who were accepted as equal participants. A Romany  Party (the ROI) was created, and Roma representatives were elected to Parliament, to the National Council, and to legislative committees. However, years of being deprived of proper education and employment left the Roma leaders inexperienced and unable to present a strong,  united front. The party dissolved.

Today, it is unclear what kind of impact Roma organizations, groups, and individuals will be able to have on international policy. Many Roma feel as if the promises made by governments such as the Czech Republic are all talk and no action - lip service paid to ensure it looks like the human rights requirements of the EU are being met.

I am beginning to see their point. At Dzeno, a common complaint is that Roma policy is made by non-Roma individuals and organizations without any consultation with Roma. I see instances of this constantly, but I am worried that many Roma are not educated or equipped to grab the attention of those in power. As a result, there are no signs that the
situation will change.’


Postcard from the Terai, Southern Nepal

Katherine Kuo (Georgetown University) is working with the Collective Campaign for Peace (COCAP), a peacebuilding coalition that arose in response to the Maoist insurgency. She is spending ten days carrying out training sessions for NGOs in the southern region of Nepal, the Terai:

‘Jhapa, the district I'm now in that borders India, is a fascinating region. In the jungle, people in sparse villages live in mud and grass huts; those in bigger towns live in white bungalows on top of wet, submerged rice paddies, surrounded by short palm trees. Everything is green - a lot like Hawaii I imagine. The people, as usual, are incredibly sweet. Kids come right up and practice their English with you, and run away happily. They walk you home at night even though they don't know you. Adults are smiley and shy. Women are dark, small, and wear huge bright saris. Men are dark, thin, and stronger than oxen. Everyone travels by bicycle or rickshaw, and the air is clean. I see skinny cows, water buffaloes caked in mud, and tiny goats crying by the side of the road. My 10 days of hard work putting together training materials from scratch may pay off. The NGO here wants me to train over 60 people, and I have a great interpreter.’


In Italy, Repatriating Foreign Sex Workers Comes with No Guarantee of Success

Julie Lee (Georgetown University) is working with TAMPEP in Turin, an NGO working on women's trafficking issues. In this week's blog, Julie outlines the complex case of two prostitutes, Natalia and Olga - sisters from Ukraine who want to return home.

Julie describes TAMPEP's initial contact with them, after they were detained in Italy for a second time in 2000:

‘TAMPEP is contacted by the hospital where she [Olga] is sent, in order to act as a cultural mediator. Tests reveal that Olga is HIV-positive. Gradually TAMPEP builds a relationship with Olga and one day she asks to return home. TAMPEP arranges with an international organization (IO) to send her home. The IO takes over the case. It says it will provide
the girls with resettlement funds. The IO gives $2700 to a Ukrainian NGO to assist the girls in their resettlement. Months later, Olga calls TAMPEP from Ukraine to request money. She claims that the local NGO never visited them, and that the girls have no money. The IO and the local NGO are unable to provide information to TAMPEP on what had happened to the girls once they returned to Ukraine. TAMPEP would later discover that the girls had received the money, but spent it all on new clothes.’

[Having returned to Italy again, the sisters decide, in 2003, that they want to return to Ukraine once more, and go to TAMPEP for help.]

‘Their questions during the meeting focused on their resettlement in Ukraine. Where will they live? Can they live together? Can they have two rooms? How much money will they receive? We could not answer all of their questions because the answers depend upon the arrangements of the IO and the funds they decide to give. The girls will likely have their
answers when they arrive in Rome.

The case is not an easy one. There are many question marks: the motivation of the girls (will we see them again in Turin for a fourth time?), the process of their repatriation (will they be monitored, and undergo a reintegration program), Olga's health (Italy provides free drug therapy, but Olga is unlikely to have comparable health care in Ukraine) and the risks involved (she does not want to use condoms when she returns home because she says that young men there rarely use them. If she requests that they use a condom, they will know she is infected.)

TAMPEP will accompany the girls to Rome. There they should receive the answers to their questions. We will have to wait much longer for the answers to ours.’


Government Control of Information in Syria

Courtney Radsch (Georgetown University) is at the Middle East Reporter in Beirut, Lebanon. She recently visited Syria, and describes the ways in which media freedom is restricted:

‘Forbidden.’ This is the message you receive, in English, if you try to visit hotmail.com or a host of other off-limits sites in Syria. I made my friend show me the page just for the novelty of seeing such blatant censorship. Of course some people find ways of bypassing such
controls through an anonymous proxy or other methods, but it is not easy to do and is time consuming - when you pay for each minute of a local call, time online can add up.

I was discussing the American attack on the Syrian border and the subsequent capture of five Syrian soldiers by the occupation forces since I wanted to see how their detention had been perceived in Syria. It was from this story that I learned how lucky Lebanon is to have a
free press and how important it is to nurture publications like The Middle East Reporter and The Daily Star.

‘The Syrian people didn't hear about the attack,’ said one person I met. ‘Unless you have satellite TV and saw it on the news, people didn't know about it. So when they read about the Syrian soldiers coming home after being detained they had no idea where or by whom. Why
were these soldiers coming home? Where had they been?’


Another Cost of the War in Bosnia: Peace of Mind for its Inhabitants

Marta Schaaf (Columbia University) is working with Bosfam, a Bosnian women's organization. She spent a day off work on the banks of the River Drina, but was all too aware that ordinary people in Bosnia can no longer feel completely at ease in their own region.

