Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

has been a positive shift in international understanding
of the impact of armed conflict on women and girls
and the importance of women’s participation as equal
partners in all areas related to peace and society.” The
report takes note of “significant strides” in some countries,
such as Colombia, where a President’s Advisory
Office on Gender Equality helped set up a working
group to support women’s participation in promoting
peace in that nation.
Dramatic Progress in Iraq
and Afghanistan
Progress has been especially dramatic in
Afghanistan (see story on page 48) and Iraq, where
U.S. support has enabled women to play vital roles in
forging the new governments. In Iraq, 25 of the 100
members elected to the Iraqi National Council are
women, as are six ministers and seven deputy ministers
of the current Iraqi cabinet.
In March 2004, then Secretary of State Colin
Powell announced a $10-million Iraqi Women’s
Democracy Initiative to train Iraqi women in the fundamentals
of democracy. The Art of Living Foundation,
created by a young Iraqi woman who traveled
across the desert to Baghdad to conduct stress management
classes during the early days of military intervention
there, is using its U.S. grant for a program
focusing on the mental health needs of Iraqi women
while training them for jobs.
Women representing U.S. organizations, companies,
and universities are eager to assist women in Iraq,
as well. The Society for Women Engineers, for example,
is working to create a similar organization in Iraq,
and U.S. women working in radio and television are
gearing up to train Iraqi women media specialists.
Since 2002, the U.S. Congress has earmarked
$27 million for programs targeted to women in Iraq
and the United States has funded more than 200 projects
to benefit Afghan women and girls. New
Women’s Centers in each country—17 throughout
Afghanistan and 20 in Iraq—provide sanctuary from
violence and offer women basic education, health care,
and job skills. The Mansour Women’s Opportunity
Center in Baghdad, for example, provides vocational
training to women and girls, particularly widows and
victims of rape, torture, and trafficking, and will soon
provide microcredit loans to help women start homebased
businesses.
In Afghanistan, there have been many successes
since 2002, when President Bush and now Afghan
President Hamid Karzai first created the U.S.-
Afghan Women’s Council. These include training for
teachers and midwives and projects backed by U.S.
corporations and foundations to train women judges
and journalists and to create community banks that
can issue small loans to Afghan women.
Another important State Department initiative,
called Women Leading Women in Peace: Fostering
Courage for Change, promotes exchanges between
businesswomen from leading companies in the United
States and women trying to rebuild their post-conflict
societies. The department hopes to extend the womenhelping-women
network so that women in countries
such as Kosovo, who have polished their leadership
skills and effected positive change, can share their
experiences and advice with their sisters in other parts
of the world.
Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula
Dobriansky launched this initiative in cooperation
with the Fortune 500 Most Powerful Women in
Business Conference. The initiative started in
Afghanistan, but soon it will move to the Balkans,
Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Recalling a recent meeting with a delegation of
women from Sudan, the State Department’s Ponticelli
speaks eloquently about the strength and determination
of women who have survived the horrors of war
and their potential for waging peace. She said: “They
have survived indescribable nightmares, yet they are
anything but helpless victims. They are looking forward.
They want a say in running the refugee camps,
they want a place at the negotiating table, they want
leadership positions, and they feel united even though
they are from different parts of Sudan. They said, ‘We
all speak one language—we want peace; we all want a
better future for our children.’”
No doubt they speak for women in conflict situations
throughout the world.
For additional information on this issue, please
see: http://www.state.gov/g/prm/, http://www.state.
gov/g/wi/, and http://www.usaid.gov/.
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