 Good morning. Good morning. And good morning to everybody who is following us on webcast around the world. I hope some of our friends in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are joining us. My name is Kathleen Kinist. I direct the Center for Gender and Peace Building here at the US Institute of Peace. For those of you who may not know very much about our institution, we are celebrating our 30th year. We are mandated and funded by the US Congress to help manage violent conflict and prevent violent conflict around the world. That is why this particular conversation this morning is really pivotal to thinking about the future and the role women play every day in reducing violent conflict. I also want to recognize that this is a part of an ongoing series called The Lessons Learned Working Group on Women's Programming in Conflict and Post-Conflict Zones. So you will hear content this afternoon or this morning that will really, I think, offer new best practices for us to consider as policy shapers and makers, as practitioners, academics, and those who are generally interested in this field and nexus of work. The title of today's program is called A Common Peace. Women from Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan map the way forward. This is a special kind of event for me. I've been at the Institute for about seven years. And probably about six years ago, I met my colleague Pat Cooper, who is the founder and convener of the Women's Regional Network. We had lunch in a little place in Dupont Circle, and she started telling me about this interesting idea she had. She wanted to see what I thought about it if it could work. And I remember thinking, this is exactly what we need. We need regional approaches for women to come together and for them to learn from one another their lessons and best practices. And so it's an exceptional pleasure and honor today to be hosting this Working Group's meeting for a discussion about the findings of the very interesting research that has gone on over the last year and a half. And you're going to hear directly from the researchers of these three countries. And I think this is just the beginning of a very serious conversation that we want to keep going in this Lessons Learned Working Group and to stay in touch with the Women's Regional Network. The format of today will be two consecutive panels talking about the findings of this research. And second, really ample time for questions and answers from the panelists. I want you to note that we are miced. Everybody in front of you, you have a little microphone. You just press on and ask your question, turn it off. I'm going to ask you to use the mic, even though we're in a very nice room. But because we're webcasting this event, it would be wonderful if everybody who's listening and watching can also hear your questions in addition to the panelists. So before we get started on our conversation with these researchers, I do want to draw your attention to the executive summary of the research. It is up on our website. It is up on the Women's Regional Network's website. And I certainly hope that you will take the time to really look over these. What I think is an exceptional study of where there is common ground in spite of very diverse countries and their approaches to violent conflict. Also, there is a package out there on the table for more information about this international nonprofit organization, Women's Regional Network. And so without further delay, I've asked Pat Cooper, who is the founder of this NGO, to say a few words. She comes to her work in the practitioner space from being the executive, senior executive, appointee of the government of Canada to provide advice and monitor the effects of federal legislation on women and children. She has other extensive leadership roles here in the United States as well, working with Women's Leadership Council at the Harvard Divinity School. She has most notably recently, though, begun this Women's Regional Network. And I want you to hear from her briefly to get the energy of how she conceptualized this idea. I think we're thinking about innovation and solving problems in an innovative way. And Pat, I'm going to turn it to you to tell us about this. Thank you, Kathleen. Well, I was just reminded earlier in the parking lot that this is just as much about a process as it is about the information you're going to hear today. And so I just want to share, thank you, Tanya, for that, I just want to share with you a little bit about the process. Because we have Justine here from Rwanda, and we're going to have Laura a little later from Mexico City wanting to model the process. And that is something that we're going to have to give a lot of thought to. But the process started with an idea, an idea that women around a conflicted region could come together, have conversations, trust one another, build the platform, and see if we could get a ball rolling in a very conflicted region. That idea was opened up through a listening tour that I was going to host with two other women, but for personal reasons, they weren't able to join me. So the listening tour went on for about five weeks, Afghanistan first, then Pakistan, then India. Not once was the door closed. And there was nobody more surprised than me. What was even more surprising was that they all agreed, irrespective from each other, in whatever city, whatever country, whatever day, they all agreed on the same issue that they wanted this network to address. Number one was corruption. Number two was extremisms with a plural as it impacted women's security. They also agreed that they wanted to include men who could make a difference in women's lives. They all agreed that they wanted women under the age of 40 to have an integral part in the process of this network. They all agreed that they wanted to meet in Nepal because it was a neutral place. So from that moment on, they met in Nepal. It took about a year to raise the funds, find the facilitators, ask the delegates to come. And in Nepal, they added militarization of aid and development to those themes. At the end of six days, with the help of Rangina Hamedi and Swarna Rajapolan, they decided that they, though being the voices of women in leadership of civil society organizations, wanted to hear the voices of women that were in the more isolated remote regions and the conflicted regions of their three countries. So what you're going to hear today is that standalone each country decided how they would go forward and hear those voices. Afghanistan chose the model. They wanted Pakistan chose its model and India chose its model. The core group has been functioning in each country to conduct those community conversations. Every one of us have been volunteering. This is run on a true shoestring. So for four years, my services have been pro bono. Everyone that's here that you're gonna hear from today is pro bono. The funds that we received initially were from Mama Cash, a women's foundation in the Netherlands and they supported the actual mechanism of conducting the community conversations. We went up a notch and we hired a regional coordinator. Chelsea saw her home who was with us here today and she's based in Delhi. But Chelsea's only been with us 11 months. So that's our model. We don't quite know where it's going to take us but we'll let you decide when you hear the rest. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much Pat and welcome Chelsea and all of you who are here supporting this network. We're gonna begin the panel now and I'm gonna shift hats. Right? Right. But what is exciting about this panel and the next is really the opportunity to hear from three different country experts and looking at the findings of this study. Pat, thank you for highlighting the themes that the study looks at and I hope with each one of our presenters here, they're each gonna speak a little less than 10 minutes then we'll open it up for Q and A and if you have a question, I would like it if you could just lift your microphone and I'll know where to look here. All right, I wanna introduce our first panelist who is Rita Manchanda. Rita is the research director of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights. She is from India. She has been directing a multi-country field-based study on auditing partitions as a method of conflict resolution. She's a writer, research journalist, written extensively on security and human rights. She also wrote an edited volume which many of us are aware of, Women, War and Peace in South Asia Beyond Victimhood to Agency. She has a very lengthy bio but I wanted to give you the highlights especially for those of you who are joining us by webcast this morning. Rita helps set the scene. What is happening in India and tell us more about the research and findings there. