Peacebuilding Commission on “Economic Empowerment of Women in Peacebuilding”

Opening Speech:

Ladies and gentleman,
Dear coleagues,

Todays' topic of our event is economic empowering of women as a peacebuilding instrument.

Let me be clear to all of us, we learn something during and after the war in the Balcans, and that is - states might win or loose wars. But no society has ever won the war. Societies always loose. That means that whatever is the formal outcome, the trauma the horrible experiences of war is something that takes, it is hard to quantify but in average, at least three times longer period to heal. We talk about the economic opportunities and economic opportunities of the women as an important instrument of peacebuilding. But I am convinced that political and economic elements are very closely related. So in order to get to the point where you will have the opportunity to start the peacebuilding you have to go through few phases. The first one starts with peacemaking. Stopping the fighting. This is not peace, this is just absence of fighting. This is extremely important but it is not enough. Second phase is peacemaking and peacekeeping. The third phase is creating the conditions for sustainable peace. And these conditions for sustainable peace combine military actions and civilian projects. They include surviving the first months and sometimes the first year of peace. Sometimes surviving the first year of peace, and certailnly the first months of peace could be harder than surviving the war. That means the surviving the institutional and economic disfunctional environment. The third phase, is the phase with the question where are the women. When the question of the ability and the roles that women play in postconflict societies again come on the agenda. And the fourth phase is those of creating the conditions for sustainable peace is when women has to transit from victims to enterpreneurs. Women who are known, even on the base of UN researches, that invest about 90% of their income in their families, and men about 40%. They invest in children, and their working wages actually contribute to sustainable peace and stabile institutions. And I would end these remarks by reminding you of the book written about 20 years ago when Europe was emerging from oneparty rules. Social scientist Barbara Einhorn wrote a book called Cinderella goes to market. It emphasise how important it is in postdictatorships, postconflict societies for women to actually get all economic resources and get wages and from there on Cinderellas have been going to the market all of this twenty years and our task here is to help them sucessfully get there.