Deborah Schebler (4:06)

Thank you very much. Thank you for having us here today. It's an exciting day, I think, and we really hope to broaden the participants view on what a peace process is because lately we're hearing the word being used for things that in my opinion do not qualify as such. Women in peace and women in peace processes is actually a daily business. I think today, right now, as we speak, women are engaged in peace building around the world in many different roles on many different levels. And we believe that they need to be heard, that their work need to be visible to the eye, and that the contribution they are actually doing to peace is really recognized.

Imogen Folks (4:49)

Okay, Mahir, I'm going to look at it now with you from the other point of view, or kind of not diametrically opposed, but peace keeping. When even like feminist women like me think of a peacekeeper, I kind of imagine a man in a blue helmet. But women do this too. I mean, would you say in your experience, women playing a part in this is absolutely crucial?

Unknown (5:12)

It is crucial because what the experience is over the last years is that the contribution of women, even as peekeepers, is a game changer. So you have an easier access, for example, to population. It's trust building, which is somehow easier for women to do. And you see that negotiations during this phase of rebuilding trust is much easier when there are mixed teams or women teams doing this task. So I think besides having diversity, which is always good for a team and fulfilling the tasks, it's crucial here for peacekeeping to have women because there is much more achievement and faster achievement than without.

Imogen Folks (5:56)

Okay, so two very positive experiences there of why it's really important to have women involved, start to finish in between. But this is maybe for Larissa and Leandra. But coming, I guess, from different perspectives, we don't see any women at all in the talks about Russia, Ukraine or about the Middle East. Not a single woman have I seen in any of these press conferences and meetings and handshakes and et cetera, et cetera. We've also seen a report came out from UN women yesterday, about one in four countries around the world report a backlash, an erosion of women's rights, women's inclusion in the big decisions. And that would also be about peacemaking, peace building, conflict resolution. So how challenging is it to get women involved? I'll let you decide who wants to go first.

Mahid Aslan (6:51)

This is something that we can see right now in many different cases. And actually there are so many women who are really keen to get involved also in these formal peace negotiations and who are ready for it, but it is made very difficult for them. But I can maybe speak of an example of Sudanese women that last summer were in Geneva when there was these.

Imogen Folks (7:19)

Talks on fire, theoretically, trying to bring a ceasefire to Suzanne. Yeah.

Mahid Aslan (7:24)

Yes. Yeah. Again, no women were invited, only the armed parties to the conflict. But there was a delegation of 15 Sudanese women who just showed up despite this, and they just said, well, we were not invited, but we're going to come anyway. And well, it was an unsuccessful endeavor because not both armed parties showed up to these.

Imogen Folks (7:47)

Yeah, one boycotted.

Mahid Aslan (7:48)

That's right, exactly. But what this delegation of 15s and these women, what they did was they really used that opportunity to just lobby all the co hosts and the observance to these talks to listen to Sudanese women's and civil society at large also, and have actually managed that. Now there is a group established that if there should be further talks, will also take in advice women's and civil society's demands for future talks. So I think there's actually many examples of women who are ready, who are very resourceful in trying to get involved in also these formal peace negotiations and talks. It's just a shame that there's so many stones put in their way.

Imogen Folks (8:36)

There certainly are. Leandra, what's your take? And as I said, you have written extensively about the oppression of women's rights and links to conflict, and we are seeing that more and more. I mean, not in Russia, we have a rollback of women rights and LGBT rights in the United States as well. Suggestions in Europe. I think we're not as far down that road, luckily, but yeah, absolutely.

Leandra Baez (9:00)

And I think Larissa's response just showed that often what we do is we just look at the surface. Women aren't there? So there's no discussion about feminism, but if we just were to scratch the surface, we would actually have a much better understanding of the drivers of conflict, therefore, also of prevention and resolution of a conflict. And what I'm usually missing is that we go about counting women in the pictures in the negotiations when what we would need is to understand that, and this has fundamentally been established in science for two decades, democracy, peace and gender equality, they mutually reinforce each other. You do need, yes, probably quite an intuitive conclusion for us. Usually when you have democracy, gender equality flourishes, but the other way around as well. You do need already movements in favor for gender equality to have a more durable democratization process. Therefore, to answer your question on the back, this is a political strategy by authoritarian leaders to push back against established women's and LGBT rights, do promote an illiberal regime. And we are now at a point where that is no longer just done domestically. It is done systematically. And it is done even to reframe an aggression, in the case of Russia, as a prevention. And just to give one sound bite of that, when the invasion happened, Putin did say on the night in his speech, we are doing this inter alia, because Ukraine has already been infected by gender ideology of the West.

