KnowHow Conference 2002, 23-27 July 2002, Kampala, Uganda

Devaki Jain

ABSTRACT
In this presentation I suggest that while Networking has been a special feature of the feminist movement - and reflects in many ways the ideals of the feminist method - flexible, and non hierarchical arrangements to bring collective perspectives to issues, to give collective voice: networks and news letters , alliances and coalitions , have reached a stage , to use the corporate language, of flooding the market . The environment demands ideology, purpose, and a clearer use of the space that is available for the aims of networks.

In the period 1975 to 1990 many networks were born, which enabled women to build international alliances, as well as develop a deeper knowledge base for their struggle for rights, or against their centuries-old subordination. Networks such as DAWN have played a role in shifting the grounds of analysis and in building opinion. However this does not seem enough. But as knowledge becomes broad based, and multicoloured due to IT, cyberspace, there is a fragmentation of the space earlier used by the networks. This seems to have diluted their purpose and impact compared to the earlier decades .

This paper first touches upon the highlights and the evolution of women's networking - touch upon a few significant chartacters and achievements, touch upon the lessons we can learn from the South African anti apartheid struggle. Then point to the slow melting down of the early participatory solidarity building movements. Suggest that the peoples movements are replacing them and the need of the networks to support them, to firm up their, "fluidity". It would also give a view of the "growth" or changing modes of evolution of networks from 1985 to 1995/2000., then briefly give the characteristics of networks followed by a few examples of achievements, and then some ideas on what is needed.

There is a need to mobilize at the global level around a few issues. Developing a power to 'transact' an issue, which both legitimizes 'women' or 'women identity' and simultaneously calls attention to an 'influential' lobby. The networks need to get together to identify one or two poles around which they determine the 'politicisation' of the women's movement. Make a global compact so that their power as a global force is asserted significantly. We know of the SIT-IN of the women of Nigeria and Colombia. We need an ideological solidarity and institutional mechanism to be able to support their efforts more effectively to sustain and to enlarge the space they have occupied, till all of it is occupied.

It is suggested that now "we" have the knowledge - we know and the "we" is not the few, but the many.

But we do NOT know how - to play upon the words of your title.

1. We know that the liberalisation program is asymmetrical, yet NEPAD is born, which conceals another attempt at economic exploitation of Africa and so on. Despite all our knowledge, shared efforts, resistance, e.g. Seattle and elsewhere a NEPAD takes place, Africa is chosen as the darling of the G-8.
2. There is a slide back to the dark middle ages of the "Christian" world and the "pagan" world. We the civilised people, Christian and Western you the barbaric, Islamic or Eastern terrorist types, is the language of not only the leaders, but Media too (note Tim Sebastian on BBC interviewing Dr. Boutros Boutros Gali). 

A total negation of the feminist discourse - built on pluralism, multiple identities social, categories like class political ideologies, location and various other identities not civilisational and religious language. But there are new ways in which the world is being divided, politically - namely the post September 11 arrival of religious difference as a source of not only conflict, but militant intolerance by ARROGANT power. I suggest the current language, intent, and practice by the "Arrogant power" is the coalition against terrorism, as it is euphemistically called takes the world back to the Crusaders of Medieval times.

At a South Asian Conference - on Human Rights, Prof. Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate) in a lecture called Inclusion & Exclusion said "… by categorising the population of the world into those belonging to the Islam world", the Christian World", the Hindu World etc.," . . . "the divisive power of classificatory' priority is implicitly used to place people inside a unique set of rigid boxes.

Such boxing (my words) '…is potentially a great ethical and political hazard, with far-reaching consequences on human rights.' He then continues, 'I would argue that the main hope of harmony in the contemporary world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and works against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of impenetrable division. . . . "

Arundhati Roy, in her essay the Algebra of Infinite Justice has this to say on civilisational divides: "The equivocating distinction between civilization and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, the "clash of civilizations" and "collateral damage." The sophistry and fastidious algebra of Infinite Justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place? How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead children for every dead man? How many dead mujahedeen for each dead investment banker?"

