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Session B.2: Friday, 4:00pm-5:15pm

Panel Title: Womens' Peace Missions

'Feminist Peace Missions or Women's "Peace" Missions?'
Catia C Confortini (Wellesley College)

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has a long history of sponsoring peace and ‘fact-finding’ missions. Since their first assembly at The Hague, WILPF has often delegated members to travel to conflict areas to assess the local situation and the possibilities for peace. In this panel we are going to revisit and compare three of these missions: Jane Addam’s mission to belligerent European countries in 1915; Emily Greene Balch’s to US-occupied Haiti in 1926; and Edith Ballantyne and Libby Frank’s to Israel/Palestine in 1974. In describing these missions we are guided by two questions: to what extent were these women inspired by feminist principles? What makes a mission ‘feminist’ and what difference does feminism make? We are going to bring the legacy of these missions to bear to the present, by drawing lessons for the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in current UN peacekeeping operations.