Imogen Folks (10:35)

Yeah. And I do remember probably 10 years ago, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, coming to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and promoting a discussion on traditional family values, which was very homophobic, intolerant of LGBTQ rights. He was hedging around intolerance of women's rights, but you could see where it was going. So we are in a very unstable world. And Deborah, as you said at the beginning, you didn't think that what was being termed peace talks, we want peace says the United States. We want peace, says Russia. We want peace, says Israel. You don't think the way they are talking really merits the word peace? I'd be interested in hearing from you all, from the woman's point of view, what needs to be on the table to really talk about peace? Because at the moment, both of these things, to me looking at it look a bit more like an imposed deal and a surrender of territory.

Unknown (11:46)

Maheed My view is especially concentrated on this exclusiveness we talked about who is sitting on the table when it comes to the dialogue or the negotiation. But I think women have crucial roles also in all phases, like in the prevention of war, during war, and also after, when it's about recovery and systematically. Now it is tried not only to define war and the war outcome by an exclusive group with the exclusion of women. It also makes it difficult to foster all the measures which were put in charge the last years and months. I currently see a bigger difficulty to keep the achievements of the last years. And in the discussion, what makes me sad or what is unfortunate is that in this east west, which is no longer existing, so we have multipolarity, we have not only nations. This concept of states and nations dealing about war and dealing about peace, it's not true. There are much more groups, different groups, non state groups in these conflicts and wars. And so the question of how do we handle this and how do we get roles for women will show that it is also a key. Because in all these communities, no matter what the concept is, you find women. It's not important if it's on a state level. It's not important if it's about community. Everywhere you find opportunity. But the question is how many obstacles and hindrances are going to be built in the next weeks, months and years.

Imogen Folks (13:26)

I've looked at different peace negotiations over the year. I remember with Syria, when staff under Mystoura was the UN special envoy, he insisted every time there were discussions in Geneva that women came too. Nothing too much came, unfortunately, of those negotiations. But he did try and he did see that this was absolutely vital. Again, maybe I'll ask you, Deborah, what is it that is being neglected that women can often bring to a peace process?

Deborah Schebler (13:59)

So to this question, I think there's one thing that we need to consider very clearly. Violence and war for men often are a crisis, something to be solved. So whenever war goes away, the crisis has gone away. But for women, violence is something that starts with their birth and ends with. In many cases, I'm not generalizing, but in many cases and with when they die. So violence is a constant in women's lives. So whenever we speak about ending a war or ending violence is bringing peace, we do absolutely neglect women's roles. And Leandra said before, gender equality issues that were already there a lot before a war started or were even exacerbated by the war or even triggered a war. That's also very clear. And we can look at Afghanistan. And I think it's interesting, the first women peace tables we had with Ukrainian women that were before the full scale invasion, women actually told us, when we asked them, what does peace mean to you? They reflected on whether they had peace before 2014. And many of them said, but there's also an issue of us not being able to live our life free of violence every day, independent of the Weapons that are around. So we really need to think ending war is necessary to peace. Without a doubt. But ending war does not mean peace. So whenever these men use the word peace in order to say, ceasefire, stop the guns, this is not peace.

Imogen Folks (15:30)

Who else wants to comment on that? Larissa Leandra because what I've seen, I spent quite a lot of time in conflict zones when the so called peace is there after the guns have stopped, it's in no way peaceful. There's so much to do. All of the infrastructure needs rebuilding, there are hundreds, thousands of missing people. None of these things. When we talk about the current negotiations going on, I don't hear these being discussed.

Unknown (15:56)

Yeah.