Other issues, ideologies, 'rationalities' which will overpower the attempts that were beginning on the ground to transform the ugly face of the South-Asian region, have also been desperately captured by Arundhati Roy when she says 'So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace' the cupidity of the new theorems.

Ann Tickner in her paper Feminist Perspectives On 9/11(Prepared for a roundtable discussion on U.S. and E.U. foreign policies at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, March 8,2002) talks of the Gendered images that have appeared everywhere in the post Sep. 11th world that reinforcing gender stereotypes. She quotes different voices that illustrate this, for example

"Our brothers who fought in Somalia saw wonders about the weakness, feebleness, and cowardliness of the US soldier…we believe that we are men, Muslim men who must have the honour of defending [Mecca}. We do not want American women soldiers defending [it]…The rulers in that region have been deprived of their manhood….. By God, Muslim women refuse to be defended by these American and Jewish prostitutes." Osama bin Laden

"As women gain power in these [Western] countries, [they] should be come less aggressive adventurous, competitive, and violent." Francis Fukuyama

"I don't want any women to go to my grave .. during my funeral or any occasion thereafter." Mohamed Atta

"War gives purpose to life….Peace brings out the silliness in man; war makes him imitate the tiger." George S. Patton Jr.

I bring these quotations to emphasise the point that there is a slide back to the Middle Ages, A Return of the Dark Ages

I have taken this larger picture because for those of us who are looking at gender democracy and development there is a great or major responsibility to work our way, during this significant conference to push back the attempts to re organise social categories; moving them from diversity, from multiple identities, which is so much a part of feminist expression, "to one single hardened line of impenetrable division.," to reinvoke Prof Sen.

We may look at best practices, mechanisms to network and learn from each other, we may exercise our brilliant minds to do hair line analysis, but Rome is burning . Our solidarity as a conference has to speak to this larger world, which is not only on the border of ruination due to environmental abuse, but due to the revival of the attitudes of the Dark Ages - bigoted and of course that bigotry includes the anti woman venom.

The perception of women's networks as 'enabling women' has to give place to a role as mobilising, generating and consolidating women's opinion on national and global issues such that their struggle towards macro-transformation which ultimately will protect them at the micro-level.

So I wonder, whether we know how to make our brilliance, our networked collectivities prevent, transform, replace these ugly 'happenings'.

The Nairobi conference was a great leap forward for building women's networks, subject specific / or across regions. Thus was born, what I would like to caricature as the the new men's club of women: women who organised, networked, wielded power in international debates, challenged inherited knowledge bases; a critical mass which laid the basis for women's international advocacy.

Between Nairobi 1985 and the Beijing Women's Conference 1995,I think a different ethos emerged. To some extent, it could be called the bureaucratisation of the women's movement and to some extent, it could also be said that women were beginning to be able to give what can be called women's advise on major global issues such as environment, human rights, habitat, population and so forth. Rather than "We need a vision of mankind not as patients whose interests have to be looked after, but as agents who can do effective things - both individually and jointly. We also have to go beyond the role of human beings specifically as 'consumers' or as 'people with needs', and consider, more broadly, their general role as agents of change who can - given the opportunity - think, assess, evaluate, resolve, inspire, agitate, and through these means, reshape the world." One could say that women have journeyed from a sense of strengthening what can be called a broad based women's identity to developing consensual approaches to what can be called general policies such as economics, population and then moved ahead to intervene and sometimes even break up some of the earlier traditional political configurations within the U.N., as the radical edge.

Networks are a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of bringing women's collective strength together to bear on society and on the State. We can also add to the categories - society and the state-markets, though I am one who does not see market as a definable boundary or propeller.

Characterising networks
Networking as a conscious form of organizing has emerged for many reasons, both pragmatic and value-based. The pragmatic considerations have been a recognition the global problems of today have to counter, also on a global scale and that networking improves the effect, visibility and efficiency of the people involved in advancing a cause.

