Camille J. Reyes

As we know Africa is a continent where militarism and violent conflicts have always been present in great quantities. But what is militarism? Militarism is an ideology of a dictatorship which has no democracy at all, and that creates fear among its people. It also supports the use of violence which has serious consequences for the safety and security of women, men and children. When a country embraces militarism it believes that everyone has enemies and the only way to solve problems is through violence. It mostly has a great impact on women’s daily life which is often manifested as violence.

“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation.  And it is perhaps the most pervasive.  It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth.  As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development, and peace.”
Kofi Annan, former Secretart-General of the UN
“A World Free of Violence against Women”
UN Global Videoconference, 8 March 1999

There is a lot of people who are not aware of the range that violence against women is able to reach so we need to have a better understanding of how militarism contributes to this manifestation of human rights violation. I as a woman  and human rights defender speak out against all forms of violence and take the time to analyze it´s causes. People need to be conscious about the connections between militaristic ideas, arms production and women’s rights violation. It is crucial that we, all together, challenge power imbalances, discrimination, violence against women and girls in all forms. Because it only takes one voice to make other million voices speak out loud for themselves or others. Violence is not an effective way to solve any kind of disagreement, it only generates more problems.  Women experience militarism differently than men do that’s why their points of view must be heard. The more people know about war and its consequences, the clearer it becomes that individual security cannot be achieved in military terms. Too much is spoken of national security but how about individual security? It might be more important to try to achieve individual security before national security since individual security begins at home, which is often a place of violence and abuse.

¿Could there be any possible way to reach peace? Many people believe on A.J.´s  Muste quote ‘there is no way to peace, peace is the way’. How can we create a way to reach something that is so intangible if we do not create it first? So, what is pacifism really? It is the way to maintain peace between nations, opposing war and any other protests of violence, through many types of peace movements such as political or religious ones. Pacifism has been present trough all history. Rousseau himself wanted individual liberty and human rights.

In the Social Contract he talks about how government could carry out its role in its best way. He also mentions how people give up certain liberties in order to gain civil rights. ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’, people are born equally and in their original appearance they are evil, as we grow up we tend to develop and shape our personalities and that is what make us different from others. At the end we all are human beings and we deserve to be treated equally, because we all have a similar goal and that is to survive. So why do we have to judge the ones who think different from us? We do not necessarily have to use violence to resolve our differences, that is what pacifism is all about.