Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

(Australia)

Peace & Freedom, journal of WILPF Australia

Excerpts from August-September 2001 edition

Report on wilpf geneva iec meeting

Australian Delegate Cathy Picone reports on WILPF’s International Executive Committee (IEC) meeting with Extended Powers, held in Geneva on July 27 - August 3, 2001

General Background

Our day to day lives in Australia are awash with the litter and glitter of capitalism as advertising's imagery and our own consumerism play out in our lives. At the supermarket, on the telly, in the newspapers, on the billboards, capitalism has us in its alluring grip.

Meeting with women who had come to Geneva to work on our common WILPF aims to end war was a welcome, if temporary, respite. Approximately 95 women from all continents and from about forty nation states came together for one week in Geneva for WILPF's International Executive Committee (IEC) Meeting with Extended Powers to ensure a solid framework and structure for WILPF's continued operation for the next three-year period: to plan our Programme of Work; to elect a new team of officers; to admit new Sections (Belarus and Burundi). There were women from Japan and Sierra Leone, from Palestine and Norway, from Israel and Sweden, from Belarus and Bolivia, from the United States and Uganda, from Aotearoa and Australia, from Nepal and the Philippines, from Norway and the Netherlands.

Not a Congress

Due to the armed conflict in Palestine/Israel, our original plan for the three-yearly International Congress to be held in Jerusalem was replaced by an extraordinary Geneva-based IEC with Extended Powers. This meant 'last minute' organisation in trying circumstances by the outgoing International Officers team with assistance from WILPF staff and interns. They were magnificent. My heartfelt thanks to all of them: in particular to Lohes Rajeswaran, Bruna Nota, Mans van Zandbergen, Kirsti Kolthoff, Regina Birchem, Mari Holmboe and to Felicity Hill. While many other women also played important roles, the work of these women was truly outstanding.

Structure of the IEC

The IEC is basically a representative meeting of WILPF internationally. Delegates from all the Sections along with the International Officers and Convenors of Standing Committees constitute the IEC. Presently we have 37 Sections of which the Australian Section is one, and one core group - in India - which means that, in 3 years time, at the next Congress, it is expected that India will once again become a fully fledged Section.

No one from the Burundian Section was able to travel to Geneva for this meeting. From the other new Section, Irina Grishevaia, a physician from Belarus spoke very eloquently about her work with people (particularly children) following the disaster at Chernobyl. In listening to her, it became painfully apparent that, in some countries, by contrast with our own, people are paying an intolerable price for the continued operation of the capitalist system of inequitable distribution of resources and despoliation of the environment, especially as its collapse accelerates.

Two Sections (in South America) were mentioned as having insufficient activity to warrant their continuing status as Sections. While they were not dissolved at this meeting, it was agreed that further enquiries would be made prior to the next Congress in order to establish whether they could continue to be regarded as functioning Sections.

Presently there are Standing Committees, among others, for: Personnel, Fundraising, Finance, Constitution, Communications, Programme, Leadership Development, Middle East, as well as other Ad Hoc Committees (i.e., without voting powers for their Convenors) for dealing with particular parts of our Programme of Work - such as the Environment Committee and the Racial Justice Committee. There was some discussion during the IEC Meeting as to the composition of the IEC as the balance changes between the proportions of Section Delegates on the one hand and Convenors of Standing Committees on the other, the latter having grown in number and therefore in relative voting power and influence on the IEC.

These other Ad Hoc Committees are the Nominations and the Elections Committees. I had the privilege to serve on both. We on the Elections Committee had the job of preparing an election slate for adoption by the IEC. That was a lot of work! We had to interview all the candidates and to work towards a consensus agreement. While I was pleased to have been able to contribute to the work of the IEC in this way, it meant that the five of us were taken out of the main meetings a good deal with interviewing and other work.

The IEC Starts

Early in the IEC, we recalled WILPF women who were no longer with us. I took the opportunity to speak of the important contributions of Australian Section members who have passed on.

Receiving of Reports

Early in the Meeting, we received a number of reports - first from our outgoing President, Bruna Nota, one of the key women on the Rainbow Committee whose wide-reaching mandate oversaw a review of WILPF's organisational structure. Long overdue, this review was a mammoth task. To Bruna, WILPF owes a huge debt. Her work will make a vital contribution to our organisation's potential efficient functioning for decades to come.

Among others, reports were also received from the Interim Treasurer, Mans van Zandbergen (financial whiz, hard worker and woman of integrity!) and from the Director of the WILPF UN Office in New York, Felicity Hill (whose rare combination of daring, intelligence and just plain hard work WILPF is indeed fortunate to have!) During the IEC Meeting, Felicity and her team were constantly at work on their laptops getting a record of the Meeting immediately up onto the WILPF website.

Reports were also received from the Sections and from the Committees.

Very illuminating reports were received from women with direct first-hand experience (as residents or refugees) from Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire), Angola, Sierra Leone and Colombia. The picture emerged of rampant capitalism savagely exploiting the rich resources of the Third World. Legitimised robbery on the part of multinational corporations with compliant puppet domestic government and inciting of civil wars while sale of armaments, especially small arms, takes a savage human toll. We heard also of the ongoing conflicts in Palestine, and Northern Ireland.

