Uprooting Status quo Steeped in Violence

To: UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet
From Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, Town of Brighton, New York State, USA

These are a few ideas, a vision, more than personal story.

I believe substantive change flows from unequivocal nonviolence. Women and innocents around the world in all nations, regardless to current level of development, will benefit not only when women take places at tables of power and leadership and decision making; but also when we all agree — and hold firmly to the agreement — that nonviolence will be the means and ends toward lifting and sustaining all nations and peoples.

I think we know the problems of disparity and discrimination and abuse against women and girls especially but not exclusively in underdeveloped nations. I think we know that inequality, plunder and desperate poverty and food shortages and human rights abuse and all the rest are not mostly self-inflicted. Historic powers have had a heavy hand in the pain of the world’s peoples. Western empires and their colonialism and domination, incessant invasion and occupation all have played and continue to play a mean role in the oppression and abuse of women and girls all over the world.

With this in mind, I am suggesting a global ground shift as the “how” of contemporary “women and girls’ liberation”— the “how” of getting from violence and injustice to uplift for all nations and peoples as a fundamental prerequisite for improving the lives and futures of women and girls.

A. UN Security Council
First, the United Nations has regressed on its founding ideals and while it must not go back to 1945, it must take hold of the best principles; and, most importantly, move forward by freeing itself from imperialism. Free itself from the dominance mainly of Western powers, the United States of America, and the five powers comprising the permanent members of the UN Security Council (France, the Peoples Republic of China, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and United States of America).

The character of raw aggression practiced domestically and internationally by these powers, their use and abuse of poorer nations and peoples, their tactics worsening ethnic conflicts, authoritarianism and corruption, their exploitation of native lands and resources have run the course of history and must be replaced.

The five-nation UN Security Council must be dethroned, disarmed, and a viable criminal justice system devised to prosecute decades-old crimes of these nations and their allies and satellites.

B. Assembly of nations
Second, the nations comprising General Assembly must lay down weapons and refuse ever to take up armed peacekeeping missions. The nature of peace must be without weapons of war. Peace must be negotiated with words seeking understanding, with mutual respect, face-to-face, and nonviolently.

C. Control of finance and currency
Third, control of nations’ and peoples’ future, their infrastructure, their lending and borrowing and prospering must no longer persist in the hands of the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund and World Bank and other global trade and nongovernmental institutions and organizations and corporations. These institutions have failed (caused to fail) some nations and obstructed progress and development of many nations. Underdeveloped nations remain underdeveloped not because their leaders are more stupid or corrupt than dominant nations but because dominant nations are using their power with impunity to keep underdeveloped nations underdeveloped. Institutions must rise to assist developing nations not in being dependent on their interminable largesse (and be grateful); but assist them in gaining and retaining self-sufficiency for the long term; becoming nations equal among nations.

No nation’s people should live in poverty or without proper education and healthcare, jobs and meaningful work, or without enough food and the means, locally, within their own countries (not from far away) of supplying those basics.

No nation or people should languish in camps anywhere in the world. There must be a definite, shortened timeframe (the means and materials exist) set and met, a timeframe beyond which it is unacceptable for people to live without proper food and housing, hygiene and healthcare, electricity, and running water.

D. Criminal Court
Fourth, rich nations’ impunity must end. Law must apply internationally, strictly to all people and nations including heads of state.

In the course of world affairs, translators must rise and be engaged from tribes and nations and dialects to negotiate the terms of equality, living conditions, peace, climate and the issues affecting all nations in a global perspective.

Translators, psychologists, special operatives, mercenaries, national militaries, heads of state who engage in, authorize or are suspected of doing anything resembling torture must be prosecuted; any official causing the abduction, imprisonment without charge or trial, and or assassination of any person must be prosecuted under international law.

Enslavers and human traffickers must caught and prosecuted. Weapons of all kinds everywhere must be properly registered; they must also be actively monitored and restricted.

In law and international law enforcement, there is opportunity for men and women all over the world to have meaningful, well-paid, nonviolent professions that are also free of bribery and corruption.

E. Sum
Entrenched power must stand down; give ground to new, forward-looking, equality-minded progressivism.

In a world free of entrenched power, lawlessness, corruption and domination where nonviolence holds in all aspects of domestic and international affairs, women will be free from threat and intimidation, violence, abuse and inequality. Women will sit at tables of power and decision- making. Girls of all nations and situations of birth will easily, reasonably and routinely aspire and assume positions they dare not dream of in the current world order.

Working to shift the ground of power is a tall order that seems impossible to take on in these troubled and often paranoid times. However, if I were part of a new or renewed women’s agency at the United Nations, I would insist on and persist in a code of nonviolence in all affairs. I would talk up a “diplomacy in words,” peace without weapons of war. At every table at which I sit, I would make sure that sitting with me would be a broad diversity of women — respectful “equal among equals” honestly seeking to hear and understand one another.

UN WOMEN Uprooting Status quo Steeped in Violence
By Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, Town of Brighton, New York State, USA

As the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women officially begins its work this month, World Pulse is asking women worldwide: What is YOUR vision and recommendation for UN Women? We invite you to raise your voice by writing a letter to UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet outlining your recommendation for how this new UN agency can truly affect change on the ground to promote gender equality and uphold the rights and needs of women both on a local and global scale.
Learn more: http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire/programs/international-violence-agai...