‘We passed the ‘Welcome to the Republika Srpska’ sign, signaling our entrance into the Serb-dominated entity of Bosnia. Someone has thrown red paint onto the sign so it looks like it is splashed in blood. Families on outings lined the river banks, sitting in the sun, roasting pork and chicken, and drinking cold beer.

Relaxing along the Drina used to be a common outing for Bosnian families of all ethnicities. Now, some nationalist Serbs say that the banks of the Drina will stay purely Serbian. Americans can confidently walk through those villages, but many Bosniacs (Bosnian Muslims) fear what was formerly a common activity - bathing in the cool waters of the Drina.

Life is to some extent more secure for foreigners in Bosnia than for Bosnians. We possess the self-assurance that allows us to feel like we can be on vacation anywhere in Bosnia, something that many Bosnians no longer feel. I recently had lunch with a Bosniac family at their weekend house in Pale (Pale is in the Republika Srpska and was the headquarters of the Bosnian Serb army during the war). They have begun to use the house again, but are still afraid to sleep there; they no longer feel as if they are on vacation in their own vacation home.

Friends and colleagues tell me that they feel much more secure in areas dominated by other ethnicities than they did just after the war, but that they will never regain the certainty about their right to be anywhere in Bosnia they had before the war. For now, that certainty is perhaps only held by foreigners.’


Nonviolence is Most Effective Means of Palestinian Resistance, According to AP Intern

Caitlin Williams (Georgetown University) is working with Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy (MEND) in Jerusalem. An encounter with an Israeli checkpoint caused her to reflect on what constitutes non-violent resistance.

‘Yesterday morning on my way to work a flying checkpoint had been set up near my house. A flying checkpoint is one that can be set up and taken down very quickly: there is no gate - just a string of spikes drawn across the road and a group of border patrol officers sitting in their jeep. As I walked by one of the soldiers, I wanted to shrink to about two inches in height so he wouldn't notice me... Perhaps those who are used to dealing with armed soldiers feel differently, but it struck me that if I had made a conscious decision to refuse to be intimidated by him and walked past with my head held high, instead of looking at the ground, that would have been an act of resistance, however small.

The consistent refusal by the Palestinians to be intimidated by the Israeli soldiers they encounter is, in my opinion, a form of resistance that is nonviolent. It is resistance to the legitimacy of the occupation and to the intimidating and often humiliating tactics the Israelis use to try and make life here unlivable. It is a way of saying, ‘I refuse to stop living my life here, on this land and I refuse to lose my dignity and humanity when faced with the threat of violence.’ All of this, just by walking through a check-point with
one's head held high!

Of course, this does not always happen. There is a high level of frustration and despair over the occupation. And there is more that can be done than simply walking past a soldier and refusing to be intimidated. Regardless of what one might see on the news, especially in the United States, I see the Palestinians' resistance to the occupation as being overwhelmingly nonviolent. These small acts don't make the 11 o'clock news; they're not as exciting as the suicide bombings, but they happen everyday and they are much more effective.’


Sexist Attitudes in Nigeria Hard to 'Unlearn,' but Being Combated

Erica Williams (Yale University) is working in Lagos at the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON), an organization trying to combat human trafficking. She recently attended a week-long gender sensitization training for judges, lawyers, and magistrates. The participants were directors of organizations or leaders in their communities who had been hand-selected because of their ability to influence others with their newfound gender sensitivity. However, as she describes, for some of the male participants gender sensitivity did not come naturally.

‘Whenever the men [at the workshop] said sexist things, which they often did, the women were quick to correct them. When talking about domestic violence, a few men said that women bring it upon themselves by nagging their husbands when they come home. In discussing rape. the
men went on to point out how some women dress provocatively, which was immediately shot down by the women who argued that they're still not asking to be raped, and that men should be able to control themselves.

Marital rape was another controversial topic. The speaker said that in Nigeria, three quarters of women are raped by their husbands the first time they have sexual intercourse. Many of the men refused to believe that marital rape exists. Instead, they argued that upon marriage, husbands gain unlimited sexual access to their wives because of an ‘implied consent’ and the fact that wives no longer own their bodies.

The workshop taught me that sexism is hard to unlearn, but at least people are trying.’


UN Mission in Kosovo Uninterested in Local NGO Input on Gender Issues

Claudia Zambra (Georgetown University, working with the Kosovo Women's Network), is critical of the UNMIK's failure to collaborate with local NGOs on gender issues in the town of Prizren.

‘On the one hand, it seems like Kosovo's fragile stability depends on the presence of UNMIK. On the other hand, UNMIK employees now depend on Kosovo for their comfortable livelihoods. They lengthen their stay, appoint new heads of mission, and do little to find plausible solutions for the problems at hand.

Before the war, Prizren was an example to the rest of Kosovo. Its municipality established an office for gender issues, and it was extremely responsive to the queries and needs of local organizations. There was constant dialogue and a harmonious relationship with positive
results for the community at large. After the war in 1999 UNMIK decided to do away with the established office and set up one of its own, headed by a foreigner.

This new office ignored local organizations for the most part. The relationship between this new gender office and the local NGOs is tense, at best. The head of the local UNMIK gender office didn't even bother attending the meeting of Prizren NGOs last week, although she
was invited as usual. Apparently there is very little interest in local input, perhaps because UNMIK feels they have their own magic formulas to deal with gender issues around the world ... This could also be interpreted as a sign that they think women's organizations in Kosovo are incapable of creating changes in the established gender roles here. Needless to say, dialogue with UNMIK on this matter has been fruitless and many people are frustrated.’

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