Women as PEACE AGENTS Two ladies, a Lieutenant Colonel from Mali and the Head of the Office of the Presidency of the Council of State, talk about women in conflict areas A Spanish military during an encounter with a group of Afghans women to learn more about their needs. «I had to teach our soldiers that child and adult rapes are no war trophies. That a woman’s body is not a revenge tool. It was not easy». Lieutenant Colonel Aminata Diabaté from Mali has worked with the servicemen of her country to put an end to these practices, often used in armed clashes in her country. «They believed that if the other party won the war it was due to the fact that they had raped 20 women in a week and that to rape a ten-year old girl was an important achievement. We had to reverse that way of thinking». These behaviours, she added, have fostered the people and, in particular women, to distrust the troops. «They do not feel protected by the State. Women are wounded, they do not trust men. We need to approach them and carefully listen to what they have to say because they find it difficult to express what has happened to them». The audience that attended the Seminar on 30 years of peace missions. Women as transformation agents at the Ministry of Defence, remained in complete silence listening to the calm voice of this servicewoman who has been for more than 30 years, and almost always surrounded by men, struggling for the recognition of the importance of the role of women in peacekeeping. «We cannot talk of development without long-term stability, and we cannot think of a long-term stability without taking into account the role of women», she stated. Besides Lieutenant Colonel Diabaté, Ms. Alicia Cebada —Head of the Office of the Presidency of the Council of State— also participated in the Seminar. She talked about the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security Agenda now that it is approaching its 20th anniversary. It was launched with Security Council resolution 1325 and, in her opinion, «it has done little to transform the reality of women in situations of conflict. It is no longer an exciting project; feminist groups consider it greatly discredited, and the consensuses with which it was founded have been broken», she stated. 20 Revista Española de Defensa December 2019
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