THE major problem for peace negotiations is that not enough women are involved, Baroness Ashton of Upholland has said. “With men sitting around the table deciding the lives of girls, nothing changes. We must find ways to interact people who find themselves most affected.”
She was addressing the audience for the Westminster Abbey Institute’s panel discussion “The Search for an Ethical Peace”, on Tuesday.
Reflecting on the early conversations within the aftermath of the war in Syria, she said that she and Hillary Clinton had been a part of the talks, and that they’d been speaking on behalf of Syrian women who were “outside the doors”.
Chaired by the ITV international-affairs analyst and former BBC world-affairs correspondent Rageh Omaar, the panel consisted of Lady Ashton, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, and a former Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter.
The panel discussed leadership, ethics, and the sensible challenges of in search of peace in turbulent times.
When asked about previous mistakes in negotiations, Lady Ashton joked: “How long have you ever got?” The panel agreed on the importance of humility and respect.
Sir Nick, speaking about previous peace talks in Afghanistan, said that the previous United Nations diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi “had not been allowed to have the Taliban across the table, and so it had been “not an inclusive group”. This, he believed, had led to further conflict a number of years later.
Lady Ashton agreed: “We should remember the incontrovertible fact that in conversations about peace, you’re not going to be speaking together with your friends [and that if you] assure the protection of your enemy, you assure your personal safety.”
Lord Williams described an issue in regards to the importance of kids’s education as “music to my ears. . . The ethos of education is that children should continually be encouraged to do good things together, whether that be sport, music, travelling.”
Lady Ashton referred to the Somalian Civil War, which had gone on for 22 years and where “the President instituted a latest slogan for young and old people: quit your guns and go to high school”.
She said that it was vital to “give the following generation the chance to recollect the past, to fret in regards to the missing, to mourn the dead, and to construct a latest life”.
She said that she was captivated with education, since it helped countries to grow and develop, and that this was particularly necessary for civilians.
Lord Williams said that, in peace negotiations, “you will have to take faith with you, a faith that something apart from mutually destructive conflict is feasible and vital.”
“In scripture, we discover God saying ‘I set before you life and death’. It is prime to attempt to get people to acknowledge a desire for some form of homecoming. We must nourish the courage to take risks, of crossing boundaries towards peace.”
The panel agreed that the priority for ethical peace have to be to stop people from being killed, and to think about a more sustainable future.