Leandra Baez (15:57)

And if I may, I'd like to add, I think Ukraine has actually been trying to make that point, like stressing the idea of a durable and a just peace for the past three years. And what the US is doing right now, it's an extractivist assertion of power, arguably even a second imperial ambition that we are seeing now in the picture alongside Russia. And what Ukraine has stressed is that we can't have that conversation in a serious way if we really want to avoid a reassertion of violence unless we include the protection of human rights in this conversation. And that does mean that if it's just a ceasefire, then we are not talking about what happens to the civil population in the areas that are currently under control by Russia. We are not talking about justice for the 13,000 disappeared children, kidnapped children, etc. Etc. So for me, from a feminist point of view, it always means it's the inclusion and the preservation of human rights for all that would be. And I know it's a utopian vision, but that is usually where everyone would be safe to be themselves.

Imogen Folks (17:09)

Some of what you said there, though, they are things that I've heard many times at the un, which is what makes a sustainable peace and a quick deal, is not it? Larissa, I see you nodding yes.

Mahid Aslan (17:21)

And maybe to add to what you also mentioned about sometimes there being women included in negotiations, I think it goes beyond that even. And that's about the different roles that women can play during all stages of peace processes. Right. If the Ukrainian people, for example, does not feel any ownership of a potential peace agreement, and that goes for many conflicts if it's just, just decided by what is perceived, either elites or even outsiders, and there have not been really deeper talks about, and sometimes difficult discussions about what does peace really mean to us beyond just, okay, there's a ceasefire or the guns stop, what does it really mean for all parts of society. For us, then peace processes are not sustainable.

Imogen Folks (18:17)

Maheed, you had your hand up. You wanted to come in there.

Unknown (18:20)

It reminds me a little bit of the discussion when it comes to policy. For example, if you have policies and you want to implement them, sometimes there is a policy setting and when you want to implement them, you see, oh, there are many factors we didn't think about when we developed that policy. What I experienced is especially this distinction between a formal, maybe military, maybe state driven idea of an agreement and then what you were talking about, and I'm very glad to hear that with specific examples, the difficulty of what it means in reality. So it's describing a formal state where there is a beginning and an end. You could formally declare something. What started is now ended. And with that there was like a solution. But that is not true. And that's why I opt also for women in the armed forces, because I also believe, truly believe that women, women perspective, gender perspectives, human security perspectives have to be in every process and every structure of armed forces in order to somehow find the glue and also do some bridging with civil societies and other actors.

Imogen Folks (19:30)

That's a really interesting point. Many countries do have women in the armed forces now, but still traditionally it's not what we think. Is that one of the reasons, do you think that the men in suits trying to make these quick fix deals right now, they don't consult women because women have not been doing the fighting? Is that one of the reasons? Or they're just not interested? Leandra, I can see you shaking your head.

Leandra Baez (19:55)

It just really goes to the root of patriarchy and how nation states are built from a patriarchal root. And that is, and it's really an exploitation of both male and female bodies. Male bodies get conscripted to defend the nation. By extension also they have possession rights over the female bodies who they're also supposed to defend. And the female body is exploited for the recreation of the nation. That is really the basis of our nation states and therefore to deconstruct that is extremely difficult for them. It doesn't even cross their mind that politics and violence and resolutions is something that could involve women's perspectives.

Imogen Folks (20:43)

How do we get those perspectives though? How do women bang open the doors of the currentwhich is troubling every person on the planet? The war in the Middle east, the war between Russia and Ukraine, well, Russia's aggression towards Ukraine, invasion of Ukraine. How do we get women in there? How do we get them to make the point that unless you address not Just the gun stopping this thing could start again.

Unknown (21:09)

I'm a bit emotional right now because I want to add one thing. Okay, maybe it is necessary, but nevertheless, it tires me to see that we always discuss what the women have to do in order to get access to initiatives or to processes, et cetera. And that's really disturbing for me. We make the experience or we try to do also allyship to bring all together and say, okay, how can we develop further by also addressing patriarchy and what it means also for the men and what kind of biases they live in order to show why there is an enhancement needed to say, how can we address things maybe from gender perspective, maybe also off gender perspective, in order to reach the goal we wanted to. I just wanted to make that point. Yes, there are strong women, there are many women actively reaching out, searching to contribute, but it should not be only the women's efforts. There should be a way that we find allies, that these doors open quicker and that these levels are easier, reachable.

