By Karen Castellon, AWC Berlin and FAUSA
March 15, 2022
“Conversation Circles are one of the most popular aspects of the annual NGO CSW Forum. This year, for CSW66 and the NGO CSW66 Forum, all Conversation Circles will address the intersections between selected themes and climate justice in alignment with the CSW66 priority theme. Participants from around the globe and all walks of life are welcome. Although the sessions will be informal conversations, they will be safe spaces with our Virtual Safety Guidelines strictly enforced. Each conversation will be guided by two co-facilitators who are experts on the topic. Participants will be encouraged to be engaged in discussion either live or by chat.”
I was encouraged by this description, as Conversation Circles allow for lots of diverse voices. For this session, I volunteered to serve as Rapporteur. (First, I asked: what does a Rapporteur do? Answer: Listen, take notes, report back to the larger group.)
The session was co-led by Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, a Fijian political activist of Indian descent who serves as a technical advisor to Shifting the Power Coalition and the Global Fund for Women. The other co-leader was Riya Yuyada of Crown the Woman in South Sudan. She is a peace activist and promoter of ending violence against women and girls. She asked, What does peace mean to you? and provided her Twitter for further interaction: @Theonlyriya1
We addressed “What opportunities are there to strengthen youth and adult methods to the peace process? What intergenerational opportunities exist to push the peace and security agenda?”
We heard from three speakers:
Political leader Nickocy Phillips from Trinidad and Tobago wants the United Nations to hold governments accountable for getting input from NGOs, which she finds “weak and vulnerable.” While NGOs are often on the ground and interacting directly with the people, offering services, the policies created in the government do not reflect the realities of the people.
Riya Yuyada said that in South Sudan a peace agreement has been signed but young people were not included. How can their concerns be addressed if they are not at the table? Therefore, how do we ensure that young women are invited to talk about issues of young women: for example, how to earn a living so that she can afford sanitary towels? Also, the Constitution does not have protections against underage marriage; there is only a vague reference to being “marriageable age,” which then gets interpreted based on a woman’s body size.
Carolyn Kitione from Fiji talked about how there are traditional structures in her Pacific island nation, and these go up to the national level. The best intervention for youth is to align themselves, for example, with indigenous women leaders to define “what peace looks like.” Peace, in the Fijian context, does not refer to armed conflict but to dealing with the results of climate change, which is really impacting this country. What does peace look like in terms of the mental health of the people? Church groups and male allies (not “champions”) are other groups that invite in young people to stand together in solidarity so that voices come from the ground up and not top down.
Dorothy Halley from the International Public Policy Institute and the Family Peace Initiative (based in Kansas, USA) focuses on stopping domestic violence and treating survivors. “I knew we had to focus on stopping the violence when we treated the seventh victim from the same perpetrator.” Her colleague, Trish, spoke of working on making changes in the systems, especially “justice-involved” women (prisons) so that the adults in those systems learned new tools for interacting with youth who come from violence.
In sum, I really enjoyed the Conversation Circle, as it allowed for some very diverse viewpoints. There is an NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. Videos can be viewed here.