Conduct of Peace: Approaches of Women and Media in Nepal

Introduction

In a post-conflict situation, the normative purpose of politics is peace. But, in Nepal, peace building has become a difficult task because leaders are using conflicting means to approach it. The subordination of utilitarian impulse of leaders to the moral desire of ordinary men and women for freedom and social justice can cure the amorality of politics. One way is wider engagement of women in different phases of political transition in Nepal—creation of democratic values and institutions, civic initiatives to liberate politics from impunity and expansion of rights in public and private life. The other way is offering women a choice to discover, envision and learn about the cost of conflict and benefit of peace. Still, the other way is to engage Nepalese women and men in peace advocacy, peace education and peace movement by highlighting the importance of non-violent change, orienting citizens toward the constitutional behavior and reshaping the motivation of actors of conflict to the invocation of peace. The comprehensive peace accord has evoked moral aspiration. But it has not sufficiently sensitized the leaders to resolve the nasty nexus between structural injustice and conflict and engage them in modern politics—a politics that encourages political actors to work together and resolve their differences through compromise and resolutionary change.

How can Nepalese women be able to overcome institutional and behavioral challenge of existing relations of power and facilitate collaborative practice of peace education and peace action? How can their alternative discourses invoke the authority of experience to validate women's voice for peace and attune corresponding strategies to address the needs of gender-equal society? What are the mechanism to remove the barriers to women's increased role in peace process and resolutionary change? 

Irrationality of Violence

Peace is a vital condition that frees human beings, both men and women, from fear and provides them ethical and material means for civilized coexistence. In Nepal, however, peace is competing with other interests and values, such as stable power-sharing arrangement, basic needs, resource, power and identity. Constructive handling of these competing interests and values is a sine qua non for defining a collective vision. The professional duty of media rests on exposing the irrationality of interests such gender-based violence, creating level playing field for men and women, reporting about human rights conditions and searching for common ground for cooperation at various levels of society. Constant monitoring of media about the health of the nation enables the political leaders not to lose sight of ever-changing nature of conflicts and create political will for women's voice, visibility and collective action. Crafting an inclusive and gender-sensitive constitutional framework is the primary political obligation of Nepalese leaders now.

The experience of violent conflict in Nepal has been painfully mirrored in the history of Nepalese women.  To forestall "similar moment" to happen in the future women's coalition is working for the rational construction of social and political order. Inclusion of women's legitimate concerns into the constitutional process and promoting their rights to participate in every peace deal can foster the capacity of women to arrest the ugly political drift and restore the capacity of state to control chaos. Irresolution of many contesting issues such as power-sharing mechanism, nature of polity, federalism, judiciary, land reforms, election system and governance have overshadowed women's issues, exposed them to the state of nature and unraveled a number of geopolitical loopholes.

The absence of potent political will for "conflict management" through social, cultural, economic and political transformation, accommodation of class, ethnic, regional and gender interests by restructuring the state, adjustment of the armed forces and consolidation of democracy based on general will have left the post-conflict tasks unfinished. Non-installment of the bedrocks of peace articulated in the peace accord, such justice and reconciliation, state restructuring, scientific land reforms, disappeared persons, etc indicates the difficulty of monitoring the indicators of peace and transitional justice. But if the Maoist and non-Maoist parties are bent on bargaining for absolute power they will be boxed in their own partial framework, muddle around and cannot together inspire the confidence of the excluded, movement-oriented and non-state armed actors in national consensus necessary for timely promulgation of new constitution by May 2010, durable peace and institutional reforms.  

Public Communication

The new conflict dynamics opened at societal level requires multi-track approaches including enhanced role of women in peace building. It also entails undistorted communication about hostility-fuelling sources— faith, reason, greed and needs deficits, removal of misconception and beginning of trust-building policies and institutions. Responsible media can mediate the contrasting viewpoints and fuse them into a rational road map of peace acceptable to all sides. This is important to pull the drivers, actors and stakeholders into a common process of contextual learning about the art of mutual adjustment in an already fragile state. 

Conflict sensitive media rooted in public political culture can alone enable the decision-makers to understand the increasing complexity of the conflict, suggest the optimal choices to solve it and support the pursuit of peace, a peace that is tied with democratic order based on mutually agreed rules for the socialization of all actors in their dealings with each other. It is in this order they can defend themselves and pursue their goals non-violently. But, there is a need to resolve the condition of unstable power equation which has left an open space for each actor to bargain for absolute gain regardless of its rationality and righteousness.

The realm of media is embedded in the general life of people where all members are organized into the same sovereignty and detest criminals, rights violators and conspirators, for whom the state is an enemy. Because of its public character, media ought to free themselves from the frame of parochial politics and articulate the wider, shared vision of all citizens. Gender-sensitive media can also reform the irrationality of actors' position and interests and their re-socialization toward a civic culture of compromise, reconciliation and peace—the ideal paths of democracy. Non-violent role of women complements media's pursuit for restoring society's trust and resolution of the root causes of conflict by means of de-linking violence from public sphere and transforming links between structural injustice and spiral of violence against women. 

Women and Peace

The UN Conference in 1985 in Nairobi highlighted the need to eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against women, their participation at all levels of society and their role in education for peace. Approving the changing narratives and resolutions of various women's conferences-- Mexico, Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing, Nepal has gradually reformed its laws, practices and institutions as well as increased the representation of women in the institutions of governance.

The Beijing Conference stressed on gender-balanced participation in conflict resolution, peace, security and decision-making at national and international levels through the structural transformation of public sphere. The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peace and Security” provides multi-track engagements of women in sustainable peace building. It supports local women’s struggle and indigenous processes based on equitable distribution of social, economic and political power between men and women.

Now, peace building approach includes the engagement of potential and left-out actors of society including women. Reconstruction—physical, social and spiritual—requires faith-based and homegrown approaches. Women’s equal participation in conflict prevention, management and transformation through multiple vectors of governance, such as the state, civil society, market institutions and social movement can help reconstruct a shattered society, heal the wounds of war through reconciliation and address conflict residues. 

The experience of women in coping with the conflict is particularly useful because their experiences differ to that of men. It is also because of inherent gendered power relations, dissimilar need for transitional justice and a growing recognition to redefinition of gender role in society and life. Reform in these areas including knowledge production, policy engagement and re-socialization is likely to expunge the bourgeois separation between the private and the public sphere and conflict between the principle of women's equal role in peace building and the general conduct of political life in Nepal. 

Conclusion

Without ending the state of nature and structural violence against women condition of peaceful life cannot flourish. The implementation of practical peace building measures, however, has become difficult in Nepal due to security vacuum and new conflict dynamics around bitter power struggle, federalism, adjustment of combatants in productive life, the state's redesign, model of democracy, etc. It is possible to establish stakeholders’ solutions if drivers and actors of conflict can dispose of their monopolistic thinking, transcend their exclusivist institutional, ideological and personality frames, recognize each other’s legitimate concern, begin to communicate national purpose, restore the balance of state-society ties, establish local peace councils and offer peace building measures as a lasting security to all the citizens. In all these areas, deep engagement of women is vital.

Posted on : 2009-12-26 20:42:00

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