Building Peace Through Great Strides
Image: Women Cross DMZ (2015)
Our crossing brought global attention to the ongoing Korean War and an outpouring of support from world leaders, including eight Nobel Peace laureates, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama. Leading women’s rights organizations supported us, including the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Global Fund for Women, AWID, MADRE, Urgent Action Fund and Women Peacemaker Program. Dozens of South Korean women parliamentarians, across political lines, issued a public statement endorsing the walk.
Since then, WCDMZ has continued to educate, advocate, and organize for an end to the Korean War. We have helped catalyze new collaborations such as the U.S.-based Korea Peace Network; have spoken to college audiences, community groups, and faith-based organizations; and helped mobilize a broad grassroots network of local, national and international peace organizations. We’ve also coordinated high-profile letter campaigns, strengthened relations with North Korean and South Korean women’s groups, and led an intervention of feminist peace activists in Vancouver to urge foreign ministers from 20 nations to prepare the table for peace talks. We helped bring together a historic meeting of women peacemakers from Northeast Asia in Beijing, China to discuss women’s leadership in building peace in Korea and the region. For seven consecutive years, we’ve held events at the UN Commission on the Status of Women to highlight the urgent need for women’s inclusion in the Korea peace process, as called for by the landmark UN Security Council resolution on women, peace, and security.
In March 2019, WCDMZ joined with the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Korean Women’s Movement for Peace to launch the global campaign Korea Peace Now! Women Mobilizing to End the War. We worked with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), providing valuable input on the first Congressional resolution to end the Korean War, which was supported by progressive members of Congress including Barbara Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and dozens of others, including the first Korean-American Democrat Andy Kim. The Korea Peace Now! campaign led a delegation of women lawmakers from South Korea to dialogue with members of Congress on how to advance the Korea peace process forward and include women. Our frontline and behind-the-scenes work is creating political space for peace with North Korea, as demonstrated by this video made by Sen. Bernie Sanders highlighting the work of our coalition.
In 2021 and 2022, Women Cross DMZ continued to advocate for peace in Korea through H.R.3446, the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act, which gained nearly 50 co-sponsors in the 117th U.S. Congress. Also in 2021, Korea Peace Now! released the groundbreaking report Path to Peace: The Case for a Peace Agreement to End the Korean War to counter hawkish voices and explain how a peace-first approach can resolve the security crisis on the Korean Peninsula. It also argues for the inclusion of women in the peace process.
At the core, our work isn’t just about ending the Korean War — which technically never ended — but about completely rethinking our approach to peace and security. And to do that, we must look at foreign policy through a gendered lens. That’s why, in 2020, Women Cross DMZ joined forces with Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and MADRE to launch the Feminist Peace Initiative, which envisions a movement-driven U.S. foreign policy that prioritizes interdependence, cooperation, and justice, centering the voices and experiences of those most impacted by U.S. wars and militarism.
References:
https://www.womencrossdmz.org/about-us/
https://actionnetwork.org/groups/women-cross-dmz
http://www.peacewomen.org/node/92296
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-did-women-cross-dmz-in-korea/
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/744971/pdf