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. In fact, it's a pleasure to return here. The country conversation, the focus in India was in fact quite controversial because we chose not necessarily the obvious conflicts Kashmir, yes, but we chose to focus on the border, the LOC, an area that was under-researched and area which is not in fact a Muslim majority area but a mixed area. If you look at the valley, the Kashmir valley which has been usually the focus of attention, it is more overwhelmingly Muslim. We wanted more complexity. We also wanted to focus on an area which is a live area. It is along the LOC that is the line of control that a great deal of violence continues to occur despite the fact that since 2003 there is a ceasefire. We also looked at the northeast, another area or another conflict zone in India and particularly once again a state that has not been particularly studied which is Tripura. Despite the fact that Tripura is at peace in quotes, we still have the draconian armed forces special powers act there and this is an act that ensures impunity for the armed forces in the performance of their duty but when duty stretches to include rape and murder you begin to wonder. We also chose to focus on predatory development or rather the consequences of predatory development, people's resistance, people's democratic resistance because India is also experiencing a Maoist movement. This is an area in the area that we focused on which was a protest against the South Korean giant Pascos takeover of the land and people's resistance to it. It's an area which is still experiencing a democratic struggle and people's struggles are likely to become more and more in India especially as we have now a new government in office that has decided that its priority is to go in for development projects, overriding the green tribunals objections and so forth and certainly sweeping aside people's resistance. The fourth conflict area was a communal conflict area and that was Kandamal in 2008. There was violence and it was the targeted community was in fact the Christians and it was the, so it was positioned as a tribal versus Dalit that is the oppressed caste, the lowest caste conflict but and the sort of Hindu or the communal aspect of it was elided. However, analysis showed quite a different picture. So we looked at in fact a range of conflicts partly because the people in these areas saw it like a war. When we went to interview the women they spoke about the resistance to the Pascos giant as we are living in a kind of war. It was the police, it was the securitized goons of the company that were sort of providing the force against the people. So certainly not the military whereas in Tripura and in Jammu Kashmir there was the military. Different conflicts but very, very similar lessons that we pulled out in a sense lessons that resonate as you will hear in Afghanistan and in Pakistan as well. I know I have a very short amount of time so I'm just gonna pull out some of the salient findings. One aspect which was very, very significant for us was the continuation of militarization in situations which were supposed to be at peace. Call it pacification, call it containment, active violence has been contained either through a kind of a peace process as in Tripura or through just pacification. Nonetheless, there is no real reduction in the level of the military. And the consequences of the military's transformation of its role from an active fighting force account or insurgency force to a soft force which is engaged in development issues is what brought forward our concern about the consequences and particularly the gender consequences of the militarization of development. That is the intrusion of the military into the civilian sphere and what it means for women. One, mobility is checked. Two, women find it very, very difficult to access resources whether it's medical, whether it's vocational training, whether it is food provided by the military because often it's seen as the minute that you step across you could be an informer. And as far as the military is concerned they say it very clear, we're not in this for development. This is a counter insurgency operation. Yes, we're trying to win hearts and minds but it's for a military objective. It's not for development. We found and you will hear about this echoes much more significantly in the context of Afghanistan where you had this whole biscuits and bombs issue. But once again, the whole idea of the military intruding into areas which were civilian and the whole question of the normalization. It was a shock to us that we kept pointing out to them but look, you're living in a garrison town and you're supposed to be at peace. They didn't even notice it or they didn't care to notice it, particularly the women. I mean these young girls going to college and they had to pass through a barricade and there was this watch tower with the soldiers. In fact, the same entrance was used by the soldiers as by them. And we asked them, don't you feel uncomfortable? They refused to in fact acknowledge it because they knew the minute they acknowledge it they would be stopped from going to that college because they didn't want to alert their parents. They didn't want to show that there was anything amiss or maybe it was so normalized that they didn't even notice it. The other aspect that came out very strongly and that was in Kandamal, which we, this is an area as I said, had experienced communal violence. 300 people had been killed. Nones had been attacked, sexually violated. Many of these people had been expelled from these villages where they were a minority. They were also, there was also a social economic boycott. Now when we spoke to in fact the women, the Hindu women or the Dalit women, that is the oppressed caste women, the low caste women, they talked about other issues, domestic violence, things like that. They never once spoke about the importance of coexistence, the importance of justice. When we talked about the Christians and you can see in fact the power disparity and what that yields, they spoke about the importance and the urgency for coexistence. Not once did any of the Hindu women speak of it, which also in fact demystify this whole issue of women's solidarities in these kind of contexts. They did not, and in terms of justice, this was actually one of the most painful. Not, I mean in Kashmir I had expected it because you have this culture of impunity which has been reinforced by the military, but here they said, well, justice, yes, we will look to God for justice. However, there was a nun and nuns, mind you, had been raped, had been butchered. This nun was studying law and she said, no, I will try. And there were still women who were going to the courts and the community conversations, the real wealth of the community conversations actually are the voices that we were able to, well, capture. And I just want to read very quickly one, if I can find it and if I can't, I'll just leave it. Yeah, okay, and here she goes to the police station. When I went to the police station to lodge a complaint, they asked me to take off my clothes and hand them over for forensic examination. I appealed to them to give me something else to wear. They indifferently said, I would have to get another set of clothes myself. Some kind person, not from the police force, brought me some clothes to change into. The police tried to dissuade me from lodging a complaint. If this is the way our legal system works, why will any woman pursue justice when she's been sexually assaulted? After going to the police station, I was constantly on the move for several months, hiding in different places. I'm still haunted by the incident, but I want my story to be told. It may give strength to other women who have had similar experiences. And of course, there is the narrative of vulnerability. There is the narrative of sexual violence all throughout these conflict sites, but very, very strong narrative also of agency. And the fact that these women are resisting, these women are still trying to pursue some level of justice. They're trying to reunite their communities. They have no options. And, but it's not that they're sitting back passively. In the, and in the last conflict that I will speak about, which is the conflict against predatory development, these are people who are not against development, but they're certainly against a development that they have seen has resulted in the displacement of thousands and the impoverishment of people who have been displaced. They've been given, of course, compensation, but what do people who have never really dealt with money do with compensation? They drink it away or squander it away. And then in the end, the second generation has no jobs because they're not skilled enough to get the jobs in these places. So these are women who are fighting for their land and their livelihood. And it's very interesting that whereas in all the other conversations, if you ask them what does security mean for you, many of them emphasize physical security, security of movement and so forth. These people said, no, security for us means land and livelihood. We don't care what happens to us physically. It is, if our land and livelihood goes, we have nothing else. There's no point of being alive. These are people who are in the forefront of resistance. These are women who are organized, who have been bearing the brunt. Now, some would say they have been instrumentalized by the men they're used as human shields. They lie down in front, prevent the army from coming or rather the police forces from coming in. They have also adopted strategies like stripping. But yet, if you talk to them as far as they're concerned, they're extremely, and I use the word militant, but please remember this is still a democratic movement, a movement that unfortunately is likely or already has been completely suppressed and there is great anxiety that in fact it will turn more militant and become turned to Maoism. But these women have shown extraordinary courage of resistance. We were able to, one of the things that we were able to try and at least indicate, certainly not establish, was the relationship between domestic violence and public violence and in various forms. And here it was quite in this conflict site where the women are resisting predatory development. Here this woman says, if our husband beats us sometimes, it is not violence. But if the husband is displaced and gets compensation or a job and starts to drink and then beats us, that is an act of violence. Even if we're beaten up by our husbands, it's okay. As long as we are together in this struggle. Women have internalized this patriarchal discourse which is there is a hierarchy of priorities, women's issues, women's inequality, women's oppression. Later on we will just take up these kind of issues. Right now the priority is