Finances

Finances are still in a parlous state. Although we have been successful in attracting funding for some areas of our Programme of Work, (most notably the disarmament areas - through the work of Felicity Hill in the NY Office) nevertheless almost all of the Programme of Work needs fundraising if it is to be enacted. We have a newly appointed WILPF fundraiser. Padmavathi Manchala, a young woman of Indian heritage will start her work in about two months time. She will be located in the US. All the Sections including our own will need to support Padma's work.

Due to various of our financial constraints, the Internships Programme is due to end in about 3 years time as the funds for the Internships will run out. Meanwhile because of various factors, there will be no interns for 2002.

For more detail on the WILPF international financial situation, ask your Branch Delegate to Section Executive Committee (SEC) who has copies of relevant reports.

Preceded by WILPF Seminar on the Middle East

The IEC was preceded by a two-day seminar on "Women's Actions to Break the Barriers to Peace in the Middle East and in other Regions". This seminar was first addressed by Mr Paul Berthoud, a retired senior official of the UN (see his article in the latest international WILPF newsletter) and His Excellency Mr Nabil Ramlawi, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN at Geneva. A most moving personal account of the human dimensions of the violence in Israel/Palestine was given by Ms Urit Peled-Elhanan who told of the loss of one of her own children as a result of the conflict. Professor Roula Assad Zoubiane of WILPF Lebanon also addressed the Seminar.

New Programme of Work for 2001 - 2004

The full WILPF Programme of Work for 2001 - 2004 appears in full in this issue of Peace and Freedom. As with all other Sections, here in the Australian Section, we will now need to set our Section's priorities among the seven parts of the Work Programme. Please consult with your Branch Delegate to be more involved in determining our Section's priorities.

Resolutions

Another very hard-working committee at the IEC was the Resolutions Committee whose members worded eighteen resolutions, positions and statements on a wide spectrum of issues ranging from the situation in the Middle East and other regions of conflict to matters of human rights, economic and social justice and to sustainable environment and human security. The two resolutions which our Section sent (one on East Timor and another on West Papua) were unanimously accepted with very little change.

For the full text of IEC resolutions, consult your Branch Delegate, the archives of the wilpf-sectionmembers email list (or ask someone who is on this email list to print you out a copy) or go to the international wilpf website at http://www.wilpf.int.ch/~wilpf/

Vision of our Organisation for 2015

During the IEC, the Leadership Development Committee led small groups in the vision for our organisation by 2015 when WILPF will be one hundred years old:

"We want wilpf to be a vibrant women's organisation. We want wilpf to be as well recognised internationally as Greenpeace or Amnesty International currently are. We want wilpf to have trebled our membership numbers and to have women from a variety of backgrounds including class backgrounds in active leadership positions. We want many new Sections especially in the global South. We want there to be no criticism or competition or comparison among the women in our organisation. We want a smoothly functioning organisation infused with a sense of mutual support and respect, with a sense of unified purpose as together we tackle our programme of work. We want it to be widely said that wilpf is a place where women are actually working together and *really* supporting each other - in a way that is a beacon to other NGOs! We want wilpf women to be connected with each other both within Sections and between Sections and to have a sense of ourselves as actively contributing to making wilpf's objectives a reality: creating a society in which war does not occur."

Many, many different ideas emerged - perhaps you might like to try a similar visioning exercise in one of your Branch meetings?

Elections and Celebration Evening

Following the elections held at the IEC, the new International Officers Team will be:
President: Krishna Ahoojapatel; Treasurer: Coby Meyboom (The Netherlands); Vice-Presidents: Lucinda Amara (Sierra Leone), Olga Bianchi (Costa Rica), Dulcy de Silva (Sri Lanka), Liss Schanke (Norway).

This new team marks a milestone as it is the first time in our history that we have an International President from the global South and the first time that we have an IVP from the continent of Africa.

The celebration evening at the close of the second last day was great fun: I particularly remember Meena and Sushma dancing with vibrancy and vigour and Rosemary whose powerful contralto touched us deeply. Women from every continent sang or danced or told stories or recited poems (- from every continent, except Australia! - I had caught a cold by that stage and could hardly talk, let alone sing.)

Next IEC Meeting - in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

For reasons of financial constraints not unrelated to the effects of economic globalisation, the next IEC meeting, normally held a year later, is to wait eighteen months until January 2002. To be held in New Zealand so close to us here in the Australian Section, this meeting presents Australian WILPFers with a major opportunity for building our Section here in Australia. Although not everyone has voting rights at an IEC, nevertheless an IEC Meeting is open to all WILPF members and I would like to encourage as many Australian WILPFers as possible to attend, and for branches to set up a travel fund to assist women from less affluent circumstances to participate as fully as women from financially well off backgrounds.

Love and peace,
Cathy Picone, September 2001

Footnote:

I have numerous papers - too numerous to list - and if you would like to see any documentation mentioned in this report, please contact me at GPO Box 2094, Adelaide or email: cpicone@ozemail.com.au

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