THEMES OF THE MEETING
After our meeting in Florence on October 26/27th, we propose again,
with some adjustments, the draft for the themes of the International Meeting
that will take place in Italy in Summer 2003.
The following themes result from the discussions carried on, at different
levels, in the network of the Italian WiB. We therefore start from us,
from what seemed more meaningful and problematic to us. Even though we
are aware of the partiality of the contents, we rely on the contribution
of all to amplify and define them better. We have asked ourselves who
are we today, what are our present difficulties and contradictions, what
are the elaborations, the needs of in depth reflection, the perspectivess
of the movement of which we are part. We ask all our friends in the Italian
and international network to communicate their observations by the end
of January 2003, so that we can then proceed to define the Summer Meeting.
Program.
The contradictions and difficulties concern especially our relations:
- with the women living in places and times of conflict, relations in
an emergency situation, sometimes asymmetrical and not equal, that perhaps
satisfy our need of conveying political solidarity and material aid,
but require a re-reading and re-visiting;
- with the women in places of conflict after the end of a fighting war
and when the media reflectors have turned elsewhere, during what we
call “the post-war”;
- with the women, and not only women, of the places in which we live;
we find it difficult to establish relations with other women’s groups
and with the mixed movements, maintaining our specificity and recognizing
and respecting our differences....
The “difficult places” which have constellated our roads in these last years
are emblematic pieces of a global picture that changes and that we want
to know and understand in order not to be entrapped in a one-sided and “short-sighted”,
however tragic, view of the world in which we live; these are the main subjects
we propose for reflection and elaboration:
- The permanent “pre-emptive” war, as a necessary element of
world domination, within the horizon of capitalistic liberalism, the
prevailing economical model on a planetary scale;
- the resulting rearmament, the apparent increase of military expenses,
a trend to be found in different countries, together with the reduction
of the welfare in relation to health, social security, education,
etc.
- the dismantlement of the international right, the deep crisis
of the United Nations and the definition of new relations between
States, heavily marked by the United States unilateralism.
- The “post-war”: how does the situation change when the sense
of emergency, which moves us in periods of fighting war diminishes,
or is transferred to other difficult places; how does it change for
us, who during an emergency direct our efforts toward the material aid,
and for those who keep living in the places and societies upset by the
conflict (see, for instance, the cases of Afghanistan and the Balkans).
- Fundamentalisms operating in the different areas of the world:
- religious and cultural ones, as the Islamic or the Catholic
ones;
- military and national ones, in the various forms in which
they express themselves;
- the ruling western one, which, in the name of security,
imposes war, the closure of borders to the outside, denies access
and reception to migrants, driven toward Europe by injustice, misery
and conflicts; determines, inside, the cancelling of rights, the
reduction of democratic spaces, the repressive control of deviations
and dissent, in a logic of a material and also mental militarization
of an increasingly masculine and macho nature.
Reading key of all this:
what is the women’s politics on each of these subjects? With which perspectives?
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