#7 Liberian Women Peacemakers

[waelisc.livejournal.com]

The full title is Liberian Women Peacemakers: Fighting for the Right to Be Seen, Heard, and Counted, compiled by the African Women and Peace Support Network, published by Africa World Press in 2004.

This book recounts the work of numerous women and women's groups in Liberia to end a civil war that lasted for 14 long years. They were courageous, persistent, creative, patient, and single-minded in their pursuit of peace. They held demonstrations, facilitated meetings between rival warlords, talked rebel soldiers out of violent acts, kept a disarmament period from dissolving into chaos, and invited themselves to peace talks held in neighboring countries and demanded to be allowed to address the assembled leaders. What they did was mindblowingly inspiring.

Half of the book gives an overview of the civil war years (1989-2003) and the peacemaking efforts that went on all through that period. The other half is interviews with women of all walks of life on their contributions to the work of making peace. These two quotes stand out for me:

To be an effective peacemaker you must be a very patient person. You must be calm and a very, very good listener. You must listen not only with your ears but with your eyes. You must listen with your heart, your soul, and your mind, because sometimes people say one thing and they mean something completely different. You must be very slow to speak on what you hear.

--Gloria Musu-Scott, Chief Justice

I worked for peace with LWI, NAWOCOL, Women Action for Good Will, Concern for Women. We all joined together to bring peace in this country. We went round from village to village to talk with those boys to put the gun down. We went to Po River, to Mount Barclay, to Lofa, even to the border. When the leaders were in town, we demonstrated on the streets: we wanted peace.

--Martha Nagbe, farmer

I looked for a book on this topic at the library after seeing Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a documentary that focuses on the last year of women's peacemaking efforts before the civil war was finally ended, and on women's efforts to nurture the fragile peace through a period of transitional government and elections in 2006. (On my journal here. I didn't post to 12films_poc because the director & producer are white.)

Comments

[sanguinity]

Thanks for the review!

I was looking for more info on the editors, and now that I've finally found it, I hope you don't mind me archiving it as a comment here: via Peg Snyder at h-Africa List:

The following book is not written by just one African woman, but by several African and Africa-related women, based on extensive interviews Liberian women journalists did with peace-makers. So it does not fully fit as a response to the query [for African women writers who have written about war]. Nonetheless, African women speak, in their own words. Perhaps it will be helpful.

The African Women and Peace Support Group (AWPSG) was formed in 1997 to work with African women to document their peace efforts and increase recognition of their peace initiatives.

In 1998, after eight years of conflict in Liberia, nearly three dozen women peace activists were identified as leaders by women and men, both within Liberia and outside it. They were interviewed by Liberian journalists, and their interviews compiled and interwoven with background provided by AWPSG into a new book, Liberian Women Peacemakers.

This slim volume tells the activists' stories in their own words how they organized to provide humanitarian aid, individually intervened with the warring factions, took to the streets to demonstrate for an end to the killing, and sat outside the halls where peace talks were being held until they were allowed to enter and be heard. Their stories demonstrate how important it is to include women's voices at all levels of the peacemaking process.

Members of the Africa Women and Peace Support Group are:

• Comfort Lamptey, Senior Advisor for Refugee Women, UNHCR, former
  Peace-building Advisor at UNIFEM after working with the NGO, International
  Alert, on conflict prevention and resolution
  
• Jane Martin, former Senior Program Officer, African American Institute;
  former Executive Director, U.S. Educational and Cultural Foundation in
  Liberia
  
• Corann Okorodudu, Professor of Psychology and African Studies, Rowan
  University; past President, Liberian Studies Association
  Gretchen Sidhu, Writer and Editor specializing in international development
  issues with intergovernmental organizations
  
• Margaret Snyder, founding Director of UNIFEM; Co-founder, African Centre for Women of the UN Economic Commission for Africa
  
• Margaret Aderinsola Vogt, former Director, Africa Programme, UN
  International Peace Academy; currently Special Assistant to the Assistant
  Secretary-General, UN Department of Political Affairs Liberian Women