Women can play crucial role in maintaining peace.
The lack of women at the Balkan peace talks is to blame for much of its failures, a former UN official in Bosnia and Herzegovina said Thursday. Elisabeth Rehn, the former Special Representative of the Secretary General in the Balkans said in a keynote address marking the UN s celebration of International Women s Day that the fact there wasn t a single woman negotiator at the Dayton peace talks and that gender issues weren t discussed is one of the many reasons why the implementation has been so slow, the misery is still there, and the word reconciliation sounds sometimes like a very bad joke and a hypocritical promise with no schedule for fulfillment. She said post war reconstruction of infrastructure is important, but all the material reconstruction is useless if the minds of the people are crashed, if no program is created to reconstruct the humanity of the suffering. Reflecting on her own experience , she said women are particularly suited for peacemaking because they are more adapt at talking to the victims of war,Victims, she said, are afraid of speaking out to the men in high positions whereas women are easier to approach. Women seldom try to create their dignity through bodyguards, armored vehicles, and being distant to the people, she said.