Imogen Folks (22:18)

Deborah?

Deborah Schebler (22:18)

Yeah, I very much agree with these allies. And I think first on the not including women because they were not fighting part, I agree with Leandro said, absolutely. But it's also used as a really bad excuse to exclude women. I mean, it's also so they're not conscious about this. That's one part. But then it's also used as we just talk about who stops fighting. And since you do not have a gun, you don't need to talk.

Imogen Folks (22:43)

Yeah, don't worry, you're pretty little head about it.

Deborah Schebler (22:46)

And we are seeing something, a very difficult change in addition to all these difficult issues is that peace negotiations do no longer or they're faltering in thinking about comprehensive peace agreements. So they go really even more so and even more so in the future to be seen into ceasefire agreements. So let's, let's just stop the fighting. And I think on allyships it's very, very important. And I agree with Maida, it's not what women need to do, because they do. Larissa said they present themselves. They said, we were not invited, but we're here. But we need the ones that are close to these processes and to these, that they are building in hooks into ceasefire agreements, for example, to say, okay, what are the monitoring bodies of ceasefire agreements? So let's try and get hooks in, let's try and open doors for women that this would be possible. And obviously, I agree this needs to come also from a wide public and maybe also all these listeners to say this is not normal. But then we have to stop saying, okay, this is peace now. Okay? What they're doing is they're building peace. That's not true. So to ask for that and to refuse to hear the word peace when actually what is meant is, I want to make a transactional win, or even, I have to say, blackmail.

Imogen Folks (24:05)

You're not the first. You're not the first I've heard a few people use that term.

Deborah Schebler (24:09)

So when listeners hear these narratives on a daily basis in the news, refuse to believe that this is peace and really keep asking for peace and asking that women are part of it. It's not only the women's role.

Imogen Folks (24:21)

Larissa, I know you had your head up, too.

Mahid Aslan (24:24)

Yes. Because it's really not about women having to try harder or having to find ways to get involved. They're already doing everything they can. And then also with ceasefires, for example, and then discussions about bringing even just armed conflict to stop, and the idea that maybe their women might not have that much expertise to contribute or something, it's just such a wrong idea. Because in a conversation that I had with a network member, she told me, you know, I've been doing this since the 90s, and I have so much experience, and I am just so worried, because I know from experience, because this has happened over and over again, that if now only men and only the armed forces are negotiating a ceasefire, they will for sure forget to include in that ceasefire agreement that armed forces have to also not occupy anymore, for example, the hospitals and the schools. They will just forget about that. And it's something that me and all. All my women activists around me, we know that, and we want to make sure they include that, because without that, there's no chance that a ceasefire is going to hold. Because if those hospitals and schools are occupied, the tensions are just not going to even have a chance to fizzle out. So I think, yes, there's just so many layers to this.

Imogen Folks (25:49)

I mean, that's. I think, what Larissa said. There's one of the hooks that you would build in Mahid. I think you, because she mentioned peacekeeping, bring your view in here.

Unknown (25:58)

I know she mentioned especially military. So I think that's a little bit my role today. I spoke about distinction or difference between spheres. And I see exactly here this difference or distinction between military and civilian, somehow it developed. And I think one of the key factors is also going to be how able we are to establish dialogue. We had one workshop, I remember, like, three months ago, and it was also about the feminist utopia of saying, no armies, no weapons. So no war. And my contribution or my recommendation that day was, although I like this utopia, the point is if you just say we talk about prevention and we talk about the recovery, the time after, you're not contributing to the face of war. So it's not only the military side or the official, the white men, how you said before, more men in suits who exclude. It's sometimes also a principle which says, I'm not going to have an interaction with this evil bringing group. And I think it's necessary that we get closer to each other and try to understand what are the necessities, what are the beneficiaries, what are the things we have to talk about and what are the needs and what are the urgencies from the civilian side. But maybe also a bit better understanding of what the military is doing. Because currently, most of the time I feel as if there are two different groups in their own narratives, in their own dialogue, but not really a bridge in between.

