 It was my great pleasure now to welcome sister Lorraine Garrison and also Bonnie Mayewald who's from the Australian Civil Military Centre and who played a civilian peacemaker role in Bougainville. And you also sister are a peacemaker. Could we begin by saying what happened in Bougainville? There was a conflict in Bougainville. What was that fight about? The conflict that broke out this war in Bougainville was, it actually started as an economic crisis because of the mining, like BCL or Bougainville Cooper Limited was mining in Bougainville for 20 years. And because the land owners were unhappy about the royalty, the payment for the land and all that. So they started, you know, they started an arm unrest against the mining company. And how long did that fighting go on for? The fighting went on for almost 10 years. And I mean that's just one aspect of the conflict on Bougainville. The other aspect is there's always been a political struggle for independence for Bougainville. It's been there for many years. And when this crisis started, it just added some more fuel onto what was already there. So that's why it turned into an armed conflict which lasted for 10 years. This conference is all about learning lessons from the past and in order to improve work in the future. And one of the lessons people want to learn is how do we bring peace back to communities that have been in conflict. In a moment I want to ask you about your role. But first of all, Bonnie, explain when did you get involved with Bougainville? When did you go there and what did you do? Okay. I was there actually as a civilian peace monitor with the Bougainville peace monitoring group. That was a regional mission. It was an unarmed mission, a very important aspect of it. So it was defence supported, but the monitors themselves were civilians, usually from departments, public service departments in Canberra, DFAT, Foreign Affairs, AusAid, Attorneys General, provided staff on secondment who were trained in the peace monitoring process during the ceasefire. So there was a ceasefire arrangement negotiated between P&G government and Bougainville parties. And they had civilian peace monitors and defence support over three or four years to negotiate the peace agreement and to also discuss how arrangements might be considered for the political arrangements on Bougainville, whether or not the people on Bougainville wanted independence from P&G or whether they wanted some particular autonomous arrangement within P&G. And that process is still going on. So we're talking about decades of work that is still continuing and should be finalised by 2020. I think a moment ago I introduced you, Bonnie, as a civilian peacemaker rather than peace monitor. And I think it's because sitting with you sister, I'm mindful that Jesus said, bless it, are the peacemakers. And I want to turn to peacemaking now and find out what you did in your community to try to build peace and keep peace. When the conflict broke out on Bougainville, I was working with the women in the Catholic Church. I was like their national coordinator. And because of the, we had to take up emergency response because people were displaced, their homes were burned by the army, the P&G, the French force or security forces, they called them because they were mixed with the police, army and police. And so we had to organise relief services for them and all that which was taking care of women and children. So it's a housing food care? Yes, like they were placed in care centres. That's what we call them care centres. And then into the second year of the conflict because we didn't realise that it was not going to stop because the rebel leaders on Bougainville, they started taking up arms, homemade guns and just started combating with the army. And so because of that we started organising activities as holding meetings. We called them peace meetings. We held peace vigils like in the night by candlelight, praying for peace. We did things like that and we held peace marches to go and petition even the Papua New Guinea government or their representatives on Bougainville, the army, the rebel leaders to stop the violence. As a group of women? Oh yes. And what we actually did was we mobilised the women throughout the island because in Bougainville the women's network in the churches is right throughout the island from the billets level, you know, grass root level all the way to the national level. And sister, is there, is it part of your culture for women to have leadership roles? Yes, because Bougainville is a matriarchal society and women are the holders of the land. They make decisions over the land, they make decisions over the family, the clan. So naturally they are leaders. Because I was wondering why the men in conflict would listen to a group of women but there was partly a cultural factor and partly respect because of you being a religious. Did that help? Yes, this helped at some level, but sometimes it didn't help because I mean there were men in the factions that had respect for women and there were also men in the factions that didn't have respect for women. But for me it was basically about, we have something that we call, you know, a malinician society called malinician diplomacy. It's how you go around talking to the men. And we do that all the time in our families, in our clans. You don't go and you scream at them or bark at them, you know. It's like going slowly behind the back of the leader and talking to the people with him to convince him that, you know, this is not the way to do it, but this is the way to do it. So for us it was like that and that's how we organized and mobilized the women. How important do you think that work by the women was in bringing a treaty? Yeah, it was very important because by the year 1995 there was no way that they could stop the violence, stop the fighting because now it just