Networks are also powerful instruments for working for social change. Their strength lies in their exceptional ability to enhance and deepen critical thinking and creativity through dialogue and exchange; to address global problems by joining forces to take global action; to transcend isolation and strengthen local action; to link local organizing efforts and structures to international ones, to facilitate participation; and to be flexible and respond quickly to new and changing situation.
In the current perspective namely in the 21st century, it is my view that there is the need to build up women as an opinion lobby with some transactional power either in terms of numbers such as votes (South Africa) or ideas, money or moral power. Networking to keep in touch, by itself is not enough. Opinion building and translating into a political force is beginning to emerge as one of the most critical elements of informing and generating change. But the challenge is to build up greater solidarity and more significantly politically The need therefore is to turn into transnational politics by which they can give sustained inputs into the political process and keep alive crossnational interests.

"The transnational solidarity of women, according to observers, was subject to the same strains as women's movements within countries, but magnified by the diversity of political systems, ideologies, economic level and cultural background." (Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, Gender and International Relations Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1991)

Some argue that the greater diffusion of information across national and state boundaries produced by information technology, actually makes the state visibly accountable, especially in international forums, for the growing or persisting inequalities (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Feminist arguments have gone further to analyse the role of the state as an actor in the enforcement of human rights and to question early attempts to use male standards to define violations of human rights (Sullivan 1994, Sullivan 1995, Facio 1996). However feminists have often had to deal with contradictory pulls. For example, governments and institutions in the North are, on one hand, criticised as intrusive and manipulative when they stipulate that aid to the poorer States of the South be granted on conditions of financial reform which often negatively impact women much more than men, and on the other hand, these same Northern governments and institutions are urged to interfere in the policies of aid-recipient states "to ensure that women have equal access with men to the benefits of their loans", and to enact sweeping legal reforms to regulate people's activities in the "private sphere" like (within families or households as much as activities are regulated in the public sphere).

Values
Networks also reflect a certain value-base. For example feminist networks are based on a belief that the coming together and the sharing of experience, knowledge and information, is by itself useful. Networks tend to avoid the tradition pyramidal structures that do not allow expression of those who are "lower" down; and therefore strive to be inclusive and bring people together for common causes while respecting diversity. Networks also imply a reciprocity, which 'aid' does not. It is a coming together of allies; of achieving 'social synergy'

One idea that has persisted, however, is sustaining a method and process that will allow space for evolution, for accommodating difference, the converging and dispersing, for engaging in dialogue and collective decision making. Platforms are built on issues that cut across differences and on viewpoints or quests that seem to echo widespread anxiety or an inspiration.

In the last 25 years, 100s of women's networks have mushroomed - some on specific issues such as health the International Women's Health Movement, region-based (for example Association of African Women for Research and Development AAWORD) based on class or occupation (Peasant Women's Groups, homeworkers network -HOMENET) or religion (Islamic Women's association) race, (Black women's groups) and so on. There are also many multiple interest network built around gender. (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) ISIS International etc.)

Many new regional networks have formed as a result of the global UN conferences. Countless programmes to empower women through grassroots organizing and micro-enterprise development have been carried out. There are South Asian Women's Networks for law, for economy, for women studies, for peace and these are on the ground, formulating policies and doing advocacy for them at regional, SAARC and international levels.

These networks are the strongest bridges across the divides, with the best basis , embedded in the movements for justice , reconstructing knowledge and so on and in these endeavours lie the hope of revitalising South Asia .

Achievements
There are international networks to protect the rights of people who live along the banks of rivers, there are committees to just protect rivers from the assault of development. These networks not only mutually reinforce each other, but have been able to hold back and roll back some of the most powerful world agencies. For example, during the 3 year 1997-2000, process of the World Commission on Dams (www.dams.org) it was the international networks of river peoples, indigenous people, natural resources rights group that "encircled" the Commission and ensured that the end product was just principled and tethered in development - Uganda has abandoned a major big dam project, this month - perhaps due to informed advocacy.

I suggest that the lived context is a crucial tethering for that combination/amalgam of thought and action that characterise those engaged in transformations including feminists. This over time has become the bedrock from which networks and groups have emerged.

Networks have in some instances been able to mobilise and assert opinion. Examples include the case of ISIS's (Geneva) campaign on baby food products, which finally lead to on a 'warning' on all baby food products that breast milk is best for the health of an infant. Other examples include the mobilisation by the International Women's Year the publishers of the journal Tribune, of signatures for the Chinese government before the Beijing conference to protest against the selective issue of visa and so on.

