"I'm going to shoot you at three this afternoon." "Well, it's only ten in the morning. Goodbye."

When Gloria Cuartas was elected Mayor of the Colombian town of Apartado in 1994, no one was quite sure if the 33-year-old former theology student and disaster relief worker would survive her term. Almost all the mayors in the region had either been attacked or assassinated by urban guerrilla forces or paramilitary troops, and the town was virtually under siege. "As Mayor, I felt helpless because I could not protect the rights of my people", says Ms. Cuartas. "The insurgents were killing people, many of whom were my friends. The killings were not only undermining the legitimacy of the State, but were also creating mistrust within the community." Ms. Cuartas decided to take on the guerrillas and the paramilitary forces single-handedly by waging a personal war of peace and solidarity against them. She started a civic education campaign which encouraged the community to talk about and discuss the violence in their town. The campaign, whose slogan was "Let us discuss our differences with our tongues and not our guns", was aimed at breaking the culture of silence that had permeated the community.

"Fear (of the insurgents) had made people afraid to talk. They feared retribution", explains Gloria Cuartas. "I took the risk of creating a new mentality among the people of Apartado, especially among the women. I told the women that instead of keeping quiet or fleeing the region, they must return to the land and stand up to the insurgents through non-violent reactions and through solidarity."

Thanks to her efforts, the women of Apartado are struggling to create what she calls "corridors of peace" in the town by speaking up against the violence and refusing to be intimidated. Cuartas herself refuses to hire bodyguards or escorts despite repeated threats to her life. Once, someone called her at her office and declared that he was going to shoot her at 3 o'clock that afternoon. Cuartas' response? "Well, it's only 10 o'clock in the morning. Goodbye."

Today, Cuartas, whose term as mayor ended in December 1997, is a member and leading advocate of the Women for Peace Network, which was formed in Istanbul, Turkey, in June 1996 during the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) by women from six war-torn countries, namely, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Colombia, Palestine and Rwanda. The main objective of the Network, whose motto is "Peace for Homes, Homes for Peace", is to strengthen peace-building activities in order to protect and ensure the survival of homes and communities during and after conflict.

The Network believes that peace initiatives should not only come about as a response to disasters, but should also serve as preventative measures against future conflicts.

"We need to go beyond blood and death, and create women and men of conscience who are not proud with the weak and not weak with the strong", says the former Mayor. She believes that women have a key role to play in creating a culture of peace, because they suffer the burden of taking care of families affected by war or conflict. According to United Nations estimates, 70 to 80 per cent of refugees, returnees and internally displaced people are women and children. The burden of rebuilding war-torn societies often falls on women whose male relatives—husbands, fathers, brothers and sons—are either killed in the conflict or are absent fighting in wars.

However, because of discriminatory customary laws, many returnee women find that they have little or no access to land or property left behind by the male members of the family. Tradition and custom further marginalize them. This means that women have no access to land, which they can use to grow extra food to feed their families or whose produce they can sell for additional income. Moreover, they are rendered homeless as they have no claim on the property left behind by their husbands or fathers.

Points of Fact:

More than 22 million people worldwide fled war or persecution in their countries last year. Seventy to eighty per cent were women and children. The largest number of such refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons, over 8 million are in Africa, although Asia, with 7.9 million, is not far behind. There are 5.7 million in Europe. Afghanistan (2.6 million), Bosnia and Herzegovina (700,000) and Iraq (630,000) were countries where the greatest number of refugees came from; Iran, Germany and Pakistan house the largest numbers of refugees from abroad. More Facts More Facts More Facts Each link returns a unique fact.