The Hindu : Women on a journey of peace

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 13, 2003

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Women on a journey of peace

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 12. Thirty-six women are on a journey of peace from Kolkata to Dhaka from May 14 with a deep awareness that they need to come closer to their neighbours with whom they share a history and culture.

Being organised by the Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA), the Kolkata-Dhaka bus journey will provide time and space to women of Bangladesh and India to raise issues that threaten to destroy peace. "Issues ranging from domestic violence, armed conflict, gender-based violence, trafficking and now simmering terrorism to issues which continue to make life difficult for the ordinary people, will be discussed during the six-day visit,'' says Kamla Bhasin, one of the participants in the peace trip.

Indian women intend to learn from Bangladeshi women and offer something in return. "In this journey, we will build old friendships, and create new networks for the future. Having been more or less passive spectators to the unfolding of events in the sub-continent since the past 55 years, women need to take their place centre stage and steer the countries in the direction of peace,'' feels Mohini Giri, social worker.

The delegation includes women from various fields and a cross section of society, which believes peace will come only when the two countries attain freedom from hunger, diseases, violence, exploitation and poverty.

The trip is fully a "people-to-people'' move, though the delegation will make effort to meet the political leaders there. The WIPSA had taken the initiative of taking a bus full of women to Lahore in 2000 and a group of women from Pakistan came over to India under the "people-to-people'' programme to remove the post-Kargil bitterness between the two countries.

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