Women for Peace

From Binalakshmi Nepram Mentschel at The Wip:

Our world is hovering at the edge of an abyss, driven there by man’s unreason. One crisis is cresting on top of another… The sinister developments in the advance towards the brink of disaster all interact, worsened by the calamitous threat – namely the arms race and militarization. These essentially ethical problems of wars, weapons, and tools of violence have existed since time immemorial, but in the present era they have been deeply aggravated and will continue to be aggravated if a halt is not called for. – Nobel Peace Laureate Alva Myrdal 

A major source of devastation, human suffering and poverty, war affects all aspects of economic, social and political life. And over time, the nature of warfare itself has changed – it is no longer soldiers who suffer the largest number of casualties, but civilians. In World War I, just 14 percent of deaths were civilian; today, that number has risen to over 75 percent. The nature of the battlefield has changed as well – no longer fought in remote battlefields between armies, wars now rage in our homes, schools, our communities and increasingly on women’s bodies.

May 24th is celebrated globally as International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament. This article was written in honor of the many women who have campaigned tirelessly for global peace.