the struggle. Unfortunately as we all know that window of opportunity when in fact the possibility of some kind of reworking of relationships disappears the minute the status quo stability is reestablished. Thank you. Very much. Thank you for also putting some, I think new challenges to our terminology from a kind of generalist view of security to looking at these different dynamics of how people themselves define security and also introducing this concept of predatory development which I think we'll want to come back to in our Q and A. It's now my pleasure to introduce our next panelist, Kishwal Sautana. She is a peace activist, trainer, research and artist. She's also the first female in her family to attend college. She has been in her professional career managing programs that specifically look at empowerment, youth leadership in peace building. She's been also a member of the provincial CEDAW committee of civil society. Kishwal, we're very interested in how the divergencies and the common ground came forward in your own research. Welcome. Thank you very much. There's a microphone. Thank you. I thank you very much for giving us this time and I think it's important that we, at the regional international level, we join hand together for sustainable peace in the world. As we have discussed, Rita has discussed about India. In Pakistan, we selected two sites. One is Baluchistan and other one is Sawat. And we actually kind of identify and identify and work with women that from the community that has direct experience of militarized societies and the conflicts on their lives. So their perception about the security, their perception about militarization and corruption in Sawat in Baluchistan. In Baluchistan, we interviewed, have in-depth interviews with different ethnic groups, women from Barahi community, women from Hazara community, women from Baluch and Pashtun community from different areas of Baluchistan. And in Sawat, it's also from the different groups that are there. I just want to share, Hazara woman said that me and my mother with younger sisters live alone. So this is the line that discuss about how women see themselves that they are alone or they are secure. Because if the men are not at the home, if no matter how many they are, they see themselves that they are alone at home. She said that my brother have given me a small gun because he's in the army and he has to go outside to the districts for his job, for months. And last time when he came, he gave me the gun and said that please hold this gun with you and I sleep this gun under my pillow every night. And he said that if you realize that someone has broken into the house, please shoot yourself and your sisters because I can tolerate that you are no more with us. You are killed or you have committed suicide but I cannot tolerate that you are a missing person in Baluchistan. So she said we live in a constant fear in our society. And that's the same thing in Sawat woman. She sleeps with a knife at her pillow and under her pillow and she has the same order from his male family members. So this is important to understand that how women, when they think about insecurities, when state think about the security, they think about the national security and around the national security thing. So they can declare anyone against the states or any group they can exclude from being a nationalist group or something. But when women think about their security, they have inclusive of everything, the social, economic and political aspects and also the fear of being raped in such situations. In Baluchistan, Hazara community, the women and men not being targeted as they are women, but they are because of the ethnic and sectarian identity. One woman, a young Hazara woman said that no one throw acid on us, they simply shoot us and because they don't have some kind of honor thing and related to our bodies and so on. A young Baluch woman said we feel constantly in race can when our brothers go out, we get panic that why they are not coming home. In Savat, a woman said that I have two sons, one have a beard and one is without a beard and one is checked by the Taliban and other one is checked by the army, that's who they are. So every time we are kind of becoming a sandwich between the two forces, this is the same in Baluchistan and in Savat, where there are militants in Baluchistan, they said that are Samachars, where that is the separatist movement from Baluchistan Liberation Army. Earlier on the woman don't believe on their actions and they don't want to become part of that struggle but now they said because of the institutions, our state institutions, now we believe that our Samachars are right and we should support their struggle of a separate Baluchistan. Women also think that this public and private sphere, it's the one Pashtun woman said that the public and private sphere, the line between them that are blurred and many of the times this insecure situation has been manipulated or used by the family or the clan for killing women they said if they don't like that women are going to have the young woman, their family are going to have the free will marriage, they just simply kill and said that Taliban have killed her because she was vocal, she was working in the NGO, she is the whole your worker and this is the same with the in Baluchistan, they kill and say this is the Baluchistan Liberation Army. A woman said that there are two kind of threats from unknown, we don't know about them, they harass us and we are constantly in fear from them and one is known that are in the families, our fathers, our husbands, our brothers. Regarding militarization, women don't understand about it the complete concept what is militarization but having army within these setups, they said they have a lot of impact just like if we see in Baluchistan, according to an FC intelligence, FC inspector general, it's 50,000 FC persons are deployed in Baluchistan, it mean 156, one person FC person, FC is the primary paramilitary force in Baluchistan and 156 people, one FC person for 156 people and this does not include army, police, lilies or Baluchistan constabulary personnel there. So I think if we calculate this, so it may be three or two military persons for one person in Baluchistan. So this is the situation and women have a mixed experience of having army just like Pushton women in Baluchistan, they said they don't have direct interaction with all these but they don't trust on FC. Baluch women, they said that these are the words that because of the FC and army, we are with our Sarmachars right now because we don't trust on them. In Savath, women see army generally as saviours because they, as compared to the violence that was there because of the Taliban and they're banned on education, health and all these mobility, it was becoming more difficult and strict parada. So some women said that the army is the saviour but some said that their constant presence in the society, it kind of decrees the civilian control on the institutions and they cannot access to different basic immunities, even the basic immunities. Some women in Savath said that this was a total drama because army and the Taliban are working hand to hand. So we are the ones who just suffer and regarding the corruption in Baluchistan and Savath, their experiences and their perception is the same that they said nothing is there we can not get anything without, this is the permanent feature that is there in all the structures. So if there is floods and natural disasters and the aid and everything, they have to, if it goes to government, it's much more difficult that it will trickle down and it will goes to the people and there are other gangs that they demand protection money from people so this mafia and crime criminal groups are also increasing. And a woman in Savath said that people now are willing to commit murder just for $500, for 500 rupees. It means $5, that's it. Wow, thank you very much, Keshwa. Your poignant examples of the insecurity dynamic within the family and in public are gonna stay with me for a long time. The concept of the gun under the pillow, not for protection but for destruction, self-destruction is really, I think illustrates this profound dynamic of the lack of safety both in public and private. Well, we're going to conclude this panel with a friend and colleague of ours here at USIP. Hossai Wardock is the deputy executive director for equality, for peace and democracy in Afghanistan. Hossai was a part of USIP as a senior fellow in the Afghan program here and she contributed a lot over the years she was here but even more on the ground in Afghanistan as her role as deputy executive director and really looking at aspects of service delivery in terms of this dynamic of development and civil society. Hossai, we look forward to your comments here this morning. Good morning. It's always lovely to be back to a place that I was really a part of last year around same timing and lovely to be back here with some of the colleagues. Before I actually start I recall a story that when we were doing the data collection and interviewing women, one of the students from the east of the country said that we women have always faced tremendous problems and anything that is being built by the funding coming from the Americans that's being destroyed or burned the next day. So we women have been the victim of power struggle in the country between the different groups that are coming including some of the political agenda that by those who are actually coming from the international community. So how can we feel safe about that? In Afghanistan actually we carried the research in last year that was a time that anxiety, the wariness about the troops withdrawal 2014 that luckily we are in already was really high. And that was the time everybody was really concerned with the elections, everybody