turned into a real armed conflict with we know people were dying, were being killed in ambush, there were massacres all over the island. So in that crisis we lost 20,000 lives. That crisis cost 20,000 lives. So by the year 1995 we knew that it was not going to end. So what we did was, there was actually an intervention in 1994 where there was a regional peacekeeping force. It was like a one-off. They had some people from like P.T. Tonga and Australia and New Zealand. They went on a ship and, you know, tried to intervene and brought people together to a meeting. But then when that happened, right after that happened, the P&C defense force organized what they called Operation High Speed 2. I don't know what that means, but they did this operation where they were going to wipe out the rebel faction, you know. And it didn't happen, it failed. And because of that incident, the rebel government and the rebel leaders just decided they didn't want to do any more dialogue. Have any more dialogue with the Papua New Guinea government with anybody. They just didn't want. So that's when we, the women from the churches, we decided to organize a non-political body of women. So me and a group of, there were like six of us, we got together women leaders from the three main line churches and the three main line churches on Bougainville, the Catholic Church, United Church and the Seventh Day Adventist Church. So we got the women together and we formed a group. And we actually had help from the, there was a Bougainville working group based in Sydney and we got help from them. They sent someone to Bougainville and she came and she helped us to organize a workshop where we strategized on how we were going to intervene. So that by 1996, we were able to mobilize 700 women and we held a conference in Central Bougainville with 700 women advocating for an end to violence and to the war and for our leaders to come together and start the dialogue process so that we can build peace. I can tell by your whole demeanour and the way you're telling this story you are confident that this mobilization of women has played a critical role in bringing peace and presumably in the ongoing maintenance of that peace. I suppose the obvious question in a conference that's about lessons learned is are there lessons we can learn from Bougainville that would apply elsewhere or is this a special case, a matrilineal society with female land ownership history, with respect for the Christian church across a number of groups that in a way it's a unique set of circumstances. Can I ask you Bonnie first and then I'll come to you sister, are there lessons here applicable elsewhere? There are some special things about Bougainville and one of them is that traditionally because the women didn't have blood on their hands they were able to call for the peace whereas men had blood on their hands and they couldn't so there is that Bougainville element and at the same time as women within the church groups were active leaders the male and female domain in Bougainville is quite separate and so when women helped form a peace they were then being told by the Bougainville men to go back to their homes and the men would take the negotiations forward. So the women of Bougainville actually had to reclaim their position and role and their right to inform the negotiations and the peace agreement and that the men should listen to the women and not just say go back to your homes. So I think if you look at a recent parallel I think in Liberia where women joined hands across Christian and Muslim faith and sat on the road and placed their lives at risk and helped bring a peace to Liberia in a kind of a parallel to what happened in Bougainville a very dramatic parallel. What do you think? Can your story inspire other women in other situations? I think it can and it's not just because of the fact that we come from a society where women have they have title and they have leadership roles because from my own personal experience it wasn't at all easy doing that. I know that for the 12 months I was organizing this conference I was like the main person going and talking to the army and using what we called coconut wireless the boost telegraph because in those days we didn't have mobile phone so basically we had to go past by word of mouth and we had responsible people who could take the message and run up the mountains down wherever they had to go or we had to send letters however and it wasn't easy in those days because we didn't have the kind of communication system that we have now and also because the men like they felt that they owned the war and that we women shouldn't be interfering sometimes they looked at us like we were interfering pools we didn't know what we were doing and that we were crazy mad and yet there were some men who felt that yes women can do it because what Bonnie said we didn't fight the war, we didn't kill anybody we had nothing against anyone so we were able to go up front and say stop it, don't do it, this is not good, this is not right so I think other people can learn from Bogan Ben One quick personal question and then I want to come to your work in trying to deal with violence within the home the personal question is this are you a leader in your community in any cultural way or are you just a woman who's grown to be a leader do you know what I'm trying to say there? Yes, I understand I come from, in my clan my maternal grandmother is the matriarch I come from a sibling family from both my mother's side and my father's side because you have authority, don't you? you have natural authority so when I was growing up I was taught Melanesian diplomacy how do you do it as a woman within a society that says yes women are the leaders and yet often times there's a system within our society there's something within our society that says yes it's true you make the decisions you