peace-workshop

1) The Dark Underbelly of the World's Most 'Peaceful' Countries

2) The teaching of Patriarchal Religions are also a factor in the abuse of women -  and peace, that must be faced


1) The Dark Underbelly of the World's Most 'Peaceful' Countries


Some nations that rank well in the Global Peace Index are notorious for violence against women and children.
By Riane Eisler
Pacific Grove, Calif.


The first-ever study ranking countries according to their level of peacefulness, the Global Peace Index, was recently published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Sensibly, its basic premise is that "peace isn't just the absence of war; it's the absence of violence."

The index uses 24 indicators such as how many soldiers are killed, the level of violent crimes, and relations with neighboring countries.

Yet it fails to include the most prevalent form of global violence: violence against women and children, often in their own families. To put it mildly, this blind spot makes the index very inaccurate.

Glancing at the list shows why. Out of 121 countries studied, the United States ranked 96; Israel was 119. But Libya, Cuba, and China – not exactly paragons of human rights – rank 58, 59, and 60.

A closer examination reveals some of the sources of distortion:

•For example, Egypt was ranked 73. But more than 90 percent of Egyptian girls and women are subjected to genital mutilation. This gruesome practice causes many lifelong physical problems and claims the lives of countless women. It's a terrible form of violence, but it wasn't included in the index, otherwise Egypt would have ranked much lower.

•United Arab Emirates is 38, but this does not count the jockey slave trade of little boys for the camel races that are a favorite sport in this area. It is well known that these children are often treated worse than the camels, subject to whippings and other violence, as well as given little to eat so they won't weigh much.

If this violence, as well as the violence of "honor killings" of girls and women in the Middle East were included, such nations would rank much lower.

•China ranked 60, but female infanticide is still a major problem, as shown by the imbalanced ratio of males to females there.

•Chile ranked 16, but as in many Latin American nations (and nations worldwide), the incidence of wife battering is extremely high. For example, although this violence is still rarely prosecuted or officially reported, 26 percent of Chilean women suffered at least one episode of violence by a partner, according to a 2000 UNICEF study.

The authors of the Global Peace Index expressed hope that it will lead to a new approach to the study of peace. They also said they plan to expand their criteria for future indexes. This expansion must start with major changes in the 10 "measures of societal safety and security."

The current index rightly seeks to measure the "level of disrespect for human rights." But according to the report's methodology, this level was based on the "Political Terror Scale" – a scale that ignores the fact that the most ubiquitous human rights violations worldwide are, as a UNICEF report noted 10 years ago, violations of the rights of women and children.

That the index fails to include this violence is particularly shocking in light of the longstanding availability of international statistics such as:

• Twenty percent of women and 5 to 10 percent of men have suffered sexual abuse as children.

• Between 100 million and 132 million girls and women have been subjected to genital mutilation worldwide. Each year, an estimated 2 million join their ranks.

•Female infanticide, selective female malnutrition, and medical neglect of girls are far too common. In India's Punjab State, girls between the ages of 2 and 4 die at nearly twice the rate of boys.

Similarly, while the index rightly includes "level of violent crime," it fails to take into account that much of the violence in families is still not considered a crime in many nations – and hence not reported, much less prosecuted, as such.

It's unrealistic to expect "cultures of peace" so long as children grow up in families in which the use of violence to impose one's will on others is considered normal, even moral.

The good news is that not every one growing up in such families perpetuates violence. The bad news is that many people do – be it in intimate or international relations.

Intimate and international violence are inextricably interconnected. But we can only see this once we include in studies of violence the majority: women and children. If we are serious about peace – not just about measuring it but about creating more of it – we have to look at the whole picture. We must pay particular attention to those formative experiences when young people first learn either to respect human rights or to accept human rights violations as just the way things are.

Only as we leave behind traditions of domination and violence in the human family will we have solid foundations on which to build global peace.


2) The teaching of Patriarchal Religions are also a factor in the abuse of women and peace, that must be faced

The survey above  is particularly relevant to this website because it is also the countries that have the strongest patriarchal religions Islam, Hinduism, Judaism & Roman Catholicism that have the worst record of violence towards, and/or  oppression of women. Though the US is perhaps an exception, due significantly to women's rights activists, many of whom were freethinkers. (www.wws-gb.freeuk.com)

As Hypacia Bradlaugh Bonner wrote: "With certain exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious the people the lower the status of the women..."

Many other women activists of the 18th & 19th Century who campaigned on peace, women's rights, abolition of slavery, minority rights saw the origins of these attitudes in the teachings of the patriarchal religions.

The origins of prejudice and discrimination, inequality and violence against women, are rooted in male supremacist, macho attitudes promoted by the patriarchal monotheistic religions. I wish more women  peace activists, anti-racists and LGBT campaigners would recognise that their struggles are against the same superstitious prejudices and expose them as not 'natural' justifiable, "just how things are" and that they cannot be changed, and are not acceptable.

Unfortunately today those campaigning on these causes have allowed themselves to become divorced from each other, and instead of making common cause they have narrowed their campaigns down, afraid of alienating the few among them who are conservative, racist and sexist..

Sue Mayer