This is to summarize my visit to Bangladesh from 3 to 10 December 2021. As soon as I got an invitation from the Embassy of Bangladesh in Jakarta to attend the World Peace Conference, I immediately called ANTAR to have a possible dialogue session in Bangladesh and visit organizations and communities, in particular women groups that are joining the micro finance program. I was also thinking to also visit some feminist organizations in Dhaka to get some update about the work surrounding peace, gender and development. But it was short notice because there was so much work to do, which made it possible to have many agenda. Bangladesh Institute of Islamic Thought (BIIT) was also proposed to organize the seminar surrounding the issue of gender, peace and development.
With the support from the government of Bangladesh, I extended my stay in Dhaka to explore the potential intervention to start conversation surrounding inclusive education, preventing violent extremism, and re-strategize the work of AMAN in Bangladesh, in particular to cover islamic education reform.
The World Peace Conference
The Ministry of Foreign Affair of the Republic of Bangladesh hosted World Peace Conference 2021, which was located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Around 300 participants were invited to join as speakers and discussants from the two days forum. There were four thematic sessions that cover issues like:
1. Peace, Justice and Rights (including women rights, children’s rights etc);
2. Peace through Sustainable Development and Social Wellbeing (including rights of
differently abled persons);
3. Peace through Inter-faith Dialogue, Culture and Heritage; and
4. Peace and Emerging Global Trends.
From two days sessions, speakers showing some concerns on the area of:
Firstly, the awareness among speakers to use intersectional perspectives to discuss peace. Peace will be achieved when violation human rights in the past such as genocide is addressed seriously by the United Nations and all state members, and bring the perpretator to the international court. Peace will present when minority groups from tribal, faiths, and gender expression are guaranteed their freedom of expression and beliefs. Peace will be attained when girls are enjoying their rights to education and pursue their personality development without fearing of being kidnapping, trafficked, or targeted of gender based violence and sexual violence. Peace will carry on when refugees like Rohingya are fulfilled their livelihood, security for the long run. Occupation is considered as the root of conflict, which is still difficult to address, when the super power is involved in the game.
Secondly, Our peace is fragile. the international mechanism is often hijected with the principle of respecting country sovereignty or non interference that bring ambiguity where in one side, we see more resolution released by the UN security council to give guidance for the state members, but on the other hand, no strong sanction applied to the state that violated the principles of agreement. Most states are still using "hard security" to attain peace, by increasing the military expenditure, using nuclear weapons, to defend for peace.
Thirdly, the global framework like SDGs is now commonly used as a strategy to address crucial issues of protection of human rights, access to justice for victims of human rights violation including gender based violence, and promoting peacebuilding. In particular addressing goal 5 (gender equality), goal 10 (equality) and goal 16 (peace and effective institution), agenda of peace and security.
Fourthly, small good practices are done in many countries to prove that resilience among people exists. Innovation and creation of the new strategy to teach the young generation about respecting diversity, embracing the multicultural perspective, model of reflective structured dialogue among women ulama (cleric).
Intervention in Bangladesh
#Regional Dialogue on PVE
It is not the first event initiated by AMAN at regional level. In collaboration with Southeast Asia Women Peacebuilders (SEAWP), where AMAN is co-founder of this network, we have done a series of webinars covering issues of women, peace and security in Southeast Asia in 2020-2021, under the support of Sasakawa Peace Foundation. You can check to the website of http://www.seawomenpeacebuilders.com
To start conversation on the issues of PVE in South Asia region, inclusive education seems the suitable topics for many muslim context. In collaboration with ANTAR, we co-hosted Bangladesh-Indonesia Dialogue with the theme Inclusive Education in Preventing Violent Extremism. The dialogue was meant to provide an exchange space for Indonesia and Bangladesh to share the current dynamics on violent extremism and its impact on women and youth. The dialogue was also intended to explore the good practices by national organizations to share their formula in engaging young people to increase their critical thinking and active engagement to promote peace and security.
The dialogue was conducted in a hybrid format, where selected people were invited to join an offline meeting hosted by ANTAR at their office in Dhaka. The rest participants were joining the discussion through an online zoom platform. I came to an offline meeting together with two other experts from Indonesia, who previously attended the World Peace Conference.
#Visit Women's Group in
Since I was in Bangladesh, my great interest was to meet with women groups at the grass root level, learning from them how the transformation happened in the level of individual, family, and society. ANTAR has been working with more than 20,000 women under micro finance projects, where empowerment is included into the process of strengthening the women. We traveled 4 hours to a village close to the India border. We met the groups of women's leaders coming from micro finance projects.
Raining caused cancellation to visit the field due to flooding that blocked the entrance of the village. I also had to cancel my visit to youth groups in the other village due to local elections that were prone to conflict. So, ANTAR decided to invite the groups of women to the ANTAR Nimsar Office, located at Nimsar Upazila(Police Station), Cumilla District. There were 32 women leaders who came to share their life changing experiences since joining the micro finance project. The women came from 10 villages such as Nimshar, Porihal Para, Mukam, Korpai, Durgapur, Changacha, Dubairchar, Monshason, Syedpur & Madhobpur.
With limitations on language, the ANTAR's staff translated my questions to understand what kind of changes that happened in their personal, relational and community. From the translation, I noticed that mostly women increased their confidence after joining the program. It is because they could open access to financing to help their husband and family to start their small business. The Woman felt that she began to be respected by husband because of the program. It is because financing for the poor is something that is difficult to get access from the bank. The existence of an organization like ANTAR, as a bridge to help the poor so they can get access to financing.
Though the story of change regarding how the relationship inside the family changed was not clearly elaborated, it was clear that the micro finance project was helpful to avoid the poor from the loan shark in the village.
#Seminar on Inclusive Development: Mainstreaming Gender and Promoting Peace
On the 8 December, in collaboration with Bangladesh Bangladesh Institute of Islamic Thought (BIIT) is a think tank registered, co hosted a seminar with the them “Inclusive Development: Mainstreaming Gender and Promoting Peace” to be held in BIIT's office at Uttara, Dhaka. The seminar was aimed to understand the concept of inclusive development, the practice of inclusive development in Bangladesh, and good practices that are done by organizations working on ending hunger , girls' security, and ending violence against women and SDGs.
I was invited to share the context of Indonesia dealing with SDGs and inclusive development. I presented the development of Indonesia after Reformasi 1998, including some reforms in the field of institutions, laws, gender equality and women empowerment, etc.
In particular highlighting the new development on area of gender equality and women empowerment, i also shared about the work of AMAN in building community resilience through engagement of inter faiths mothers under program called Women's School for Peace, and the approach on dialogue called reflective structured dialogue engagement of women ulama (cleric).
I visited the BIIT office and found there are a lot of journals publishing covering issues of Islamic Education Reform in Bangladesh, which I believe is very much relevant to our context.
Follow Up Planning
There are three possible follow up that we can do for Bangladesh, there are:
1. Strengthening the work on gender equality and women's empowerment working together with ANTAR through development of practical guidance for staffs to work on gender equality and women empowerment
2. Exchange knowledge among scholars through webinar series on Indonesia-Bangladesh Dialogue covering crucial issues related to women, peace, security and development. This will strengthen the diplomatic relation between government and people of both countries
3. Capacity building for strengthening women's leadership at regional level, by engaging leaders of micro-finance group to learn more about leadership and share experiences with women in Indonesia
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