was concerned with the drawdown of troops and as well as with the drawdown and shrinking of funding and resources to Afghanistan. We covered this research in eight provinces and the selection were from most secure to least secure and from both urban and rural setting. And what is really beautiful about this research is that it does not really go only to those who were there to tell us something and to contribute but those women who were actually only setting in their homes even including those who were not educated and their main responsibility was looking after their children or sometimes even working in the field. So those are the typical views and ideas that are coming in and for that obviously carrying the typical focus group discussions were part of it but we did our level best to ensure that we are part of their social gatherings to ensure that we are there with them to hear some of their voices in a very informal basis as well. I would actually have a very short snapshot of findings and the dynamics that came out of this research and the interesting linkages between the different topics that we choose here. And obviously that was shed light on the common issues that were really same when it comes to both Pakistan and India. The interesting part actually that it came in terms of security for women it really depended on where women were really living. Women in Kandahar felt less secure while women in Bamiyan were thinking that they are better off with security issues. Most of them were actually talking about the insecurity in terms of attacks, kidnappings and killings. While most of the other women actually raised their domestic dynamic issues and in terms of insecurity in their own houses. Rape, honor killing, forced marriages, exchanging women to subtle disputes were those forms of actually insecurity that were raised within families and where women were pretty much concerned. The other issue that it came out in terms of attacks and kidnappings and the interesting part was that women were like we don't care about the rest even if we are beaten up but what we are really concerned is that what if if we lose the man of our house who's gonna win for us and who's gonna actually feed us? These were the main concerns and the different dynamics which were coming from the different parts of the country. Women were also concerned that once if they don't have anybody to look after them going out and winning certain issues and cases in terms of looking for their vulnerability and as well as getting their cases settled down in court looking for services and service delivery that we were talking about is also really so wrapped up in corruption. Corruption and insecurity were directly linked between the different groups and as well as these were the issues women were directly linking them. One of the women in one of the provinces told us that her brother snatched away all the property left by her father and whenever she was actually asked to go to court and complain the brother could manage actually to win the case because he paid a lot of money and at times even when she asked for the support of provincial council members and parliamentarians then she was asked to exchange sexual favors in order to get her case win and she was like it's not that this is what they really wanted it was just what exactly they wanted to disgrace me so that I can back off and leave the case. Militarization of aid and aid effectiveness or development was another concern that it came out and it was very very interesting. Women in the rural areas those who were really not aware of the politics behind the development aid were really concerned and thinking that whatever came out to Afghanistan went to the private pockets of those who were in charge. The ministers, the contractors, the parliament members, members of provincial council members and as well as some of the governors. These were the serious issues were coming and they were talking about how a family got rich to an extent of having property in Dubai through these contractors. While women in the urban setting were pretty much concerned about the aid that is actually being flown out of the country by the contractors. These were one of the main issues that were coming out. All in all you can say that women were really thinking that probably there was obviously direct linkages between corruption and insecurity. One issue which came out was the concern that they were presenting with the troops withdrawal, shrinking of the development aid. They were afraid that women's issues are gonna be the soft target to reduce from and these were the concerns that women were raising. Thank you. All right, then thank you Hossam. Victim of power struggles between the internationals and local national politicians. I think that could be a book in and of itself and would love to pursue that more. I am going to forego my questions to open it up to the audience because we're a little limited on time and I'm gonna take three questions and see if we can open it up here. If you have a question or comment just go ahead, lift your microphone, turn it on. No questions? Okay, please, Hoda and introduce yourself and your affiliation. Hi, a great panel. Thank you, Kathleen for organizing. I am with the South and Central Asia Center here at USIP. My question was actually more targeted towards India. I think the situation there across the board between Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, we can see some overlaps in terms of challenges and opportunities. Do you have some possible recommendations or steps forward in terms to how to mitigate some of the sexual violence and what's going on in India right now, especially with the police sector? And I'm gonna ask one last time if there's any other question because after this one, we will move to our second panel. Please, Tonya, could you use the microphone we're on webcast and also introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Tonya Henderson. Thank you so much for coming today and sharing this was an extraordinary in-depth discussion. I think we're all stunned a little bit with the amount of information we've received. But I wanted just to clarify for when you were talking in for Kishwa, talking about Pakistan. In one instance, you said that the women describe both their known fear, which was the husband, fathers and brothers and then the unknown fear. So I assume you're talking about private public sector, but if you could explore that a little bit more, I thought that was really powerful. I'm going to turn it back to the panelists, Kishwa. Why don't you begin? And then, oh, there was one more. All right, please use the microphone. Viola Gengar, I'm here at USIP. Jose, I was interested to hear from you, looking back now at the elections, how strong you feel women's influence was on the elections and where do you think there still may have been some gaps where women would want to work on in the future in Afghanistan? Thank you. I'm going to ask our panelist, Kishwa, Rita and then Hossai. I'll ask you to keep your comments brief because we have another panel, but very important questions, and thank you, Kishwa. Actually, this is important that we understand that in the militarized societies and in the conflict zones, a public and private sphere, the boundaries blurred because if the men are going out and the women, men are killed in the conflict, women are left alone to us. So we found many women-headed households. So the women that never come out of their houses, they have to come out and earn money for themselves. So it's when they go out in this insecure situations, this is also that they don't know because there are suicide attacks that are going on. So they don't know who is from the Bolivar Sun Liberation Army or who is from the Lashkarjhangvi or who is from the FCE or military or the agencies. So it unknown is the forces that are there, the state and non-state. And within the household, if there is insecurity outside, sometimes men from the home, they said, don't go to school, don't go to your job. So they become the boss that they are there to protect them. So it's important to understand this, that there is a woman who said that if a man kind of have, let me find it for you, it's very important. She said, if men descend, the state kills. But if a woman descend, the family kills. So this is the kind of known and unknown force. Thank you again, Keshwa. Rita? Thank you. I take it that your question talks not about the interdependence of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, but much more in terms of what is common as far as sexual violence issue is concerned. And as you are well aware, this is the part of the region where gender inequality is most acute. And internationally, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan are three of the five countries that have been named where women are most at risk for various reasons, including structural violence, not only conflict-related violence, but structural violence. And in this context, as you may be aware, because it's been in the headlines of the two women, the two women who were found hanging, they had been tortured, they had been raped and murdered. Apart from the whole issue of the extreme disgrace of the way that our political community reacted and the kind of impunity, that the culture of impunity that exists, the difficulty they had to file the case, the fact that the parents waited two hours. When they reported it, the police told them wait two hours. What that meant was, wait, yes, your girls are being brutally raped, they'll be returned. After all, upper caste, lower caste, this is the way of the world. They didn't come back. Instead, they found their bodies hanging. Now, the point I wanted to emphasize was not this so much as, of course, it's rooted in the low status of women. And that is, it's