19.1 (Spring 1995) Women and War

Women As Refugees: Perspectives from Burma

The Burmese expression for refugee is dukkha-the, the "one who has to bear dukkha, suffering." In the contemporary global setting, those who are suffering overwhelmingly in the many situations of terror-warfare are civilian populations. Today approximately 90 per cent of war-related casualties are civilians and the number of casualties who are women and children has escalated. Millions and millions of people have been forced to flee wars and war-relate circumstances.

InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council

In the mid 1980s the timber multinational, Georgia-Pacific, was in pursuit of logging coastal ancient redwoods in the Sinkyone area of northern California, and the California Department of Forestry (CDF) approved. In response, native people from the area, the International Indian Treaty Council, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) in Eureka, California, sued.

WAR AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Even in a region subject to guerrilla warfare, women may suffer more from the violence of their kin than they do from the violence of their kin than they do from the enemy. The 1970s were years when Gwembe District in the Southern Province of Zambia was under threat of landmines and commando action as the European dominated government of what was then called Rhodesia, and is now Zimbabwe, attempted to forestall attacks by "freedom fighters," stationed in Gwembe who crossed Lake Kariba and the international boundary of the Zambezi River to launch attacks on Rhodesian territory.

Forced Resettlements in Ecuador and Peru

In late January 1995, the Shuar and Aguaruna Indians along the border between Ecuador and Peru were forcibly relocated into refugees camps while Peruvian and Ecuadorian soldiers battled each other in hilly forests between the Cordillera del Condor and the Cenepa River.

Mother's Milk in War and Diaspora

Ten years after Samine Sophat arrived in the United States as a war refugee, her daughter planned to get married. Following the Cambodian custom, the groom offered a monetary gift that Mrs. Sophat could have retained as mother's milk money, in recognition of the work of bringing children to adulthood. As a widow and a remarried woman, Mrs. Sophat had struggled against great odds to ensure her children's survival in the 1970s war, starvation and flight to the United States. But she confided, "I couldn't bring myself to keep the money.

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