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Global Fund CEO Kavita Ramdas Reflects On The Recent Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai |
Dear Extended Global Fund Family:
The holiday of giving thanks was a blur for me as the city I grew up
in, Mumbai or then Bombay, withstood a series of violent attacks on its
people and being. The escalation of violence that we have witnessed
around the world, the failure of "the war on terror" to do anything
except exacerbate and further deepen hostilities and divisions, is all
too clear as the disease spreads like a virus around the world.
The holistic framework with which the Global Fund for Women has sought
to understand and engage with the world makes more and more sense to me
as things become more surreal - we cannot address militarism or
violence if we fail to address inequality or injustice in the social
and economic spheres. We cannot make our world saner by building
walls, buying more weapons, launching more missiles, creating ever more
terrifying ways to anihilate our planet and its people and life.
But how does love and peace prevail in a culture which glorifies and
justifies violence at every turn? What nuances of understanding do we
have to bring to bear on the complexities of human nature that express
themselves in such anger and fear? Do women's movements offer us a
different path - a way to challenge this status quo, or do we get
sucked into the same cycles of fear and violence and hierarchy? These
are the questions we will have to struggle with in the years ahead. I
give thanks for each of your contributions to this shared mission and
to the complexity of the work that we have chosen to make ours.
I read a beautiful piece on despair that was written by John Berger in
November 2001. It seemed a fitting way for me to rethink what is
happening in Mumbai, but also in Gaza, in Pakistan's villages and
Afghanistan provinces, and Colombia's small towns, and Rio's favelas,
and in Iraq, and in the DRC and Uganda and in Somalia and, and....
with much love to each of you always,
Kavita
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