the root cause that one has to engage with socioeconomically. But I want to pick up a symptom because you said, what is it that one can do? And it's a symptom. I'm not saying this is the root cause. So please don't get me wrong. Toilets. After all, why did these young women, what made them even more vulnerable than they are in any case, is because they stepped out at night to go to the toilet. In the country conversation report, you will read that the women in Kashmir say that during the height of the militancy, when in fact the soldiers were all around, they, and the militants were around, they would not step out at night. They would eat just so much. They would drink just so much that they would not have to go out at night. In the Afghan police force, there has been this huge campaign to get more women into the Afghan police force because how are you going to provide security to women unless you have women police, particularly in a place where you have gender apartheid. So they've been trying to get women into the police, but what is stopping them? What in fact is dissuading families from sending their women? It is because there are no toilet facilities and the number of women in the Afghan police who have been raped. Women have been encouraged to join the government, the public service. Why have they been dissuaded from doing so? Once again, women joining suddenly find there are no facilities. A young, a woman who from Kandahar who had joined a government department. Look, there were not very many women. I think there were hardly any women. Maybe she was the only woman, I don't know. She asked, you know, where do I go? She was handed a teapot and told, well, pee in it and make tea in it. The kind of gender insensitivity that exists. Of course, it all reflects back on the low status of women. And therefore I am not pointing to this as saying, oh, you know, build more toilets and it'll resolve the problem. But yes, sensitivity to some of these issues does make some difference and it's easy to do, easier to do. Of course the root cause is the low status of women. Rita, that is, you know, sometimes the most profound predicaments are not put forward and we often so emphasize the need for women to be a part of security forces that we don't realize the risks around very structural issues from engineering these into our own planning. It's definitely something that we have to engage in much more with a serious eye to these predicaments. And thank you for adding that. Hossai, final comment before we ask the second panel. And I promise I'll be very quick. In terms of actually women in women in the elections that we just had last week and obviously in the first round, no doubt that actually they made a significant improvement in terms of coming out of their homes and actually vote. Proxy votings were obviously there but it was not to the amount and to the level that was actually existing in the second presidential elections. However, there were still shortcomings and I think I wouldn't call it gaps but actually shortcomings that women can still improve on. Those were working quite ahead of times with the candidate in terms of what exactly their programs would look like starting from their own political parties or starting from their own groups leading up to the programs that they are going to have. Those were the important things that it came out still. It was there, it was in a much better shape than actually the two last rounds but still it was actually at the 11th hour or what exactly did it really want from the candidates to target and to achieve once when they make it to the office. The other gap that it came out to be obviously the low number of the election commission workers in some of the areas we still did not have enough polling stations for women that really would enable them to come out and vote and that was partially because they were naming insecurity and the lack of women who were really willing to come and work on those ends. And I think as I said, for next time around, I think it would be extremely important for women to work hard, not only to present statistics and to say what exactly they want in terms of very generic ideas but actually really talking about drawing lines. These are the issues we do not want to negotiate on. These are the issues we do not really want to trade off once when they make it to the office and once when they're making their programs. And I think, you know, building on that once when the elections are over, the Avons made their responsibility in terms of coming out and vote to support tremendous threats which were there on the ground, security concerns which were there. And I think now it's time up to the two candidates to ensure that it's a peaceful transition rather than making violence in the country once again. Thank you. Thank you, Hosa, Kishwa, Rita. I hope you'll join me in thanking these women and the remarkable research stories they shared. I'm gonna ask you all to take a seat that direction and I'll ask you all to come in on that side. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope the audience and our webcasting audience will afford us a few extra minutes here because as you can see, the richness of this research doesn't contain itself to a few minutes. These are powerful stories and I think really groundbreaking information that all of us who are either in the policy shaping side or on the ground practitioners need to know more of. So we will go till 1140, not 1130 and I just wanted to brief my audience here. I wanna welcome our second panelists to the podium here. The title of this panel is called From Conflict to Security, a Regional Overview of Community Conversations with Women in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Our three panelists again are very distinguished women who are also like the former three very courageous in their efforts to understand the situation on the ground and to make a difference. Our first panelist joining us is Judge Naila Oubi. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm looking at two different processes here. Our first, what's this one? But you were gonna be first. Forgive me, I have two different programs here. Again, our first panelist joining us in the second is Swarna Raja Gopalan. Swarna works as an independent scholar and writer on traditional and non-traditional security topics in Chennai, India. She is the founding trustee of the Pranya Trust, a non-profit working to create awareness on human security issues. She joins us also as an academic coming from her PhD at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Champaign and an MA in International Relations at Syracuse University. Please, Swarna, welcome to the panel. Thank you. May I take the podium? Yes, you may. It's high school training and education. Or we stand and look your audience in the eye and make sure they don't fall asleep. Thank you very much all of you for taking the time to come here. I know there are a million things happening in D.C. on any given morning at any given hour. And we're very grateful you chose to come here to listen to these stories. What do women living in three countries across a continental span isolated from the mainstream divided by language and culture ignored by history and invisible to policy makers have in common? Well, it turns out they have a great deal in common especially when they share the experience of living with conflict or the high levels of structural violence that militarization introduces. I want to start by reading their words to you and the reason I'm choosing to read to you today where all my other colleagues have spoken to you is that these words are so incredibly important that I don't want to change them inadvertently. So what I've done is to take quotations from the community conversations and simply string them together so they can tell their own story. What is it like to live with insecurity? Problems with peace, security and corruption these matters have a negative impact on women's daily life, on their normal activities it leads to women being less active in society. Though we have a democratic government and these are independent quotations put together in a collage though we have a democratic government the people are free to talk the insecurity takes away all these rights from the people. How can one feel secure when every day we hear the news from the news that someone has been kidnapped or killed whenever a family member leaves the house we are worried for their security and whether they will return or not. How can a person feel secure and live normally in a climate like this? If men dissent, the state kills them. If women dissent, the family and community kill them. I wear a burqa covering every centimeter of my skin except my eyes so no one can see my skin and recognize my ethnicity. On my eyes I wear dark glasses I wear gloves and socks even in the unbearable quetta heat otherwise I am a walking target. My brother takes me to work he wears a helmet on his head so his face can't be seen I cannot breathe in that get-up but it's a choice between that and not working so I take it. Ordinary women will tell you that except for the check posts there is peace but I am insecure even today. Yesterday some children had written the number six in red on the wall of my house as a prank. When I saw it I felt very insecure wondering why someone had written a six in red on my wall. This is my state of mind that I get nervous about the smallest of things. Young women from working class backgrounds belonging to Las Bela district pointed out that the Sardari system of justice was affordable because it doesn't involve paying any bribes. This is a quotation from the report this is not from the women. Additionally, approaching the traditional system violates no taboos. Women said they preferred the Sardari system because the