Rita Manchanda  Expert Spotlight
The Many Roles of a Peace Builder
Whether as a journalist witnessing the violence of the Kashmir insurgency, a program executive coordinating projects on women, media, and conflict, or a founder and committee member of the Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, Rita Manchanda demonstrates that "without a participatory democracy, one cannot have an enduring and sustainable peace." She is an exemplary woman peace builder whose innate courage and determination has brought together hundreds of people from both sides of the India/Pakistan conflict to demystify "hate politics" and promote a vision of lasting peace. Rita Manchanda is the India/Pakistan Local Partner for Women Waging Peace and has been a member since its launch in December 1999.
Working within this tempest of violence and war, Rita Manchanda challenges years of institutional partition by promoting peace-building activities across conflict borders and advocating for women's full participation in a democratic peace process.
As a journalist and human rights activist, Ms. Manchanda witnessed the surge of fundamentalist politics and routine riots between Hindus and Muslims that culminated in the violence of the Kashmir insurgency and the Kargil conflict. Through numerous print and public forums, Rita Manchanda broke the silence. She confronted the anti-nationalist tension by asking the difficult—but necessary—questions concerning the denial of democratic rights and the systematic abuse of human rights. These inquiries escalated into a small, but visible political movement when, in 1994, Ms. Manchanda and a group of Indian and Pakistani activists founded the Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, asserting the notion of security and peace from the grassroots people's perspective.
Ms. Manchanda is currently the executive director of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), which was established in 1990 as a regional public forum for the promotion of respect for universal values of human rights, the interdependence of rights and the indivisibility of rights. They believe that peace is not simply the absence of war or the management of crisis, but fundamental to realizing peoples' security of food, shelter, health, and livelihood in a non-hegemonic democratic regional order.
In July 2001, Ms. Manchanda and SAFHR held the Strengthening Women Building Peace conference to discuss the role of gender in conflict transformation. Over 30 women peace builders from South Asia gathered in Kathmandu, Nepal, to participate in discussions on a variety of topics; including women's participation in democratic peace processes, reconstruction and rehabilitation activities, heightening the profile of women's current role in peace activism, and empowering and safeguarding the progressive gains in gender relations arising from situations of conflict.
A critical component of the four-day conference was the introduction of Ms. Manchanda's innovative concept of "mapping from the margins." In these sessions, conference participants mapped out the conflicts in South Asia from a gender perspective, creating visual representations that reflected their own experience. Ms. Manchanda describes the maps as highly personal and a vehicle for challenging state-centric representations of conflict and borders. She sees the mapping process as a catalyst for discussion and developing new understanding of conflicts. "This is the newest and most exciting element of what I've been doing," Ms. Manchanda said. "Initially there is some resistance to the idea of 'mapping,' but when they start doing it, their energy flows. First, it's pain and then it's creative vision, a vision of the future. Each map is very different and is a new means [for the mapmaker] to understanding her own conflict. It is also a means of translating the reality of her own conflict for someone else. The 'mapping' process at this conference was done by women on-site, working together in groups. It worked for them, so I think they'll take the concept back with them and use it in workshops in their own communities." (07.2006)  |