Networks, therefore have a place in a certain phase of the movement especially as bringing together of people, especially women; of mobilisation in terms of knowing each other along with information sharing -

Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, in their assessment of the Fourth World Women's Conference at Beijing, 1995, say, "The creation of coalitions between groups with very different interests certainly seemed to b taking place in Beijing, with for example a broad alliance on reproductive rights between north and south women, which allowed for rather different interpretations of these rights." Thus understanding the intersections, and then finding the convergence through the selection of one or two issues and working them into mainstream agenda.

If I were to do a balance sheet in India, I would say that the most significant achievement has been the education of the State - and the judiciary on Domestic Violence, for example in India. A remarkable graphic of this is a huge half page advertisement placed by the women and child department of the government of India, in a national newspaper on May 28th 2001, showing the face of a battered bruised woman, and making an appeal (-when you do this to your wife, think of your sister mother daughter) showing the governments willingness to admit, the existence of this highly sensitive issue of domestic violence - men's rage over women.

Some years ago - may be 10+ years ago, it would be unthinkable that a government will expose anything within the sacrosanct family. It was always either the rhetoric men and women, 'shoulder to shoulder' or don't destroy the harmony within the family. Issues such as trafficking in women, brought up by Asian women as far back as in Nairobi have now been adopted by the governments as priority issues for redressal, as has violence.
An achievement is the increase in the visibility of women - whether in their misery or in achievement. The identity, the woman question, the difference has been established.

Catherine Hoskyns talking about the development of the European Women's lobby that was to influence the European Lobby, says that these "peak organizations" represent both advantages and disadvantages. "That on one hand it provided focus and articulate spokeswomen, and good sources of information; on the other it has experienced difficult problems with internal democracy, representation and efficiency. The danger is that fluidity and diversity are traded for structure and coherence." ( 'Democratizing the European Union - Issues for the Twenty-first Century' Manchester University Press, 2000)

At a local / national level a large number of resource organisations are engaged in networking in different parts of the country, taking up a variety of activities in collaboration with women in the community and the elected women in the panchayats. (i.e. local councils of self-government). For example, two groups of women in a district in a Kerala by "networking" the women's groups had networked in such a way that they had made their production and trade get inter linked with the demand in the district. Thus, overcoming the usual problem of "non-saleability" of products prepared by local women's groups.

Shortcomings
What needs to be recognised though is that none of these advances has reduced the misery, or redressed the exclusions and oppressions endured by women. In fact data - world wide shows that there is an increase in domestic violence against women e g in India, higher and more virulent dowry demands and of course a wider spreading of sex selective abortions in India. The improvements in women's lives that has been referred to the Women 2000 publication does not reveal that the advances are segmented and highly sectional and minimal The masses of girls, women and female children, worldwide are under assault.
In my view one of the shortcomings of the WWWM is that it has also entered the conventional mode of functioning: where government is postulated as the main player in transformation, in drawing up national and international initiatives, and the women's movement a reporter of progress, a monitor, a This is a very conventional relationship - it also diminishes responsibility.

We hear more often these days that there is no women's movement, no united social flow- towards a purpose - only a large, scattered, diverse set of women focussed organisations. From the earlier 70's when national initiatives for women were in the hands of women, as in Mexico where we gave birth to our selves, today national initiatives are in the hands of government- a slide back.

We do not see those strong alliances between mass based struggles for justice and the women's agenda. In India for example, mass based struggles, like the anti-arrack (native alcohol) in Andhra have not necessarily been adopted by what can be called a national women's movement.

Today economic reform programmes, as the structural adjustment policies are euphemistically called, are attacking the worker movements, worldwide. In India the trade union movement was and is one of the strong institutions of democracy, however full of warts and patriarchy - but it is one of the bulwarks against state and corporate sector domination. Yet we do not see the national or worldwide women's movement taking a global stand against the deconstruction of this institution. One can go on giving examples of such isolation from mass based struggles, often led by women but dealing with natural resources (Medha Patkar), with political transparency (Aruna Roy), as for example the right to information movement in India.