formal legal one involves high-eut financial and administrative as well as emotional and psychological transaction costs. For five years, but this is a different set of quotations, for five years women formed a human blockade. We cordoned off the village and did not allow anyone to enter. During the day we guarded the gates. At night we guarded our Babu Abhaisahu the leader of the movement but the police managed to break our defense and arrest our leader. We were not disheartened. Abhaisahu who is gone but each one of us is in Abhaisahu. Once while I was protesting the Posco people took off my Sardari and threw me in the river but I am still alive. I broke or sprained my leg but I was still at the pickets. I slept in front of the ACP scar and did not allow him to enter our village. Afraid of what? We have never felt scared in these eight years. The only fear that looms large in our mind is the fear of losing our land. This fear drives away all the other fears. Fear of being killed, fear of being beaten. But stability is not security. This is something that is important to remember at this moment. What development work is the army doing? Nothing. I've never seen them develop anything except their contaminants and military bases. I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe elsewhere, I know nothing about that but nowhere here are they doing anything developmental or remotely constructive. Militancy has given people many new opportunities for corruption and bullying and intimidation. If the number of illegal armed men increases in society security decreases. And if society becomes unstable, corruption increases. Corruption is the second way that people select for reaching their goals. Because sometimes it's the easiest way and sometimes it's the only way. Before it was called bribery, now it is like robbery. Corruption has changed to a culture. Money is involved in everything we do. It is impossible to get work done without bribes. Increased corruption and insecurity have direct linkages. This is not an academic writing. This is a quotation from one of the focus groups. Increased corruption and insecurity have direct linkages. The military issues contracts for companies. These companies take all the money and provide services that are not up to standard. We started off thinking three very different countries, three very different contexts and found six threads running through all of these sites. The first was that every single place no matter what the odds, no matter what the challenges, women showed courage, imagination, creativity, enterprise in taking care of themselves and their families. They were not cowed down, they were not victims. And in ignoring this very important reality, we build futures that are predicated on their continued victimhood and on their continued inability to take care of themselves. So we want to put that finding up right up front so it makes a case for participation and it makes a case for inclusion. For all of the women that we spoke to, except in one site, the first meaning of security was physical insecurities. They were concerned about violence within the home and they were concerned about violence in public spaces. But beyond physical security, many, many, many of them spoke about the limiting reality of fear. They were afraid for themselves and they were afraid for their family and they were afraid for the community around them. And this fear made themselves sense or limit their own movements, constrained their choices. And so the second, there was the fear of physical harm but there is also the fear of fear and what, how it changes their lives. They were ambivalent about the presence of security forces recognizing that in some cases they had been invited into a particular area given the prevailing situation but that they perhaps had overstayed their welcome and their utility. The experience of militarization was all pervasive. So you would think that it was restricted to certain kinds of violence but then it also affected who was responsible now for taking out garbage and contracting those services. It was responsible for the kind of money that was floating around, the prices that had gone up. It was everywhere. And finally we asked them about corruption because on the listening tour it had been identified as an important issue but when you read the three country reports from the conversations, it's almost as if the women who spoke in these focus groups were scoffing at the idea that there was anything remarkable enough to discuss. Corruption was a part of their lives and militarization increases the opportunities for corruption. I'm not going to elaborate on these six intersections because I would really like you to take a look at the report itself. But what I want to draw your attention to is the way in which women imagine ideas like security, corruption, militarization, which as an academic, I think many of us work with traditional and cutting edge academic discussions of these concepts. But how do the people who are living in situations that we define as insecure look at them themselves? How do they, so we derived, we chose not to walk in like deductive social scientists and say, here is the definition, here is its operationalization, this is what we're looking for. And what emerged were these definitions. Security to them was freedom from personal and physical harm. A life without fear for themselves and for others. The exception here was Jagat Singhpur in Orisha where activists in the anti-Posco movement had forgotten what it was like to be physically afraid. And the corollary of this finding for me is if being politically active and being free to access public spaces frees women from fear, then this is a really important reason to facilitate women's participation. Political access is a better guarantor of safety than policing. And so it should move participation right up our agendas. Militarization to them was any group, state or non-state that carries arms and uses violence to enforce its will. Any such group contributes to militarization in their view. And the prolonged presence of the military and non-state armed groups or protracted conflict, all of these constitute militarization. It has experienced just the entry of the military into the civilian sphere, which results in infringement of civil rights, loss of accountability, a parallel economy and patronage networks, limited flow of news and information. This was something that they described. We had a section, I think the Pakistan report, particularly on coping mechanisms. They also talked about how they called people to get news and how they found ways to find news about what was going on in their neighborhood. Increased levels of violence in interpersonal relations in the private sphere and the public sphere. The corollary of this is militarization, this is no surprise, is inimical to democracy and reinforces hierarchical elements of society. Corruption was a part of everyday life, a way of being in the world as so common as to be unremarkable. Corruption includes several kinds of behavior, from bribes to a failure to do one's job, to a lack of accountability, to sexual harassment, to violation of rights. Corruption causes insecurity and is reinforced by it. Go back to one of the quotations, I will finish soon. Peace exists when we would be left to fend for ourselves, when no government or no company takes away our land. We have our vines and rights over the jungle and the sea. We at WRN hold peace to be more than the absence of violence and have specific recommendations that we finish up with for the international community, to ensure that women are present and have a voice, to make support contingent upon inclusion, representation and full participation of women, promote women's rights based on existing conventions and resolutions, build capacity and assist others in compliance. And in this room, this might mean investing more in oral histories and ethnographies of conflict and militarization, listening to women and documenting their voices, designing truly inclusive, consultative processes for peace, development and transition processes, stepping up both public advocacy and law being in support of relevant legislations like the Women's Peace and Security Bill and finally working in coordination to build capacity for compliance. I'll stop here. Thank you very much for listening and do take a look at the report. Thank you very much. And again, echoing what you said about oral histories and ethnography, the words speak for themselves, very powerful. Thank you also for the summary. Our next speaker is George Naila Ayubi and she is a lawyer with two master's degrees in law and politics from the State University of Tajikistan and in post-war recovery and development studies from York University in the UK. She is a former judge with extensive experience in judiciary, elections, human rights and women's empowerment and her bio as well goes on for quite a lengthy time and so I want to give her more of the floor than her bio and I turn the mic over to you, Judge. Thank you for this introduction and good morning everybody. Most of the things have been covered by my colleague, Swarna, but I would like to just highlight a few things in particular in three countries that how these three countries have become a common, have found a common understanding of the security corruption and militarization of the aid, which I will go first particularly on the security and militarization and then Abha will elaborate on the other points. One of the things that we found is, as Swarna mentioned, the physical violence in particularly in three countries, violence against women was a common issue among all women that we have been asking, which is very interesting for us. The second thing is the fear again that Swarna also emphasized on that in particularly in