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Women PeaceMakers Program
Made possible by a grant from the Fred J. Hansen Foundation
2006 Women PeaceMakers Biographical Abstracts
Shukrije Gashi of Kosovo
Shukrije Gashi lives and works in Prishtina, Kosovo, where she is the director of Partners Center for Conflict Management-Kosova, working within local communities to resolve disputes and build consensus on issues affecting civil society. A lawyer, poet and mediator, Gashi has worked throughout her life on issues of human rights and conflict resolution. As a student in the early 1980s, she was imprisoned for two years for her involvement in the struggle for the recognition of Kosovo Albanian rights in the former Yugoslavia. Following her imprisonment, Gashi worked as a journalist for many years, writing for newspapers such as the New York Times and the Albanian daily newspaper Rilindja. In the 1990s, she helped establish several regional NGOs, including the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, the Centre for the Protection of Women and Children and Motrat Qiriazi. She was one of the main actors involved in drafting the first mediation law, gender equality draft law, and property and housing legislation in Kosovo. Also throughout the decade, Gashi was involved in the Council of Reconciliation, which brought together Albanians from Kosovo and the diaspora to resolve sometimes decades-old blood feuds (or interfamily revenge killings); she and other mediators in the council adapted traditional conflict resolution practices to modern Albanian culture.
While working on the development of successful relations between civil society and government, Gashi has been working to raise awareness among women of the importance and advantages of seeking roles in decision-making processes, particularly at the local level. Gashi, recognizing that the healing of divided communities is vital at this stage of Kosovo’s development, has also been focusing on the return of Serb minorities to the largely Albanian Kosovo. Working jointly with programs in Serbia, her efforts aim to reintegrate minorities both physically and mentally and to ensure sustainability of the process. Palwasha Kakar serves as a deputy minister in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs for the government of Afghanistan. Prior to this, Kakar served as program manager in the eastern regional office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province, where she worked toward the protection, promotion and defense of the rights of the Afghan people with a particular focus on women.
Born to an educated family in eastern Afghanistan, Kakar graduated from the faculty of social sciences at Kabul University and became a teacher. Throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s, Kakar and her family were displaced because of the Soviet occupation or fighting among the Mujahedeen. When public teaching became impossible, she joined a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) program working as a social mobilizer and trainer. She went on to create the only home school for girls in the eastern zone during the time of the Taliban. Because of her activities, her husband was briefly jailed and her family later forced into exile in Pakistan. Back in Afghanistan in 2001, Kakar served again as a UNICEF trainer, this time in the western city of Heart, and created the first council of women in the city. For the AIHRC, Kakar served as women’s rights officer and program manager, documenting human rights violations and calling on the government of Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents and international forces to respect and uphold the rights of Afghan citizens.
In her post in the ministry, Kakar has been seeking ways to surmount the challenging patriarchal norms which prevail throughout the nation. With 64 women currently holding seats within parliament, Kakar is battling tokenism and pushing for effective, transformative leadership to ensure that the rights of Afghan women are ingrained within governmental policy. Her work to ascertain the status of Afghan women in remote regions of the country has placed her in life-threatening situations, yet she asserts that the voices of the female population will be heard. Additionally, through this post, Kakar is working toward the creation of environments in which Afghan women may have some reprieve from the constant discrimination and violence they face because of their sex, and is seeking to institutionalize the abolition of violence against women.
Click here for Narrative.
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Palwasha Kakar of Afghanistan
Palwasha Kakar serves as a deputy minister in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs for the government of Afghanistan. Prior to this, Kakar served as program manager in the eastern regional office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province, where she worked toward the protection, promotion and defense of the rights of the Afghan people with a particular focus on women.
Born to an educated family in eastern Afghanistan, Kakar graduated from the faculty of social sciences at Kabul University and became a teacher. Throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s, Kakar and her family were displaced because of the Soviet occupation or fighting among the Mujahedeen. When public teaching became impossible, she joined a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) program working as a social mobilizer and trainer. She went on to create the only home school for girls in the eastern zone during the time of the Taliban. Because of her activities, her husband was briefly jailed and her family later forced into exile in Pakistan. Back in Afghanistan in 2001, Kakar served again as a UNICEF trainer, this time in the western city of Heart, and created the first council of women in the city. For the AIHRC, Kakar served as women’s rights officer and program manager, documenting human rights violations and calling on the government of Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents and international forces to respect and uphold the rights of Afghan citizens.