The struggle against racism has much to teach us, as we have to teach those struggling against racism. The myths are in the mind and the politics is to sustain those myths. A highly political feminist movement, very broad based, with alliances with other such oppressed classes is necessary for the revolution that is needed to stop the careless crimes against women.

Changing the condition of women- the hardships they face whether through poverty or the basic discrimination - requires monumental change in the social perceptions of woman, across caste, class ethnicity and other differences. Studies are showing that owning assets, bringing in income, being educated, even having equality in the social indicators, like the closeness to one of the GDI or GEM, as in Kerala in India, has not reduced either the violence against women or the dowry rates- nor the basic disregard which makes an adult or adolescent male rape a girl child even if she is a relative or a neighbor.

For this long march to begin what is needed is political mobilisation of women, united, even if temporarily by their sex. We then have to move out of the conventional grip of the arrival hall - by which I mean that most movements when they gain self confidence and shape, think that being the subject of governments consideration is an achievement, the arrival hall, and lobbying for a conference document becomes the consuming energy.

Yesterdays workers movements and their collective voice is today the peoples movements.Workers movements have had to take a back seat ,as much because in economies like India the trade unionised labour represents less than 10% of the labour force , as because the structure of production and trade systems world wide have blurred, as well as dampened working class culture. As the space for trade unions and cooperatives is reduced and weakened as part of the institutional machinery for bringing the strength and opinion of the less privileged or the larger masses , peoples movements must be seen as the institutional vehicles for carrying the voices of the masses into public debate and policy making . The left movements have also been marginalised by world events , as well as by the emergence of the assertion and affirmation of injustice within class, a critique from within, as for example ,by women , the blacks and coloured, the 'dalits' and minorities.

The space for the voices of the oppressed once occupied by the left and the unions then is available , unfilled - and in the last decade or two is being filled by peoples movements all over the world - North and South. But peoples movements by definition do not have the institutional structure that political parties and Trade Unions have . They do not have a space in the States institutional framework nor come under any legal framework They are fluid and this enables them to be inclusive as well as broad based and massive in numbers. But it also demands from them unity of purpose , single minded thrusts , which in turn requires shared knowledge , clarity of purpose - attributes of efficiency They need to be taken seriously by agencies of the State and Society as the most vital safeguards to democracy and for sustaining the democratic spaces outside of the conventional structures ,which are often suffocated, crippled.

It is only the networking, and more importantly, the coalescing of such diverse and dispersed efforts that can reverse the flow of resources. This is the crux of autonomy and self-determination.

The institutional frameworks that develop at intermediary levels will be the ultimate test of our networking and advocacy skills. Success at this level will determine whether the dispersed initiatives can come together over a period of time to coalesce into Structural Transformation, or die in the wilderness.

For the future
Poverty is a political issue. To my mind, poverty eradication cannot take place unless political institutions are built which represent the voices of the poor, and those institutions in turn become vote banks and thy in turn transform the political leadership to be representative of the poor. The women's movement is the most effective, possibly the least tarnished and the most united across divides of political and social forces in the world today and hence the ideal vehicle to spearhead transformation and poverty eradication. Not surprisingly women today lead the many mass based significant social and economic rights movements in India. The right to information is led by Aruna Roy, the right of the peoples of the Narmada Valley to development is led by Medha Patkar, the right to the seed is led by Vandana Shiva and the right of home based workers to law is led by Ela Bhatt. For women, democratic spaces are even more crucial, as their resistance to oppression from family, culture and patriarchy requires ventilated spaces with firmly embedded laws that safeguard individual rights. At the state and national levels women are engaged in drafting modifications in the People's Representation Act and other details of electoral reform. Electoral politics has found vibrant support in India, as demonstrated by this million-strong force of local women politicians, historically subordinated castes, and minorities. The populace has benefited from the freedoms and inbuilt checks of democracy.

Treatises have been written , and here we can draw on Nobel laureate Amartya Kumar Sen - who repeatedly has emphasised that unless the voices and strength of collective public action was included as an element in economic models there was no way of generating equity with growth. This is the political element in economics- the space for negotiated settlement in making the choices at the macro level.

