It is difficult to talk about women in general when we know that women live in such different cultural, social, and economic contexts. But when facts such as life, death, violence, and survival are involved, bringing into play those spiritual and moral resources that unite them, one can venture some observations.

Women are the first victims

The first is that women, in situations of armed conflict, whether they take an active part in it, directly or indirectly, or suffer it, are the victims who bear the marks of it the longest, sometimes indelibly. The violence of the conflict leaves them widows with children to raise or deprives them of their dearest affections, but above all, in many, too many cases, it violates the integrity of their bodies. And this happens in every region of the world.

Sexual abuse has been an aberrant historical constant since the earliest times, but it is only since the second half of the 20th century that such criminal behavior has been considered a “weapon of war” and explicitly condemned by the international community. Older people like me will remember with pain the rapes that were termed “ethnic” suffered by women during the long and bloody war in the former Jugoslavia, and today we read the testimonies of women suffering violence in Ukraine.

Without wishing to establish a ranking of suffering, I believe that the testimonies presented by the Congolese women to Pope Francis reach unprecedented heights of anguish. Watching and hearing them as they speak is shocking: one of them presented herself with twins who were the result of abuse suffered during a year and nine months by her persecutor, whom she said she had forgiven; another, whose testimony was read by a woman who knew French, managed to escape after three months of violence and declared that her and her companions’ desire in the IDP camp is only to “return to our villages, cultivate our fields, live with our lifelong neighbors, recover the dignity of sons and daughters of God” (see Apostolic Journey to the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Meeting with Victims from the Eastern part of the Country, 1st February 2023).

The courage of women

A second consideration concerns the strength that women are able to express through their spiritual and moral resources. These are resources made up of courage, such as that demonstrated by women who take an active role in armed conflicts believing it a duty to participate in the struggle to defend their countries. It happens today in Ukraine where 60,000 women have enlisted in the army, it happened during World War II where many women in Europe fought the partisan war, perhaps in the role of a relay girl, like Tina Anselmi who pedaled tirelessly between Castelfranco Veneto and Treviso carrying documents and information. And certainly, in many other parts of the world, this happened and happens in an undocumented way, such as the case I was given to know from the voice of Card. Van Thuân: in the late 1980s, as soon as he was released from the prison where he had spent 13 years, he had organized a group of Vietnamese women who, defying the danger of being arrested, brought food to lepers, which was forbidden. They did this by traveling through the countryside on bicycles, carrying, in certain folders, tablets of fish paste of high nutritional value so as not to arouse suspicion.

The fortitude of women

Another female quality that emerges in a special way in conflict situations is fortitude, the exact opposite, in the words of St. Paul VI (Message for the Celebration of the Day of Peace, 1978), of violence. The mothers of Russian soldiers – without waiting for the current war, just read Anna Politkovskaya’s book… – have always borne witness to this; the Ukrainian mothers, who are relentlessly trying to recover their children who were silently and deceptively deported, bear witness to this; the Nigerian mothers of the schoolgirls kidnapped in 2014 and who went to the United Nations to claim them. You may remember the #bringbackourgirls campaign: a Nigerian filmmaker, Joel Kachi Benson, who years later made a documentary about that story, said, “most of these women – the mothers – have other children for whom they are struggling to feed and educate them, but one is missing, and while you – the authorities – haven’t found her yet, the others are living in extreme poverty: it’s a double tragedy”.

The power of non-violence

There is another attitude, or rather another “style” as Pope Francis calls it (Message for the Celebration of the Fiftieth World Day of Peace, 1st January 2017), which in certain cultural contexts is also effectively adopted by women. A few days ago, the 40th Niwano Peace Prize was presented in Tokyo to Mr. Rajagopal, an Indian gentleman, who, in the school of Gandhi’s non-violence, has been committed to the poorest and most marginalized and to the recognition of their human dignity for more than four decades. On that occasion, in the committee awarding the prize, the dramatic war situation that Myanmar is experiencing after the coup in 2021 was evoked. Well, on two occasions, in February and March of that same year, a small woman, the fifth of 13 children from the country’s rural north, sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng, managed to stop the attacks that the police were about to launch against the protesters by getting down on her knees in front of the policemen. In one of the photos, which you may remember, two policemen, in turn, knelt before her.