In her post in the ministry, Kakar has been seeking ways to surmount the challenging patriarchal norms which prevail throughout the nation. With 64 women currently holding seats within parliament, Kakar is battling tokenism and pushing for effective, transformative leadership to ensure that the rights of Afghan women are ingrained within governmental policy. Her work to ascertain the status of Afghan women in remote regions of the country has placed her in life-threatening situations, yet she asserts that the voices of the female population will be heard. Additionally, through this post, Kakar is working toward the creation of environments in which Afghan women may have some reprieve from the constant discrimination and violence they face because of their sex, and is seeking to institutionalize the abolition of violence against women.
Click here for Narrative.
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Svetlana Kijevčanin of Serbia
Svetlana Kijev?anin currently manages the bachelor of education in community youth work studies for the Swedish NGO Forum Syd Balkans Programme, where she also teaches a course in leadership, youth and development work. After the graduation of her first cohort of students in 2007, she is working to establish similar programs in other universities across the Balkan region.
Kijev?anin was born and still resides in Belgrade, Serbia, part of the former Yugoslavia. As Yugoslavia began its disintegration, Kijev?anin embarked on peace activities with both local and international NGOs, including CARE International and the United Methodist Committee on Relief. She co-founded Group MOST (“Bridge”): Association for Cooperation and Mediation in 1992 and implemented various creative and innovative programs in peace education. During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, including during the NATO bombing of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, Kijev?anin continued her peace work, conducting hundreds of trainings, primarily with youth, refugees, psychologists, teachers and NGO activists throughout the Balkans. She has used a variety of media, including a television series on conflict, documentary films on peace studies and print media in the form of drawing books for youth, to explore the potential for conflict transformation and to connect people across national and ethnic lines. Kijev?anin is actively involved in the use of theater-in-education methodology for building tolerance and understanding among youth; her theater troupe recently performed their piece, “The Love Affair of the Sun and the Moon,” at the International Festival of Theater in Education in Mostar, Bosnia and in the province of Vojvodina.
In 2007, Kijev?anin received a full scholarship to participate in a 10-month, long-distance course at the East Side Institute for Group and Short-Term Psychotherapy in New York, where she will enhance her psychological studies and strengthen the application to her work in education and grassroots activism. Her presentation of her work in reconciliation utilizing theater-in-education methodology at the fourth “Performing the World” Conference coincided with the recent publication of her article, “Reflections on Activism,” in 20 Pieces of Encouragement for Awakening and Change: Peacebuilding in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia, a publication of the Centre for Nonviolent Action. Kijev?anin is married with two children and considers herself a genuine networker and activist because “activism is my only authentic response to the situation in which we are living.”
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Rebecca Joshua Okwaci of Sudan
Rebecca Joshua Okwaci is a journalist by profession and the secretary general of Women Action for Development (WAD) in Sudan. As a peace advocate, Okwaci co-led the Sudanese delegation to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995 and facilitated dialogue between women from the south and north. Her progressive work to bring the groups together was recognized by international institutions and governments and culminated in the founding of Sudanese Women’s Empowerment for Peace (SuWEP), an organization included in the list of 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is also a founding member of the Sudanese Women’s Association in Nairobi and Sudanese Women’s Voice for Peace (SWVP), the first grassroots peace organization established by Sudanese women living in exile in Kenya, and she co-led the Sudanese women’s delegation to The Hague Appeal for Peace in 1999. With SWVP, Okwaci carried out the first peacebuilding and conflict resolution programs and trainings in the Shilluk Kingdom in Mid-West Upper Nile in southern Sudan.
In her role as secretary general for WAD, Okwaci strives to educate women and communities in skills necessary to advance the agenda of peace in Sudan. She has conducted several trainings and is assisting in the creation of a WAD office in Juba, the capital of the south. Okwaci recently contributed to the Collo (Shilluk) Conference on Peace and Development with a presentation of her views on women’s roles in peace and development. With successful strides in engendering the government of Southern Sudan at all levels, Okwaci is still working toward the realization of 25 percent women’s effective representation within Sudan.
As an executive producer at Sudan Radio Service, Okwaci produces programs targeting women, such as “Our Voices” and “Women’s Corner,” and contributes to programs educating citizens on elements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005. As the only female member of the Association for Media Development in Southern Sudan, Okwaci has been instrumental in the drafting of three media bills focused on issues of public service broadcasts, access to information and regulation of broadcasts. Additionally, she is contributing to the formation of a code of media ethics and a code of conduct for Sudanese journalists. She is a member of a media council task force designed to guide and support journalists in the proper usage of the code of ethics.
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Contact Information:
Erika Lopez, MA
Women PeaceMakers Program
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice
University of San Diego
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 92110
USA
Fax: 1.619.260.7570
* Alternative fax number: 1.619.260.7809
E-mail: erika.lopez@sandiego.edu
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