2008 August | Miren Gutiérrez

August 29, 2008

Q&A: “Where Women Can’t Thrive, MDGs Are in Jeopardy”

Filed under: Articles by IPS, Interviews by the Author — miren @ 7:40 am

Interview with Ines Alberdi, executive director of UNIFEM

ROME, Aug 28 (IPS) – Ines Alberdi has worked for over 25 years on gender issues and in politics.

She comes to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) from her previous position as professor of sociology at Madrid University where she has taught political sociology and sociology of gender since 1993. Prior to that, she was director for research at the Centre for Sociological Research. Her main interest has been gender-based violence.

“It is crucial to see the women’s rights movement in this context of creating more democratic, equitable, and just societies that benefit the population as a whole. And I devoted my professional life to this cause,” she says.

Alberdi spoke to IPS Editor in Chief Miren Gutierrez about the role of UNIFEM.

IPS: UNIFEM talks about the importance of incorporating gender into national poverty reduction strategies. How is this done?

Ines Alberdi: National poverty reduction strategies are particularly important entry points to ensure that women’s needs will be taken into account. It is based on these plans that governments allocate resources and donors contribute to national budgets or to specific sectors. To have a strong gender perspective incorporated at this planning stage is therefore crucial.

Gender advocates and women’s machineries must therefore be closely involved in devising national development plans. UNIFEM’s work has focused on opening policy spaces, for example in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries. As Kyrgyzstan began formulating its new development strategy, UNIFEM worked with civil society organisations to raise the profile of gender equality measures. These encompass measures to increase women’s political participation, perform gender analysis of school curricula, reflect gender differences in pension reform and end violence against women.

Kyrgyzstan has also pioneered a set of gender-responsive development indicators, harmonised to capture both national priorities and international commitments to gender equality, such as those in the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) and the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals).

August 5, 2008

Q&A: ‘All Political Violence Is Not Terrorism’

Filed under: Articles by IPS, Interviews by the Author, New links — miren @ 12:30 am

Interview with Gustavo Gorriti, author of The Shining Path.

Gustavo Gorriti

ROME, Aug 4 (IPS) – Gustavo Gorriti, author of The Shining Path, which examines both the insurrection and the government’s response in the internal war in Peru, has just reprinted his book. And that has raised some questions about terrorism today.

The Maoist group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) became notorious for indiscriminate bombings, assassinations, brutal killings, kidnappings, bank robberies, and attacks on embassies and businesses before it was beaten in the early 1990s. The human and economic toll was devastating. Human rights groups estimate that more than 30,000 people died in violence arising from the confrontation since the rebels took up arms two decades ago. In 2003, a government commission blamed the Shining Path for about 54 percent of the violent deaths caused by the civil war.

Gorriti, a well-known senderologo (as those who studied Shining Path have come to be called), talks to IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutierrez about terrorism then and now.

IPS: You published ‘The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru’ originally in 1990. How relevant is the book today?

Gustavo Gorriti: The book is selling well, which probably means that its subject remains important to Peruvians. After some years of self-induced amnesia, many Peruvians are trying to understand that tragic period, among other reasons because its consequences and most of its protagonists are still with us.

IPS: Reporting about the Shining Path, what have you learnt about terrorism? Is it comparable to other armed groups?

GG: Armed insurgencies have some points in common and may have significant differences. The Shining Path attempted to forcefully graft into Latin America Mao’s ‘People’s War’ insurrectionary doctrine. Yet it had some differences with its historical model in that it tried to bring the Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution’ into the insurrectionary equation, as well as several elements from the Komintern, an international communist organisation founded in Moscow.

At the same time, Abimael Guzmán, the Shining Path’s supreme leader, studied the early Muslim conquests, to impress on his followers the importance of overriding conviction in achieving dramatic expansion and military victory.