This fact testifies to the strength and power of nonviolence, which, as Rajagopal says, may seem commonplace in Asia, while in many parts of the world it is an idea that has never been seriously embraced.

But Sister Ann, who is a nurse, is also a witness to the faithful and dedicated task of caring -- caring for the sick, caring for the elderly, caring for children -- that has always characterized the role of women in armed conflict. She also, but not only she, has the comfort of prayer, which makes one capable of “demilitarizing the heart”, as Pope Francis says. It is moving to read her interview where she says that it is the Holy Spirit who gave her the strength to face the platoon of armed men, for whom she prays and spends words of understanding. Her words are truly words of disarming simplicity: “God does not like that people are killing” (Twang - Fazzini, 2021, 38).

Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng during the Myitkyina, Myanmar, clashes on March 9, 2021

Rural women protagonists in informal peace processes

A third consideration concerns peace processes, I would add “informal.” They are the processes that aim to enfranchise from the violence of hunger, poverty, ignorance, and injustice. They are the processes that aim to achieve peace through integral development, which is its new name (Populorum progressio, 1967, 76). “True peace is not possible – wrote St. John Paul II in his Message for the 1995 World Day of Peace dedicated to “Woman: Educator for Peace” – unless the recognition of the dignity of the human person is promoted at all levels, offering every individual the possibility of living in conformity with this dignity”. And to live in accordance with this dignity one must literally feed the body and the mind.

Here rural women in developing countries, producers of food through their work in the fields, are the absolute protagonists. For hunger is a competing and triggering cause of conflicts and wars, but it is also the effect of conflicts and wars. And it is on women that the livelihood of family members, especially children, depends, and very often that of other children who are orphaned or without parents who can care for them. It is still women who, able to work as a team, help strengthen their communities and achieve much-needed food and nutrition security.

But on mothers also depends education, first and foremost education for togetherness, which is ultimately education for peace. Says sr. Daphne Sequeira, who has spent most of her 30 years of religious life working in rural India for the redemption and advancement of women, engaged especially in the education of girls: “a woman is the epitome of peace. It is from her that peace flows and radiates to the other members of the family. We all know that the woman is the first agent of socialization. When a child is born, it is she who nurtures it; women are the natural teachers for the peace education of their children. In fulfilling their roles as parent, service provider and teacher, they are the ideal people to instill in their children values such as respect for each other, finding a peaceful solution to conflicts and problems, sharing, cooperation, tolerance, a sense of justice, fairness and gender equality. All these are qualities of sustainable peace” (Sequeira, 2015).

Even in Africa, where “to educate a girl child is to educate a people”, the focus is on women and mothers to overcome the many crises that can turn into humanitarian tragedies as in South Sudan. Pope Francis also emphasized this during his recent trip: “mothers, women are the key to transforming the country: if they receive the right opportunities, through their industriousness and their attitude to cherish life, they will have the ability to change the face of South Sudan, to give it a serene and cohesive development” (Meeting with internally displaced persons in Juba, Feb. 4, 2023).

The presence of women in formal peace processes

Finally, a fourth brief consideration I would like to devote to the presence of women in formal peace processes. The traits of women’s attitudes to dealing with conflict situations just sketched before should enable women to be protagonists in formal peace processes as well. In fact, women have already for some decades had the ability to harness what St. Paul VI called the real weapons of peace, that is, the moral weapons that give strength and prestige to the international order, in other words, diplomacy and negotiation (cf. Message for the Celebration of the Day of Peace, 1976).

Instead, too few women still play a major role in the diplomatic field, despite their recognized peace-building capacity and UN resolutions (UN Security Council Resolution 1325, Women, Peace and Security, 2000). This, although it must be acknowledged that some progress has been made: in fact, between 1992 and 2019 women made up an average of 13 percent of the negotiators, while for example, in 2014 Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, in the Philippines, was the chief government negotiator and signed the peace agreement that, after 40 years, ended the conflict between the Philippine government and the Islamic Liberation Front. Another woman with great skills in conflict resolution, Leymah Gbowee, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Liberian pacifist whose nonviolent women’s movement helped end Liberia’s second civil war in 2003, founded the pan-African organization Women Peace and Security Network Africa for the very purpose of promoting women’s participation in peace processes. It is to be hoped that this goal will soon be achieved!