ethnic or religious communities. These groups con-
cern themselves more with interstate conflicts, such
as that between India and Pakistan, rather than
intra-state conflicts. They are also vociferous critics
of the nuclear program of India and Pakistan. In
Sri Lanka a few such women’s groups campaigned
successfully for women’s participation in ceasefire
negotiations.
Women’s peace movements are largely issue-
based in much of South Asia. Different women’s
groups for peace come together on the same plat-
form in moments of crisis. The one common aim of
these groups is to fight against the marginalization
of women through adherence to personal law. The
Shah Bano case in India brought women’s groups
together to protest against Muslim personal law.
Women’s peace movements were losing much of
their fervor when the riots against the Muslim pop-
ulation in Gujarat brought them together once
again. There was widespread protest against grow-
ing fundamentalism in the region and an effort was
made to build up a regional women’s movement for
peace on the platform of opposing all anti-feminist
laws and ordinances such as the Hudood and blas-
phemy laws in Pakistan and the growing popular-
ity of Hindutva in India. The greatest challenge to
such movements is delivered by women’s groups
belonging to the extreme right, such as women in
the Jamaat-e-Islam in Pakistan and Bangladesh and
the Sangh Parivar in India.
One of the main contributions of South Asian
women’s peace movements is that they define peace
in much larger terms than merely the end of war.
Many of these groups, both secular and religious,
speak of peace with equitable distribution of
resources among all segments of the population.
They are severely critical of the growing militariza-
tion of the region. However, a major defect in South
Asian women’s peace movements, both rural and
urban, is that they are unable to disassociate them-
selves from their communities. Peace movements
across communities, such as women’s groups within
the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and
Democracy, often have a socialist orientation.
These are the movements that are fighting against
fundamentalism and radical nationalisms in the
region. They are making an effort to build bridges
across communities but their efforts are as yet in
the nascent stage.Bibliography
P. Banerjee, Peace initiatives of Naga women, in Canadian
Women’s Studies 19 (Winter 2000), 137–42.
M. Burguières, Feminist approaches to peace. Another
step for peace studies, in Millennium. Journal of Inter-
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U. Butalia, The other side of silence. Voices from the par-
tition of India, New Delhi 1998.
CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency),
Gender equality and peacebuilding. A draft operational
framework, Ottawa 1998.
R. Manchanda (ed.), Women, war and peace in South
Asia. Beyond victimhood to agencyNew Delhi 2001.
G. Shangkham, Naga women and the peace process, in
Kohima News Letter, 8 June 2000, 1–8.
Women’s Coalition for Peace, Statement I and II in Nive-
dini 6:1 (1998), 195–9.
Women’s Initiative,The green of the valley is khaki.
Women’s testimonies from Kashmir. A report by
Women’s Initiative, Bombay 1994.
WSRC (Women’s Studies Research Centre, Guwahati
University), Women in the North East. Challenges and
opportunities in the 21st century, Guwahati 2002.Paula BanerjeeTurkey and the CaucasusThis entry is about women, gender, and the peace
movement in Turkey and the Caucasus, where
women peace activists are responding to conflicts
that have disrupted the lives of millions and killed
thousands of people. Armenia and Azerbaijan have
sparred over Nagorno-Karabakh. In Georgia, several
separatist movements and boundary disputes flared
in the 1990s. Chechens, aided by non-Chechen
Muslim fighters from a diverse array of countries,
have been fighting a war against Russia that is both
separatist and Islamist. In Turkey, Kurdish sepa-
ratists have fought government forces in a secular-
ist, Marxist bid for autonomy, and Turkey has
strained relations with several of its neighboring
states. These and the histories of other conflicts, of
the grievances of their participants, and prospects
for peace are diverse. Exacerbating factors include
ethnic, nationalist, and territorial assertions, reli-
gion, and designs by both local and international
entities on the rich oil and gas reserves in the region.
Despite this diversity and complexity, peace
movements by women have emerged that cut across
ethnic, religious, and political categories. Non-gov-
ernmental organizations (NGOs) and government
agencies focus on mobilizing people for peace, and
a significant proportion of these have been initiated
and are headed by women. One observer claims
that approximately 60 to 70 percent of Azerbaijani
NGOs, many of which promote peace, are headed
by women (Bickley 2000). Women’s NGO partici-
pation is highly visible in the surrounding states as
well. It is likely that the conflicts in the Caucasus
and Turkey have attracted more female than male
protest. For example the Conflict Research Center,
an independent organization in Baku headed by a
woman, promotes civil society (Davis 2000). In