October 2, 2019
In Conversation with… Lilly Be’Soer, Voice for Change
By: Lilly Be’Soer, Founder and Executive Director of Voice for Change
At CPS, we believe that what security means (and what peace means) differs necessarily and often dramatically from one community to the next, that those residing in these specific communities are experts of their own circumstances and that—in order for security to be effective and peace to be sustainable—they must lead the development and implementation of security strategies that will keep their communities safe.
In line with our commitment to challenging received ideas about those discussions that do and do not have a place in the security sector, CPS was pleased to engage in conversations with Lilly Be’Soer surrounding her work to eradicate violence in her native Papua New Guinea.
Lilly Be’Soer, Founder and Executive Director of Voice for Change, is an advocate for the political, economic and social empowerment of women.Voice for Change (VfC) focuses primarily on creating safe spaces for girls and women and empowering women economically. Voice for Change works in collaboration with local communities, the police and community law enforcers (village court magistrates, peace mediators and ward councillors) and other key local groups.
In her conversation with CPS, Be’Soer discussed VfC’s gender trainings (conducted with an eye to preventing conflict), her focus on forgiveness before compensation in conflict mediation and the role of women in peace processes.
– Eds.
When we conduct gender trainings, we look at the attitudes and treatment of men and women, as well as boys and girls, in the family. Often, there is greater value placed on the boy child and man and less on the girl child and woman. We look at gender stereotypes and work together to understand the gendering process—that which was instilled in us from our parents and our traditions. And we try to change this.
We conduct trainings in communities on many things, including gender-based violence, conflict prevention, peace building and human rights. Our trainings are ongoing and remain necessary, but we are seeing some changes.
Our trainees learn how to communicate respectfully with one another in a number of ways, including by role-playing and creating and acting out dramas, to understand gender discrimination and make commitments to change. They recognize they have been conditioned to think in gender stereotypes about men and women’s roles, and they want to change their behaviour.
When men go through this session and see how they treat the women in their community, it helps them to understand themselves, think about the way they communicate and how they treat their wives and their daughters. This is an important step because, then, they can apply the same to the community. If they can treat their wives and daughters with respect, they can treat other women in the community with respect too.
We try to integrate traditional beliefs into this process too – thinking about the roles women and men need to be able to take on in order to work together for peace.
And we encourage thinking about what peace means. If you have peace at home, there is no violence. You can sleep at night. You can feel safe. There’s no conflict. If you have peace in a community, then everyone can feel safe. If you have peace in a community, there are opportunities. People can go to school and become educated. In this way, the community can develop.
One community we are working with has been in conflict for a long time.
We work to ensure that justice is served, especially for survivors of violence, and to ensure the reintegration into the community of parties to conflict. But we believe in forgiveness. Our society believes in forgiveness. This must come before compensation and justice.
It’s a long process, and many people are involved. We cannot tell people to forgive after they’ve experienced violence. We help give the survivors a sense of space and support, and we support them to take the actions they want to take. If they want those who committed the violent acts apprehended, we assist with accessing the justice system. We work with the people who are affected first. If they want peace, we will help them. We work with all the parties involved.
Women play a big role in this process, and in building peace – they talk about peace in their communities and homes, they pray, they are often the ones who come to us to facilitate peace. In general, women are not the ones who make the trouble… it’s the men’s trouble, but it affects them. We help women in our community understand that they have a big role in building peace. We work with the Christian church – Christian beliefs are a big part of what we do in this process—as well as with peace mediators.
Since we started working with this community to build peace, community services have been restored.
