WISCOMP Continues to Empower Women as Peace Builders

Building Capacity for Peaceful Transformation of Societies

Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP ), a WANGO member, positions itself at the confluence of peace building, conflict transformation and security studies. The intersection of these three issues with gender concerns provides the focus of its engagement and is the leitmotif that informs its programs.

    Over the past five years, WISCOMP has strived to further civil-society engagement between India and Pakistan through its conflict transformation program. In June 2001, WISCOMP was among the few South Asian initiatives to bring together third generation Pakistanis and Indians for a sustained dialogue and training in conflict transformation. Since its inception, the conflict transformation workshop has emerged as a forum for meaningful dialogue and networking between young practitioners, researchers, media-persons and students from South Asia.  

    As the program enters its sixth year, WISCOMP is working towards bringing together Indian and Pakistani alumni of the last five years for knowledge sharing, learning, and assessment, and for planning future initiatives. Notably, the conflict transformation program has grown beyond the workshop to lead to collaborative research projects, publications, and in-country workshops. WISCOMP has also instituted a Collaborative Research Award which is awarded at the end of every workshop. Zahid Shahab Ahmed (Pakistan) and Michelle Baxter (India), participants of the 2004 workshop, were awarded for their research project on Teachers’ Attitudes and Practices towards Indo-Pak Conflict: An Exploratory Study of India and Pakistan. This has led to the publication of a monograph on a crucial subject of contemporary relevance.  

    The workshop reports have emerged as resource books on the theory and practice of conflict transformation. WISCOMP is in the process of publishing a monograph on peace proposals for Kashmir titled Kashmir: Engaging with Possibilities. This monograph is based on the proceedings of the workshop sessions on the issue of Kashmir.  

    WISCOMP has also continuously engaged with issues of reconciliation and methodologies of dialogue, building capacity for positive change in areas of conflict. The WISCOMP initiative in Jammu and Kashmir Athwaas¹ has grown in spread and scope to touch the lives of many.

    The Athwaas group comprises a group of women from the region who seek to expand constituencies of peace through a range of activities such as active listening, trauma counseling, conflict transformation workshops, and the initiation of projects that facilitate democratic participation and a “just peace.” Since the first roundtable in 2000 that brought together a small group of people, the project has evolved carving out a trajectory of its own and growing in myriad ways. At every stage of the personal and collective journey made by the members of Athwaas, the WISCOMP team in New Delhi has worked closely with them, organizing meetings in Srinagar and Delhi to discuss best practices and lessons learned, and brainstorm on the road ahead.  

    Lately, WISCOMP brought together a group of women and men from Jammu and Kashmir for an inter-faith workshop which explored resources for reconciliation and healing available in faith and religion. The workshop sought to generate a spirit of dialogue among different traditions that goes beyond mere “tolerance” to appreciation of diversity. It also sought to focus on how religions can be interpreted in order to promote better relations between people of different communities, and how such understandings can be made a part of the public consciousness.  

    Almost all of the participants from the region had been touched in some form or another by the activities of the Athwaas initiative. WISCOMP continues to move forward in its journey of empowering women as peace builders and building capacity for peaceful transformation of societies.  

Contributed by Deepti Mahajan

Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP)

New Dehli , India

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¹ Athwaas is a Kasmiri word which means a handshake or holding of hands as an expression of solidarity and trust.