Imogen Folks (27:36)

That's an interesting point. I guess that traditionally, if we're talking about liberal values, left wing values, the military's somewhere else. So it's not just a gender divide, it's an ideological or political opinion divide. Leandra, I see you nodding.

Leandra Baez (27:52)

Yeah, because I mean, in my research on Russia and Ukraine, that's really one of the frictions that came out. It kind of like really had forced a lot of people to revise or at least reconsider revising. I'm gonna call them innocent pacifist views. And that Ukrainian feminist very soon made clear at the latest in 2022 that you are now just being a bystander to imperial violence and that sending us hand knitted sweaters is not going to which people did. And I think it comes from a good place, don't get me wrong. But it's not going to help us. And if we go back, and that's probably what has helped me, is the feminist principle of I extend my hand to you and grant you that you know best what is right for you in your place at this moment. And that for me is the way to collaborate and then also to bridge. Because that then means I do actually start having a conversation on, okay, what is military aid in that context which you are asking for. But equally, and that doesn't exclude what is your concern about you do now have a militarized society, you do have more circulation of weapons. What does that do with you? Right. And also that's where I become very emotional. Can we in this discussion please not just talk about Ukraine? There is a whole Warring aggressor here who we are not making any demands to demilitarize, to work on their gender equality. All that burden is only put on Ukraine, who is completely sidelined from those hardcore negotiations. And we have whole international norms around UN women, peace and security. It's even established in NATO. But with the moment of the full scale invasion that just went out of the window.

Imogen Folks (29:50)

Okay, well, I am actually going to come towards the end of the program summing up on a positive note. But again from your own personal experiences, Deborah, we heard from you about hooks and I'm going to come back to you about that. I'm interested again in the context of the conflicts that we have been discussing. Let's think about the positive things that can be achieved when women really are in peace process, peace building, conflict prevention, whatever aspect of it there is, how that can work better for everyone. And Meheed, I kind of want to put a hypothetical to you. Should there be peacekeepers? Were there to be peacekeepers in Ukraine? Women? Now obviously Switzerland, we don't know is very hypothetical. But what are the positive hooks that women peacekeepers can bring in a situation like that?

Unknown (30:52)

When you ask for female contribution to hypothetical peacekeeping mandate in Ukraine, I would just refer back to what we just discussed before. That's already after the mandate. So there is a. There have to be hooks in the mandate already and not coming up when the mission is starting or taking place. So yes, I think if you put these hooks which Deborah mentioned when you put them in the mandate. And anyway, it is crucial that women participate because it's a society of mixed gender. Even if you go further and look about gender identity. Diversity, after all, is a topic we have to treat also in peacekeeping, also in re establishing institutions. And the more diversity you have, the more social interest in social cohesion. And at the end, what is peace? Peace, in my opinion, is that we aim for the best conditions for everyone. No matter if it's a man, it's a woman. So we want to create the best conditions that everyone is nourished and can grow and develop and give something back to the society. And if you exclude a part of it, even with the ones who establish re establish somehow order or safe and secure environment in order to establish the institutions. Again, you spare out half of the most important part and that's just wrong. And especially after war, we know that vulnerable people have a longer way to find back to these perfect conditions in order to live on.

Imogen Folks (32:29)

Larissa, pretty much the same question to you. Positive examples maybe that we could draw on in the current situation where women have played a significant role, I think.

Mahid Aslan (32:42)

Probably a perfect peace process, it would be difficult to find one. Name one. But one in Colombia that concluded in a peace agreement in 2016 has many very interesting, I think, facets to it. And we can see it in the many gender provisions and how diverse also the various negotiators were and the civil society behind it. And that's also something that we see in our network of feminist peacebuilders across the globe, that this interest in learning from each other is really there. So, for example, our Filipina partners, they were really interested to learn from the Colombian women how they managed to get so many gender provisions into that agreement and what their strategies were. I think it's one a question of really being curious, looking to that and having a wider understanding of peace process to be able to see these and recognize these things that are already being done. And then on the other hand, still pushing for it to be easier and be able to play all the different roles during all different stages.

