Syrian women 'blocked' from peace process
Date
12/17/2015 4:44:00 AM
(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) A Syrian human rights activist has told Anadolu Agency that the country’s women are being blocked from contributing to the peace process.
Laila Alodaat Crisis Response Programme manager for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom was speaking in London during a meeting at the U.K. Houses of Parliament on ‘Women’s perspectives on the Syrian conflict’.
MPs activists and researchers attended the Wednesday gathering where one parliamentarian blamed the “militarization” of the conflict for excluding women’s voices.
Claiming that many women were building peace at grassroots level Alodaat said: "[Women] have been trying since Geneva One to Riyadh last week to make it but they are not allowed in despite their central role."
Scottish National Party MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh who visited UNHCR camps in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep earlier this year hosted the event.
Ahmed-Sheikh said that Syrian women were being challenged by the increasing militarization of the conflict which shrank their space and marginalized their voices and contributions.
She said the Syrian war had "particular effects on women as victims of the targeting of civilian areas of the destruction of health services and of the use of sexual violence as an instrument of oppression.
"However women continue to play a crucial role in building peace and spreading the culture of non-violence within their communities and beyond" Ahmed-Sheikh added.
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