Civil Society Cannot Be Destroyed - Queen Noor

Civil Society Cannot Be Destroyed - Queen Noor



My husband once said that “Peace is essential to us in leading a normal life, which is the legitimate right of every individual, in order to dream, plan for oneself, and for the future of one’s family, to raise one’s standard of living away from fear, worry and confusion.”
The desire to have a “normal life” and live in peace – for ourselves and our families - is one of the most intrinsic values we aspire to as human beings. It cuts across the racial, ethnic, gender, geographic, cultural and religious differences that seem to divide us and fuel the devastating conflicts, wars and humanitarian crises that destroy countless lives and tear nations apart.
For the better part of the last three decades, I have had the privilege to work beside and witness women, men and children who are giving up everything they have: creativity, time, resources, and all too often their own safety, to achieve peace and some semblance of normalcy amidst the most daunting challenges and conditions. Seemingly ordinary people under the most horrific circumstances exhibit extraordinary courage and strength as they reach out to others – to recover, to reconcile, to understand, to believe in the basic humanity of others, even of those some would call enemies.
Civil society, I have discovered, cannot be destroyed. It springs up, again and again, like a strong and beautiful flower from the ashes and rubble of conflict and deprivation. It endures because of everyday people - men, women, the young and old, survivors of chaos and conflict – who act and react to build a better life for themselves and future generations.
The most frequent victims of war and conflict are often innocent women and children. Yet, more often than not, these same individuals nurture the flowers of reconciliation, stability and peace.

Breaking Down the Barriers
For years I have worked with Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings together young people from conflict-torn regions to live and work together to begin to break down the barriers of ignorance and prejudice that generate confrontation over communication. Children face old animosities that have been passed down like legacies from their elders.
When they go home, they continue to hold out their hands and hearts to each other. Even now — especially now — Arab and Israeli Seeds graduates phone or e-mail across conflict lines to comfort their friends in the midst of the worst violence their region has seen. They risk the scorn of angry neighbors for the chance to meet and talk and grieve together. Sometimes, they risk their lives. But by those risks, they also inspire their families and neighbors to take a chance on hope and humanity. They have stared hatred in the face and refused to succumb.
In Colombia where two people are being killed everyday from landmines and half of all civilian mine victims are children, I met two young cousins, Jose and Jonathon, no more than 11 years old who encountered terror when they picked up what they thought was a toy rocket. They each lost a leg, their cousin Monica lost a leg, and Jose’s younger brother perished. They are but a few of the thousands of victims of guerilla warfare, who have lost their innocence.
Now they are also survivors and teachers. Their new mission is to prevent future mine accidents and deaths. In a region where limited government resources exist and narco-guerilla warfare has festered for decades displacing millions of people, two hopeful souls educate local villagers and students about the dangers of landmines. One person at a time, they spread a message of prevention and awareness to thwart future deaths and disability.
I have also witnessed networks of courageous women raising their voices — and sometimes risking their lives — in conflict areas around the world from Africa and the Middle East to the Balkans. They nurture peace in different ways by working for what is best for their families, cutting across ethnic, religious and tribal barriers, and breaking through seemingly impermeable obstacles to reconciliation and reconstruction.
After the war in Rwanda, fifty women, both Hutu and Tutsi, banded together in the Association of Widows to support each other and the war’s orphans. The Mano River Union Women’s Network for Peace brings women together to end conflict in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Israeli and Palestinian women have worked with each other — electronically, if violence prevents it physically — in organizations like Jerusalem Link and the Jerusalem Center for Women to further Middle East peace efforts.
Senator George Mitchell said women’s weariness of conflict was a significant political force in achieving the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. War widows in Tajikistan who suffered through years of devastating civil war are now working together to understand their legal, social and economic constitutional and Islamic rights. Rural women whose main survival strategy has been to cultivate land are now working together to secure rights to access, manage and inherit land to provide for their families.
For me, the most wrenching and ultimately one of the most inspiring examples of collective action is in Bosnia, where thousands of women lost their families and their homes to ethnic cleansing.
I first traveled to Bosnia to reach out to the widows of Srebrenica in 1996, a year after 8,000 men and boys were marched away and never seen again. Several years later I returned as a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons. On two trips in 2001 I met with many of the same women still searching for news of their loved ones — unable to rest or begin to rebuild their lives without this knowledge, without assurances that the massacre would be memorialized officially and that those responsible would be held accountable. It is largely through their persistence that, eight years after the massacre, the prime minister of the Bosnian Serb Republic acknowledged the tragedy and paid tribute to the victims, and it was they who invited President Clinton to open the Srebrenica Memorial Center in September 2003.
All of these efforts have begun to bring some closure, at least as much as is possible, until those responsible are brought to justice. But nothing can ever dull the emotional pain these women, and other victims of war, have suffered.
And yet, as I have sat and wept with these women, as they struggled to come to terms with the deaths of their husbands, sons and fathers, I have marveled at their strength. I have seen them reach out to other women, some of whom may well be the wives or mothers of those who perpetrated the massacre. They have chosen to search for threads of humanity amidst the chaos and destruction of civil war.
Every one of these women, as they pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, is building a civil society that benefits not only them, but everyone in their region.
King Hussein frequently said, “it should never be forgotten that peace resides ultimately not in the hands of the governments, but in the hands of the people.” These extraordinary people that I have met throughout the world, with all their diversity, experiences, and circumstances, provide the seeds of hope for a better future for us all. That, ultimately, is what makes civil society — people voluntarily joined together for a common goal, for the common good. It is truly the most effective agent for peace we have.

Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan is an international humanitarian activist and an outspoken voice on issues of world peace and justice. Queen Noor is actively involved in a number of international organizations dealing with global peace-building and conflict recovery and currently serves as an Expert Advisor to the United Nations on these issues. Her autobiography, Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life (Miramax Books, 2003) was a New York Times bestseller.