Imogen Folks (33:54)

Okay, well, Leandra. And then we'll end with Deborah. We heard some very positive examples and why women should be. Need to be included. But say again, hypothetical. Say you were sitting in the Oval Office and, well, don't look quite so horrified. How would you say to President Trump, look, the way you're playing it, I mean, great, if you believe in peace, great. But this one, this deal's not going to work. And this is why you need a different approach and you need women.

Leandra Baez (34:27)

And this is the moment in a recording where you had your answer planned and now you're throwing me in the Oval Office with Trump and I'm like, lost for words because I can't fathom how I would bring that across to someone like him, because I really believe he has an inherent authoritarian penchant. He genuinely does want any liberal refashioning of his society and of the world. So, however, if I were to have a reasoned, a rational actor in front of me who wants to actually listen, the example I would have brought to bring hope in the conversation because I said before I would actually like us to also swing the camera from time to time to Russia is actually. So I've been doing research on the feminist anti war resistance in Russia. And what I would argue, it's marginal. I mean, we're really talking about a marginal movement. Yet nevertheless, in Russia's modern history, the biggest we have seen and extremely well organized, and it's a rupture in Russia that that movement for the first time is talking about decolonization. And so for me, because when we say durable right, it obviously also means that Russia doesn't aggress anymore. And that means, means in the utopian world that you do have a democratic reform of Russia. And that would definitely entail coming to terms with the imperial violence it has conducted, not just vis a vis Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states, but within that country. So to see a feminist movement take that up and actually putting into light the imperial violence, indigenous people, ethnic minorities within Russia have suffered to move. That is the small hope I am attaching to. And I would do, of course, my best if I had more preparation to bring that across to Trump.

Imogen Folks (36:15)

Good luck with that. Deborah, final words to you. We want to end on a moment of positive. Everybody feels a bit depressed now, the state of the world, but bring us some words of motivation.

Deborah Schebler (36:29)

That's almost as difficult as speaking to under pressure words of motivation. I think I will go back to how I started. Women are out there. So whenever people say women are not included, they might not be included, but they are working for peace. And very resourceful. And just what Leandro just now said sparks my hope in this. We take our motivation on a daily basis from them, from everything that they say that they are doing. I think, I think women networks get together and be able to be solidary the feminist principle that Leandra said of extending. I know you know best. I'm here to support, I'm here to hold, that is hope. And I think that's what we need to strengthen. In general. Everyone can support these networks by saying, I think what you experience and what you think is best, you go, you do that. Not try to impose our views, not try to impose peace, but really create the soil for the agency of these women to create the support. So I think that would be my hope.

Imogen Folks (37:41)

And on that note, that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. These wonderful women have to cross the road and go over to parliament and make their very compelling case. Again, thank you all. Mahid Adslan, Deborah Schebler, Larissa Lee and Leandra Baez. We hope you enjoyed it. I certainly did. Fascinating conversation and one that really should get a lot of listeners, male as well as female generals as well as peace builders. Peace builders. Thank you, Deborah. Generals as well as peace builders. Although generals can be peace builders. Exactly, exactly. Thank you all for listening. And just a quick reminder, next time on INSIDE Geneva, we'll be bringing you that in depth interview on artificial intelligence, social media threats to democracy. And we'll be talking to a Human rights defender from America about his take on what's happening in his own country. Join us on April 1st for that.

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Becoming a parent definitely is a very emotional thing.

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And what if there was a solution? From the second your child is born.

Leandra Baez (39:34)

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Leandra Baez (39:58)

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Imogen Folks (40:03)

We'll keep those amazing cells safe for you.

Mahid Aslan (40:06)

Frozen in time we saw a light.

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At the end of the tunnel. That was our daughter.

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Every breakthrough brings hope and new promises.

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But promises can be broken.

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Lost Cells an original Swiss info podcast in collaboration with Piers Gloria Productions, Future Prosch and Studio Orcenta. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.