Senator Douglas Roche: Women, Peace & Security

Rosalie Bertell, on nominating The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace for the Millennium Peace Prize for Women, said:

"From the outset, the organization's philosophy has been one of inclusiveness and outreach to other women, refusing to accept labelling of other women as "enemy." They espouse and practice peacebuilding through cooperation. Their record speaks of the mobilization of women, and public and governmental education."


Below we touch on some of the highlights of VOW's history

1960's

Born in 1960 when women of Canada were aroused about the possibility of nuclear war and how nuclear testing was endangering their children's lives. Lotta Dempsey wrote columns in the Toronto Star asking women to write to her if they were willing to DO something about this awful threat. Hundreds replied and four women, Jo Davis, Dorothy Henderson, Helen Tucker and Beth Touzel met with Dempsey and shortly thereafter started "The Voice of Women". Soon thousands joined, paid a membership fee of $2.00, received bi-monthly newsletters urging them to form small groups to keep in touch with one another and to encourage all their women friends to join.

National VOW:

  • Organized an international conference held in 1962 in St Donat, Quebec, focussing on building mechanisms for working together and influencing the United Nations and asking the UN to declare an International Year of Peace. This was later proclaimed as International Co-operation Year in 1965. A second international Conference was held in 1965 and a third in Montreal in 1967.
  • Pressured Canadian Government to support the international appeal for a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty resulting in the partial test ban in 1963.
  • Organized the collection of thousands of children's baby teeth for testing of Strontium 90 content.
  • Organized a visit of VOW members to the former USSR to meet with Russian women in defiance of the cold war.
  • In opposition to the War in Vietnam VOW brought women from Vietnam to tour Canada on a well organized public speaking tour and to meet with American women at border points across the country at mass rallies.

Local VOW groups:

  • Held educational meetings on the threat of nuclear war.
  • Demonstrated to stop the war in Vietnam.
  • Protested the manufacture and sale of war toys and the violent nature of TV programs.
  • Knit thousands of baby articles and children's clothing for the children in war-torn Vietnam.

1970's

National VOW:

  • Became accredited at the United Nations, with observer status in 1977.
  • Participated in the UN Special session on Disarmament in New York as a Non-Governmental Organization in 1982.
  • Presented briefs, lobbied government delegates on disarmament in Ottawa, New York and Geneva.
  • Sent delegates to international conferences in Europe.
  • Obtained consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN. in 1977.
  • Represented VOW at International Women's year in Mexico in 1975.

1980's

  • Represented VOW at United Nations Conference on Women in Copenhagen, 1980
  • United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament (UNSSOD 11) in 1982 attended by many VOW members. Past president Kay Macpherson spoke to one million persons on behalf of Canadian citizens
  • Presented the Women's Peace Petition (115, 000 signatures) to UN session.
  • Sponsored and organized the Women's International Peace Conference "The Urgency for True Security: Women's Alternatives for Negotiating Peace", in Halifax, in 1985, attended by 350 women from 33 countries. This conference re-appropriated the word "security", defining it away from the military.
  • Held fourteen local peace conferences across Canada that same year
  • Incorporated as a non-profit organization under title of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace in 1986.
  • Represented at United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi, 1985 where the famous Peace Statement from the Halifax International conference was presented to the Peace Tent.
  • Organized in 1986 the first of annual lobby trips to the United Nations in New York to heighten women's visibility at the UN and to lobby multiple missions on demilitarization and concern for human life.
  • Presented a statement to UN Third Special Session on Disarmament in 1988, calling on the UN Secretary General to report on ways the UN and its system could increase women's participation in peace and disarmament processes.

Local VOWs:

  • Organized opposition to training exercises by US Nuclear Warships in BC waters and in Halifax ports.
  • Campaigned for the rights of Native people and against low level flying over the INNU people in Labrador by NATO Military Training Exercises, sent representatives to be in solidarity with INNU women and received official status at the government 's Environmental Assessment.
  • Held events in commemoration on Hiroshima Day.

1990's

  • Represented at United Nations Conference on Women at Beijing.
  • Participated with Women for Mutual Security at several international women's lobby efforts of NATO and Warsaw Pact officials throughout the 90's.
  • Called on the Canadian government to include women at the negotiating table in Kosovo.
  • Brought to the early attention of Canada's ambassador to the UN a stinging NGO critique of peacekeepers and UN staff's sexual abuse of women in Cambodia in 1993.
  • Helped to mount the first International Somali women's peace conference in partnership with Somali women in diaspora, July 1999.
  • Completed in January, 2000, the first of an annual series of practical training in feminist leadership and legal literacy, including CEDAW and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, for 50 diverse, grass roots Canadian women.
  • Completed a proposal together with archivists, writers, artists and other peace women, for a major travelling exhibition "Groundswell: Women Building a Culture of Peace" to illustrate a century of grass roots women's extensive work for peace and non-violence.

Local VOWS throughout the past decade have organized and joined peace coalitions to hold public events, lectures, vigils, demonstrations at the time of the Gulf War, the war in Kosovo and the war in Afghanistan.

2000's

 

 

 

 


 

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