make the last say but we don't sit at the negotiating table it's our men who sit at the negotiating table and they come back to us so as a leader in your clan when you are growing up you are taught that Melanesian diplomacy if you have to get a point across to the men at the table how do you do it? It's almost like concentric circles the men and the women you see this whole conference is about transitions and part of that is bringing societies that have been in conflict or after a crisis of a flood of fire or whatever bringing communities back to stabilisation and this question is in my mind is part of that not just peace on the streets but peace in the homes and as I understand it the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution a few years ago 1-3-2-5 and it's trying to bring gender into these discussions and as we go to this conference together should we be talking about reducing violence in the home as part of stabilisation in the Solomon's or in Afghanistan or is it a separate matter that's private and this conference is about the public do you want to go Bonnie? No I think they are intimately connected and it really is important that men and women learn positive ways of going forward together and that's recovering from a disaster situation or a conflict or a mix of both because often particularly fragile and vulnerable countries that have serial disasters or serial conflict don't know what normal is anymore and so giving them space and time to learn how to relate to each other in positive ways allow women and men, children and older people to all find normal and stable ways of living are really important and I just see it as all part of one spectrum What do you think? I feel exactly the same way and I know from first-hand experience in Bougainville now because of the fact that the trauma experienced by former combat and has never been dealt with properly we still have that ongoing cycle of violence and we do not forget that there were young children growing up cheering the 10 years of the conflict today these are the people who are suffering because they were traumatized like as Bonnie said there are no other but violence so they think it's normal and in Bougainville at our center we work a lot with children and youth and we try to help them understand that no, that's not you know, that's not a normal situation the behavior, the anti-social behavior violent behavior, that's not normal that's not correct this is the normal way you have to be a normal person a person that is not violent to be able to know that that's life do you believe that the Australian Civil Military Center, the host of this conference that these issues about children, about women should be equal equal with all the other issues it should be equal with all the other issues because like I also know that like within the park when you're going to need defense posts all the men who fought in Bougainville have never been de-traumatized or however you say and impacts on their families you've jumped exactly to what I wanted to bring up as my last point because we're at a conference with lots of people in uniform from all over the world and many of them have been working in very traumatic locations either in either in conflict situations or humanitarian responses and it's part of stabilization and transition assisting the civil and military teams to return to ordinary life. Is that an issue, Bonnie? Yes it is an issue and we talk about getting people ready to do a response or to do a rapid response but we also talk about how they come home what they bring home with them and how they need to process that mentally as well as physically get over some of the things they may be carrying with them because they may have been exposed to all sorts of things and it really is a whole of body and whole of mind kind of confrontation they've been through and they need to come back to a normal family life. You almost need a little in-between period when you can talk to your family about what you've been through so they can understand a little bit of it and give you space and time to come back down to Earth again to Libya. So that kind of transition is an important tradition for people who've been third party witnesses or part of the conflict just in a similar way people of Bougainville need to be given time and space to find their new footing and decide on their new political space. Sister in that future political history let's say 20 years time the next the little girls of today and the little boys of today when they're adults do you dream of a time when men and women sit at the same negotiating table as equals or is that a you know a western culture in position? My thinking for the future is that I would like them to sit at the one table and I also I mean in Bougainville it happens in some families like in my immediate family my clan there's no more millennial descent diplomacy we come and we sit at the table and dialogue because all my family members the people in my family who are my age we've all been to school to university and all that and because of that educational background behind us we are able to tell our older people it's no more like before we have to sit round table discuss and reach consensus so for the future of Bougainville that's what we want to see and today in Bougainville the women we the women through the women's organizations are educating our women to do that and not only the women we also educating men and getting them to what we are doing more and more often even in the homes in the communities is getting them to relook at their gender roles within the families within the homes or in relation to you know men and women and in the Vatican too oh yes once you've sorted out Bougainville go to Rome Sister Lorraine from the sisters of Nazareth and also Bonnie Maywall from the center thank you so much that was very good thank you