Afghanistan, everyday attack was a point of security or a very, I mean, specifically problem for women. The first disappearance in Pakistan was something that we found that how military and militarization can be seen as a different in these three countries and sexual violence was and also lack of help of the police in India was something that came out from all of these reports and we found a common ground that in each of these particular areas you could see that the women are finding a common ground in a common struggle, in a common situation. On the militarization, there was a mixed understanding in three countries, which in Afghanistan, I'm sure that most of our friends here in this room is understanding that the post-Taliban intervention in Afghanistan have been more kind of brought some sort of more effectiveness, even being the intervention was in a military way. One of the examples that we have from Afghanistan, it says increased security, it increased vulnerability as well, but at the same time, there is effectiveness of emergency responses to the conflict zones or conflict situations, which applies for Afghanistan. That's why you could see the mixed feeling of the people. The second thing is also one more thing that the Afghan security forces have been enjoyed greatly among Afghan audience because they were thinking that the Afghan security forces will be stent from the quality perspective or from the capacity perspective, then they will be feeling more secure rather than insecure. At the same time, they also emphasize on other illegal arms groups as well as foreign troops that how they are dealing with these three issues. One more thing that was very interesting that we found that most of the people, particularly in Afghanistan, that they said while the security forces are doing the civilian work, then they are increasing the vulnerability of the society or particularly women. But at the same time, they emphasize that they will be economically well off because they will find jobs in particularly for the provincial reconstruction teams in most of the provinces that they were thinking that this is somehow they're increasing their economic situation. In Pakistan, particularly it was a difference feeling on the militarization among different ethnic groups. Some of the Hazaras who have experienced the FC front, the frontire responsible forces. When they had experience of being saved by these forces, they had different feelings to these forces, but those they have bad feelings or they have been attacked by them, then they had most of the fear from this. As well as in India, it's interesting to see that the lack of support from the police forces, particularly on the sexual violence that Rita already pointed out, and also you can see in the country reports and also in the regional reports that this is something that it was found some sort of problem, how women are most vulnerable from sexual point of view, from gender point of view and most of the sexual violence survivors are not receiving enough support from the police forces, but coming to understanding of the militarization of the aid in particularly in these countries is something that we have specific recommendations in our reports and I'm not going to list all of them. That's why I will let Abha to, sorry, I will stop here and then you will be contributing to some of the talks for the, thank you. Thank you very much, George. Again, this paradox of increased security with increased vulnerability, there's so many themes here that I wish we had hours to debrief with you. I hope you'll come back. Abha Baya is joining us from India. She's one of the founding members of Jagori, a feminist organization set up in 1984 in Delhi, India. She has been active in women's movements in India for more than 38 years and as an activist she has covered an enormous number of issues which I'm sure you're going to touch upon some of the, and reflect on, please, welcome. Thanks, thanks, Kathleen. Really, I want to thank the entire USIP colleagues for creating this fantastic opportunity, not only to share but to dialogue with each other and because I think both organization or platform or institute have common agendas and big, large, boldly written agenda of peace and women's participation. I think a lot of my colleagues have actually given a fairly large territory of our community conversation. I was just kind of reminded of the beginning in Nepal in 2010 and how tentative we were at that moment as we were architecting this entire network and deciding what should we be doing to see this network become a real regional solidarity group. Our dream was to create a network to document women's voices and it's very clear from what you've heard before that women are often seen as voiceless and also therefore seen as not being capable of analysis of their own lived experiences which is absolutely not true as you have heard different quotes from Swarna as well as from Najla. We also started very clearly with an assumption that the experiences of conflict are gendered and therefore this gendered experiences need to be brought into the public arena because in mainstream discourse we seldom hear what and how women feel, think and act. What is their analysis of conflict that surrounds them? Now I just want to add one more dimension as a feminist activist that for women conflict is a well known territory. They live in conflict zone within their families. 70% of the abuse and murder and violence takes place inside the home. So for them to get surrounded by conflict inside as well as outside definitely increases their vulnerability manifold. But they know the nature of conflict except the nature of enemies keep changing. Whether it's the police or the army or the extremist groups they have to understand the different textures of their violence, of their strategies and how often they work in collusion. So our community conversation therefore is kind of a general overview of how women have experienced these different actors in different locations whether India, Afghanistan, Pakistan not only in three different countries but within our countries. Now listening to women's voices as you have now seen gives legitimacy and authenticity to their narratives and prepares a ground for us to take our agenda forward and that is advocacy on behalf of women who have spoken to us. I want to just very quickly share something very personal. My work in the last 35, 38 years has been in the South Asian region. And as an integral member of women's movements across Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh borders we have always dreamt of a borderless regional identity. We have even talked about the regional passports and I often say I'm a regional rather than an Indian. And I think these nationalities are anyway a creation of patriarchal mindset. Anyway, in order to achieve this dream we need to create a political agenda, finding common ground for political action and for advocacy, for building solidarity to bring women's voices from the conflict zones to peace around tables. So that's the journey that we undertook and we wanted to magnify women's voices, their experiences because without inclusion of their experiences and their strategies I do not think we can fulfill our dream of peace building. Agency, many of my colleagues have already talked about it. I'm not going to elaborate a lot on it but that was a remarkable, not surprising finding that women are not victims alone. Women use their agency all the time because majority of the poor women, the women of breast, class, and caste and communal identity women have to deal with their realities of a daily basis and see to it that food is brought to the dining tables or to the grounds of homes and therefore their agency is something that we need to recognize and shift this discourse from women being victim, women being not able to do something within those circumstances to the fact that if we include women's agency, women's strength, women's courage that we have seen displayed during our documentation we will be able to really create a much more holistic peace agenda for ourselves, for our children and for our men as well. Pakistan study clearly states housing women as vulnerable and victim often overshadows their strength and agency and similarly women standing for election in one of the provinces that is Kashmir, women stripping naked in one of the conflict sites in India to make the police retreat. These are very, very kind of powerful strategies that women used at times at the cost of their bodies and to be honest, we realize that during conflict time women's bodies become the battleground and I'm just reiterating it, but the fact that the land and the body come kind of together for the conflict managers to take over and fights are actually enemies, settle their disputes on women's bodies by using them, by violating them, by mutilating them. Physical security, again, we have already talked about it, but it provided commonality and differences. What Swarna talked about, the differences when women are organized, when women create that solidarity, their sense of physical security kind of changes. It changes its kind of within the mind and within people because in one of the sites that's being mentioned often, and that was the only site, unfortunately, within our community conversation where women were organized, that women said physical security, sexual security is not an issue. We are not worried. What we are worried about is our ancestral motherland and our livelihood, and I think that's very central in today's globalized economies that people's fundamental right to land and livelihood is being taken away, and women want to make a noise about it. In Pakistan, both Balochistan and Swat are full of narratives of instances of sexual violence and their coping mechanisms, sexual violence and overarching experience of women in India during communal violence. So I think any kind of violence, definitely, the first target is women's bodies. Environment of fear that women live with in any case, all the time, whether there is an kind of overt conflict or not, of course, get magnified during conflict time. Bribes, lack of accountability, exhaustion, corruption affecting land rights, right to education, access to job, development scheme, all these are the fallouts of conflicts. Am I running out of time? In terms of moving forward, holding peace to be more than absence of violence and believing that security lies in freedom from fear and freedom from want, that justice is inalienable from peace and security. Peace for women is not possible without pursuing the political agenda of demilitarization. This is my point of our nation states. We have common past, common silk roots in these three countries. We need to open up regional feminine pathways to peace. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hate to say that sometimes being a moderator is very painful because there are so many stories here and so many memorable quotes inside, outside insecurity as the nature of the enemy keeps changing. It is insecurity everywhere. Thank you also for putting us kind of on that roadmap to the future, this creating a political agenda in the region among women. I think you can see that we've barely scratched the surface this morning on this profound study. It reminds me of years past when I was at the World Bank and the report called Voices of the Poor came out. The ethnography, the story, what is the day-to-day reality? And I think you have taken that study and brought it into the sphere of security and insecurity and certainly what it means for women in this region. I know that we have gone over our time but I sense there could be a couple of questions and I would really like your permission to allow this to go a few more minutes if you have to leave, we understand. But I'm going to go first to Julie and then to Valerie and anyone else, I'll take three questions. I'm gonna go to Laura just because she hasn't asked and then Tonya, please introduce yourself. Good morning, I'm Julie Aristigie with Women's Action for New Direction. Thank you so much for sharing with us this morning. This is for the panel in general. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the factors that are driving the militarization of aid in the region. Okay, I'm gonna keep moving and I'll let you decide between you. Go ahead, Valerie. Thanks also to all six panelists who are so insightful. And all of the panel, all of the speakers really helped, I think, articulate the instability of the word security, in fact. And I wonder if you can shed some perspectives on how the international community might be, could do a better job of getting militaries to comply with the international instruments that are already in place to protect communities and women. Yes, stability is not security. Hi, I'm Lauren Lovelace. I'm the director of the USFGA Women's Council. Thank you so much for your time and your insights this morning. We also, in addition to a USFGA Women's Council, we have a USPakistan Women's Council and I think one thing that we might wanna do is see these councils working more closely together. I would love to speak with you, judge about the Afghanistan Council and others. My question was, you know, we have, at least as I'm a diplomat, I'm a State Department employee, we have for a long time talked about the New Silk Road in ways, you know, as a political construct to link the region specifically to Afghanistan. One of the ways that I've seen could be a possibility for what I call building a fast lane for women on the New Silk Road is working with economic development. And I'm wondering specifically about, and kind of building on Valerie's point, instead of governments, what about NGOs? And I'm thinking of NGOs like BRAC that are working in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan. What work could, how could NGOs that are working in development, specifically with women, help move forward the vision that you stated about trying to build some sort of connectivity regionally. Thank you. Tonya, I'll take your question very quickly. And if you turn on your, yeah. Thank you. I'll make it very short. I just wanted to raise the mention that you talked about the regional solidarity between the women and was wondering if how that was brought back down to the women at the grassroots level, the women that you interviewed, that concept of solidarity. All right. Have you organized here? Okay, George. Actually, the first question on, specifically on the, what are the factors promoting the militarization. You know, something that based on our conversation in our experience, particularly I'm talking about Afghanistan, which I think Rita already mentioned that, that at the same time when you were bringing like, let's say, in Afghanistan when the intervention happened at the same time, the drones and the, what is called this, my name, cluster, cluster's mine was. Cluster bombs. Cluster bombs were the same, the same size and the same color plus the food packages, you know. This was something that you could see, the people were in Bamiyan particularly, in the northern, central island of Afghanistan, we found that most of the people were killed because they thought this is a food. Instead, there was a cluster bomb and they, this is a kind of fact that you can see that how you can differentiate between the two, providing the aid and at the same time, particularly providing the emergency aid is something that in the conflict zone is things are happening, sometimes you see that you are developing some laws, emergency laws that this might respond to that particular situation, but after a few, maybe months or a year, then you could see that the backlash is coming, which the same, this happened in Afghanistan, I'm not talking more because we are running out of time, that these type of things can be one of the factors that at least we can differentiate between the two, the two side of the issues, thank you. Thank you. What the international community can do. According to me, first of all, I think we need to shift the discourse a bit. We need to recognize that wars and conflict and militarization and ideology of militarism is a patriarchal agenda. We are all the time talking about combating sexual violence and not asking a very central question and central issue, why sexual violence is integral to wars and conflict? How come that military is created with this kind of a thought that they have a right to walk over women's body and mutilate women's bodies? And let me go back to Vietnam war. What happened at that time? The American state created an entire sexual zone by bringing prostitutes and creating a possibility for these soldiers who were out of the nation to have entertainment. Now, if this is the mindset, how can you work against sexual violence? Men think it is their right once they're out of their homes into this conflict zone to violate the citizens and violate women's bodies. So what I find very important for us women, especially men who are working on the issue piece, to actually ask a very central issue, why militarization? Why the Security Council members are the best providers of defense industry? So the questions are much more deep and central. We can give superficial answers, but I think we need to ask this very important question. I think the other thing if the military has to continue for the time being and that's what it seems and looks like, there's a tremendous, I mean, this is one of the biggest billion dollar business. Then we need to conduct gender training, gender equality training for the military personnel from top to bottom. And that should be non-negotiable. Nobody can stand with a gun or with a uniform without going through that training that should be made essential. Let's shift the burden on the perpetrator. What we are constantly talking about, how to help women after they have been sexually violated, after they have been mutilated. I think this is not going to work anymore. That's my assumption. I want to really respond to the issue of BRAC and NGOs. Again, I want to challenge the entire notion of this corporatization, the globalization, the consumerism that we are going for as a development route. I think we again need to challenge it. I don't think that's the route that is going to eliminate poverty. That's going to change the power relationship. That's going to reduce the difference between the poor and the rich within our countries and between countries. So if America and other allied countries have the power to dictate terms and conditions because they are also our provider of aid and all, then I see no really window to change this. And the voices of protest have to come from below. So if whether it is NGO or whether it is the state, I think the politics of development, the present paradigm needs to be really reviewed and we need to look at a new possibilities. And I am not hesitant to quote Gandhi who said that you can live with minimum and with maximum happiness. Now we have reversed that. We live with maximum and with minimum happiness. So I think we need to go back to some of these very important positions and understanding of society. Thanks. Thank you. On that note, I just want to thank all of you and the organizers and the visionaries and our audience for this really, I think groundbreaking work. And again, I hope you'll come back to USIP. I hope we can keep learning from this work and each of you and your efforts to make a difference in your region and as regional citizens. So thank you all. And I ask the audience to join me in really raising a hand of thanks to these. I think we should say a big thank you for hosting us here today. I thank my team. Thank you.