It has often been the strategic combines of women that have opened the spaces for women. For example women in the delegations, combining with officials within the Secretariat , and the NGOs, can collude, to engineer a desirable outcome. This has been called the velvet triangle, a metaphor to capture the three major actors'/groups typically involved in gender/women's politics - first, femocrats and feminist politicians; second, academics and experts; and third, non-governmental organizations. However the same three partners can also be the cause for failure. Women who are officials on delegations do what their governments want and so can become impediments.

Thus it may be useful to move away from taking a report card approach to the measuring of performance, like PFA monitoring, instead take a platform of ideas and practices emerging from large scale women's actions in the world and let it teach, speak to the UN and the BWI's towards a revised, reconstructed agenda.
It would be useful to identify one or at most two issues especially affecting the poor woman - around which the international women's movement rallies. The idea is to upturn the aims of a mobilisation to strengthen ourselves, as a social force, not a negotiating agency, which commands attention by its very presence and ethics. A unified action at one point is always a battle that has a better chance of winning than 20 points. I feel that we should now have a one-point programme of full employment, and if you use that lens to critique everything under the sun, we might be able to make a dent. Networks need a goal a single minded purpose (as I suggest a lens) and work at all levels for that goal. To my mind the only way by which public opinion can be made into big public policy is through movements

When Gandhiji picked up a fistful of salt from the beaches of Gujarat , he was not trying to give free salt to the people of India. It was a symbol, an idiom of political assertion , but in a language, a vocabulary which represented the masses of people, not the elites . When President Mandela said in his inaugural speech , we want Bread water and salt it was not that he wanted to limit the life style of his people to bread with salt and water: it was to signal the aspirations of the masses again a vocabulary which was representative both of political assertion and identification with the deprived. Imagine if these actions and words had been interpreted in their literal sense? That gandhiji wanted to give free salt or that Mandela only wants bread with salt and water for his people? How absurd it would have been? Imagine if the salt satyagraha had not fired the imagination of Indians and opened the flood gates of the movement for freedom? What a loss to the grammar and method of politics and most of all to democratic processes which attempt to move the State towards justice?

What the International NGO movement needs is a fistful of salt, a symbolic unifying gesture to roll back the overwhelming force of the current paradigm of development - but not through essays and articles but through international solidarity on one public action.

Annexure I

Names of some Women's Networks and a two-line profile on one of its leading members/pioneer.

African Women's Development and Communication Network FEMNET: Sara Longwe
Asia Pacific Women Law and Development (APWLD) Nimalka Fernando
Asian Women's Human Rights Centre (AWHRC) Corrine Kumar
Association of African Women for Research and Development AAWORD Zenebework Tadesse
Center for Women's Global Leadership: (CWGL) 1989 Charlotte Bunch
Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM)
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) 1984 Devaki Jain
Gender and Science and Technology Association (GASAT) Manju Sharma
Global Campaign for Women's Human Rights
International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) 1980
International Women's Rights Action Watch (IWRAW) 1986 Shanti Dairiam
International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC) 1975 After Mexico: Anne Walker
ISIS International (1974) Marilee Karl/ Jane Cottingham
KARAT Coalition (regional network) 1997 Central and Eastern European Countries
Kinga Lohmann
TWAEMAE Sister Solidade
Women in Law and Development in Africa WiLDAF
Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) Marie-Aimee Helie-Lucas
Women's Environment and Development Organisations (WEDO) 1990s early Zeitlin
Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights

