As someone who personally experienced the brutal war that destroyed my homeland, I would like to share with you briefly the active role which women played in the Somali civil war. Somali women were not passive as is often portrayed – they participated the war in various ways, supporting their clans by going to war with them, cooking, cleaning, nursing, or even spying on “the enemy”. Some women who did not physically participate in the war, used their artistic expressions to support their clans, through war songs and poems to encourage and boost morale.

In the early days of the war, I remember one afternoon when armed men and women came to our home to loot whatever they could find. Men looted the cars and heavy objects, while the women walked away with jewellery and clothing. Some of the women searched for us and took some of the jewellery we were wearing. I am telling you this, to explain that women were actively involved in the war, participating for various reasons, whether by choice or by force. I believe we need to recognize the active agency of women in war-time, as well as their important potential contributions to peace-building and the rebuilding of a new, peaceful, Somalia.

I strongly believe that many Somalis, including all who are here today, want to see peace in Somalia. But peace means different things to different people. Some of us simply want to rebuild the political structure of Somalia, others focus upon the economic and security aspects, while others want to address social concerns as a way of finding durable solutions to Somalia’s problems. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “peace is not just the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.” Our proposals and strategies for helping to foster peace in Somalia should not only alleviate the immediate tensions or conflict between groups, but also address the root causes of those conflicts — including gender inequality – and aim to bring peace to a new Somalia