Conference on Gender, Peace and Security in Africa

Back in Dakar. Deep sigh of relief.

I'm struggling to find the best way to describe the conference I attended in Bamako in order to do it justice without tainting it too much with the negative aspects I witnessed as someone working behind the scenes. But I think the best thing to do is just describe it as I experienced it. I also have a lot of other stories and observations that are generally unrelated to the conference that I'd love to share, but all in good time. First, I think you all should have a picture of what went on at the conference itself. Unfortunately most of the press coverage we got is in French, but for those of you who speak french, search google news for "femmes genre Bamako" and you'll come up with some articles describing the event. But for the rest of you, my descriptions will have to do.

I arrived in Bamako Sunday night and was immediately greeted with panicked (and exhausted) co-workers, very grateful I had arrived to help. I brought with me the final document we'd had printed to be presented at the conference, the ten-year evaluation study that I had been working hard on editing and making corrections to. I hadn't yet opened the box because they delivered it to the airport just as we were leaving, but when I arrived at the hotel, that's the first thing I did. I was really looking forward to seeing all my hard work pay off in the form of a nice printed document that could be presented, used, and appreciated at the conference. Unfortunately, no such luck. Somehow, the printer had gotten a hold of the wrong version of the study (I think someone sent them an older version to give them an idea of the layout and then when we sent the final draft, somehow they mixed the two up). So, the version they had printed was wrong and couldn't be used. They also had only printed the english version instead of printing half of the copies in french and half in english. So, I spent most of that first night retreiving the latest version of the study (thankfully I had it in my e-mail) and making copies of it to be presented the next day at the conference. It's 25 pages long and we needed 150 copies, so you can imagine that it took quite awhile. And it's not like there was a Kinkos around the corner that we could use. Luckily we were staying in a 5 star hotel with a business center that had a printer and copier and a few computers. But around 1am their copier ran out of ink so we had to wait until monday to finish the copies. But on monday, plenty of other last-minute things came up that added to the demands on both the copier and on my time, so it became pretty hectic.

The opening ceremony of the conference was supposed to start at 9am on monday, but when you invite heads of state and other important people, it's never good to rely on their prompt arrival. I learned that lesson well during the 2004 election when we waited for hours for Kerry and Edwards to arrive at several of their campaign events. So, the President of Mali, accompanied by the President of Liberia and the Foreign Minister of South Africa rolled up to the conference center at about 11:30.

The ceremony itself was nice, but very formal. It was the first of many times over the week that I observed how important status and formality seem to be here. Every speech started out naming the name and title of all of the important people there (His Excellency, Her Excellency, Madame le Ministre etc..). I was in and out during the ceremony, but was able to be there to hear Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf speak, which was pretty exciting. I realized that I've heard speeches by a few former heads of state (Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev) and some current senators and potential future heads of state (John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Hilary Clinton) but never current heads of state/presidents. So being in the presence of two at once was kind of exciting. EJS's speach was appropriately encouraging and illustrated that she hasn't forgotten her commitment to women's rights and empowerment or how instrumental the African women's movement was in getting her elected.

Amadou Toumani Touré, the president of Mali, also spoke at the event and was awarded Le Prix Tombouctou for his commitment to women's rights in Africa, but I missed both those things because I had to go prepare for the afternoon events.

After the ceremony, the conference itself began. There were supposed to be three panels Monday afternoon, but since we were so behind schedule, we only had one. I was given the role of the official notetaker at the conference, which guaranteed that I attend all of the panels rather than always being off preparing documents and dealing with logistics. But it also meant that I had to stay alert and engaged enough to take accurate notes and report back to the others on how things were going. The panels had both english and french speakers, and people were given headsets to hear translations of the speeches and questions. But I decided to challenge myself and not use the translations. It actually worked out pretty well, although I think contributed to an increased exhaustion by the end of the third day.

The first panel was mostly focused on the concepts of peace, security, development etc. and how they have evolved and what they mean for the women's peace movement in Africa. There was a recognition that the understanding of security needs to change from a military-centered approach to one that focuses on human needs. They also had an interesting discussion about Condoleeza Rice and how disappointed many of them were that an African-American woman had achieved such a high level of power but wasn't using it to change the agenda or redefine security in favor of women (or Africans, really). The second panel (tuesday morning) addressed best practices in women's peacebuilding and had speakers from the Mano River Women's Peace Network (MARWOPNET), FERFAP in Burundi as well as from women's groups in Côte d'Ivoire, the DRC, and Mali.

The second panel of tuesday switched gears to focus more on gaps between policy and practice and difficulties in implementing international and regional mechanisms of gender equality. It was interesting and showed that, although a lot of great things have been achieved by these women peacebuilders, there is a lot of tension among different groups and a number of shortcomings that need to be addressed to make the movement more effective.

After lunch, the third panel of the day focused on the 10 year evaluation study. Three of the four consultants who undertook the study were there to present their initial findings, which I already knew because I had basically written the executive summaries for them. There was supposed to be a fourth panel on evaluation best practices that evening, but it was cancelled because we ran out of time...which is really unfortunate because they needed it - I mean, the evaluation had a lot of gaps and problems and I think it would have been helpful to have been able to open up more of a dialogue about the process to ensure that lessons are learned from it.

Tuesday evening was the big ceremony where awards were given out to a number of other prominent peacemakers, including Ruth Perry, the former president of the transitional government of Liberia. It was a nice evening and I was able to relax and enjoy it rather than work at it (thank goodness, because a number of things went wrong there as well). The only problem I had there was that someone stole my cell phone. Well, I guess technically I lost it - but I knew right where I left it and went back for it right away and it was already gone. Apparently my good cell phone karma doesn't extend beyond the borders of the US.

Wednesday was the General Assembly for FAS, where the members met and the board presented their annual report etc. It was the first meeting since 2000, so they had a lot of ground to cover and the meeting extended well into the afternoon and I was there for the whole thing taking notes. But the end of the day, I was exhausted and very ready to relax a bit. The closing ceremony was the final thing of that day, and it was actually really nice. The Prime Minister of Mali was tehre, along with a number of the other foreign ministers and ambassadors, and there were several really nice speeches, including one from the ED of ACCORD, a conflict resolution NGO in South Africa that partners with FAS on a lot of projects. After the ceremony, I stayed to type up the "Bamako Committment", which was the concluding document for the conference and will serve as the platform of action for FAS for the next few years. I had to translate it into english and get everyone's approval, and then distribute it to all the FAS board members etc. It was kind of an interesting process to see something like that be drafted, changed, translated etc.

So there you have it...that's the meat of the conference, at least from my angle. What made it hard for me was that there was very little communication to the staff when changes were made to the schedule or about what documents were needed for each event, so it always felt like we were playing catch-up. On top of that, the women at the conference were very demanding on the staff and were constantly asking for extra documents or information that we didn't have. I think I had expected people there to be a bit more down to earth and cooperative, but what I came to realize was that many of the women attending the conference have achieved a level of status within their comminities that allows their peacebuilding work to be more effective, but it also means that they're used to people being at their beck and call and have no qualms about asking people to constantly do things for them. That observation ties into my more general observation about status and heirarchy, which I will write moer about next time.