1. Sara Longwe, Female, Zambia, Director FEMNET,
   Will bring in the voice of the African women and the experience of using Information Technology to link women.
2. Nimalka Fernando, Female, Sri Lanka, founding member of APWLD, and served as secretariat of the Asia-Pacific NGO Coordinating Committee for the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia (WCAR), which was held in September 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa. 
   One of the leading feminist voices on gender, race, caste and class issues
3. Corrine Kumar, Female, India, Regional Coordinator of the Asian Women's Human Rights Council,
   Worked on feminist paradigms of development, issues of violence. Involved with peace initiatives like the Women in Black in India, the Public Hearings on Violence Against Women
4. Zenebework Tadesse, Female, Ethiopia, founder of Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) 
   Has long experience with the African Women's movement and knits theory and practice
5. Charolotte Bunch, Female, USA, Founding Director Center for Women's Global Leadership (Global Center)
   She has been a guiding force in efforts for women's rights to be recognized as human rights, in particular at the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna and at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and has remained a powerful leader and negotiator in subsequent international conferences on women's rights
6. Devaki Jain, Female, Indian, Founding member of founding member of DAWN.
   As a development economist, women's rights and democracy activist and feminist writer who is located in India and has been involved with the women's movement for over 30 years.
7. Anne Walker, Female, Australian, has been the Executive Director of the IWTC sits inception in 1976. 
   Brings in the experience of the one of the first major women's networks. A feminist activist, educationist, artist, photographer and writer, has supported the initiatives of women, primarily in Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East.
8. Marilee Karl co-founded Isis in 1974 and was one of the coordinators from 1974 to 1994. 
   Brings in perspective on gender and sustainable development and analysis on the transformation of networks.
9. Jane Cottingham, female, She co-founded ISIS and served as the organization's director
10. Kinga Lohmann, Female, Poland, the Regional Coordinator of KARAT 
    Brings in the East European perspective, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union - the changes.
11. Shanti Dairiam, Female, Malaysia, Director, IWRAW Asia/Pacific 
    Expertise on Law, especially the CEDAW and its implementation in various situations, countries etc.
12. Greice Cerqueira: Female coordinator Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights
    Brings in the issue of reproductive rights and how it operates in various situation and countries
13. Marie-Aimee Helie-Lucas, Female, Algeria is the founder and coordinator of the French-based advocacy group WLUML. She is also a sociologist 
    Brings in the voice of Muslim women and the role of law and religion. Her experience in advocacy is also noteworthy.
14. Joana Foster, Female, Zimbabwe, Regional Coordinator & Executive Committee Secretary of WILDAF
    Brings in the experience of regional networks and the links between
15. Rosanita A. Serrano, Female, Philippines, Programme Coordinator APGEN, 
    Brings in the perspective on women and work, including technology.
16. June Zeitlin, female, USA, Executive director of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)
    Insights on sustainable development and the use of caucuses in influencing UN agenda.
17. Ellen Chesler, Female, USA, Chair, International Women's Health Coalition
    The various dimension of women's health, including equality and rights.
18. Manju Sharma Female Indian, Member of GASAT Association 
    Will bring in the issues that arise between gender and science and technology.

References:
Roy, Arundhati, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, New Delhi, Viking, 2001

The Report of the World Commission on Dams "Dams and Development - A New Framework for Decision-Making", Earthscan Publications Ltd., United Kingdom, 2000.

Kavita Srivastava , Nikhil Dey and Neelabh Mishra, 'Taking Democracy Forward: The Right to Information Movement in Rajasthan'. Paper presented at Technical Workshop on Indigenising Human Rights Education in Indian Universities organised by Karnataka Women's Information and Resource Centre, Bangalore, December 2001.

Renana Jhabvala, 'Sewa and Home-based Workers in India Their Struggle and Emerging Role'. Paper presented at the Workshop on Indigenising Human Rights, Bangalore, December 2001.

Devaki Jain, For Women to Lead…Ideas and Experience from Asia. A study on the Legal and Political Impediments to Gender Equity in Governance , Study sponsored by Management and Governance Division, UNDP, New York ,1997.

December 1998 from an interview with al-Jazeera television. Quoted in Tony Judt, "America and the War," New York Review of Books, vol.XLVIII, no.10, November 15, 2001

Francis Fukuyama, "Women and the Evolution of World Politics," Foreign Affairs, 77, 5 (1998):24-40, p.27

Will of Mohamed Atta found in a suitcase at Logan International Airport in Boston. Quoted in the New York Times October 4, 2001, B5

"A World Too Intoxicated by the Wine of War," Los Angeles Times ,October 8, 2001
Amartya Sen, 'Transition to Sustainability in the 21st Century', Keynote Address, , Tokyo, 2000
Contact Address:

Devaki Jain
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