To be here with all of you women and men participants in this conference is a joy and a pleasure. Egypt and Greece are two countries that share many things. Founders of the earliest civilizations in the Mediterranean, their quest for independence and peace, and a relationship which at times may have waned but has almost always been close.

In 1983 when I came to Greece the father of your foreign minister was Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Invited by Melina Mercuri who was then Minister of Culture, I enjoyed wonderful moments of art and theatre and thought. Her secretary spoke to me in Arabic and wherever I went people addressed me in my mother tongue. Poets and writers like Kafavis and Ritsos are part of our cultural heritage. Theodorakis came to attend the funeral of Nasser. In the village home of my husband there is a small piece of land on which stood the house of a man called Khoreimi who lived there about a century ago.

At the same time these are moments of anger and grief, moments of aggression and war where the cities of Iraq have once more been destroyed and women, men and children bombed out of their homes in the name of freedom and democracy. These are moments when the Palestinian and Arab peoples are threatened by a new colonization, by division, strife and war.

This is a moment when we are here to face the dangers and see what we can do to hold back and defeat the forces of militarization, colonialisation, and war.

Conference on Gender, Peace and Foreign Policy

Keynote Address by Nawal El Saadawi

Because women constitute half the human race, and half the population of every country in our world we cannot separate between problems of gender and other issues on our globe. Problems of gender are necessarily related to peace and war, to foreign and domestic policy, to international, regional and local affairs, to democracy and social justice in society and in the family. Because of gender there can be no separation between public and private life. These links are an important contribution which women have made to the development of our thought, to our notions of social justice, of peace and to the fullness and richness of human life.

Women have made it incumbent on those who shoulder responsibilities in the state, in political life or in civil society, not to ignore the links between the public and the private in our intellectual, cultural, religious, political and mediatic activities.

Throughout my life in Egypt, I have been a witness of the massacres, the sufferings, the oppression inflicted on our Arab peoples in the economic, political and cultural domains of society.

The first victims have always been poor women and children. They are the weakest, the most defenseless sectors of society. They are the first victims of military power and aggression that dominates over domestic and international affairs in our post-modern world still governed as it is by class patriarchal relations. It continues to be governed by the laws of the jungle, by brute technological, military, and economic force rather than by the principles of freedom, justice and peace.

During the past years many women and children have lost their lies, have died or lived a living death under the terror imposed by a military industrial machine in the United States of America or other neo-colonial countries, or through the terror imposed by religious fundamentalist movements promoted by reactionary conservative wings of the capitalist class who share power in the state and sometimes rule.

The political forces dominating the world today belong to two main tendencies:

1. A conservative neo-liberal capitalist wing represented by the United States Administration presided over by George W. Bush. This wing has close relationships with a fundamentalist Judeo-Christian alliance in the United States composed of various religious groupings such as the Christian Coalition, Zionist organizations, etc. At various stages this neo-liberal wing has allied itself to Islamic fundamentalist movements in the Arab region, Asia and Africa especially before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
2. Political fundamentalist tendencies in various parts of the world including the United States, Israel, Arab countries, West Asia, Asia, and Africa.

Despite the present struggle between the conservative neo-liberal wing of capitalism in the United States and political fundamentalist Islam, these two currents have been allied for many years in the struggle against socialism, democracy and peoples movements against neo-liberal capitalist globalization and war. The conflict which broke out between them after the events of 11 September 2001, instead of weakening them, is serving to give both of them a new lease of life.

Ever since the beginning of slavery in history, religion has been used by ruling classes in international and domestic affairs to cover up the economic interests of a minority of exploiters, as well as a means to divide the forces of peoples struggling for peace and human rights.

Women in particular suffer in different forms and to different degrees at the hands of both the capitalist neo-liberal forces and the political religious fundamentalist forces. The use of religion in politics always leads to the targeting of women, for all religions are highly patriarchal and consider women inferior human beings-especially when interpreted or used by ruling minorities of men.

Despite the hundreds of demonstrations against the war which millions of men and women participated in, and despite a growing organized resistance against neo-liberal capitalist globalization and the policies of domination followed by the United States of America, the local and international democratic struggle of peoples has not yet been able to constitute a force powerful enough and independent enough to cleave a way for itself between these two opposing yet complementary poles.

The peoples movement of resistance against the war in Iraq was impressive. Nevertheless, it was unable to stop the war. The United States and the United Kingdom have now occupied Iraq and despite declarations to the contrary their armies will remain to exercise pressure on neighboring countries in this strategic area, to serve as a launching pad for future wars and to ensure that oil flows into the pipelines of their multinational corporations which are already vying for the lucrative business of "rebuilding Iraq."

Everyday we are witnesses of new massacres in Palestine, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Everyday the political military machine in the United States threatens to strike at Syria and Iran. An international force capable of stopping George Bush does not exist. Everyday he and the ultraconservative hawks in his government are becoming more and more dangerous to the peace and security of the world. The United Nations Organization and its Security Council have been unable to stand in the way of the aggressive military and economic policies that they are pursuing regardless of world opinion.

Surrounded by this atmosphere of terror and war, people are unable to pursue their daily struggle for economic and social rights; are unable to fight back against increasing unemployment and poverty, against the rapid deterioration in health services, social security, education and in the environment. Women are increasingly exposed to patriarchal oppression; to violence; to rape; to loss of their rights in the family; to segregation, discrimination, veiling, and female genital mutilation. When the flames of war are ignited people rush to extinguish them, leaving all else aside. When cities and homes are destroyed, people have to rebuild them before they can settle down. When loved ones are wounded or die, people rush to their aid instead of organizing to fight for their rights. The first to suffer, to pay the price, to become even poorer are women.

In addition, terror and war permit governments to attack the civil and democratic rights of people, to spread fear, to use force, to tyrannize. In the United States, Bush has enacted what the racist Attorney General William Ashcroft has called the Patriot Law which has deprived citizens of important freedoms and guarantees. In Egypt we live under martial law.

Poor women who have no economic means to care for themselves or their families join the army to earn a wage. In the United States 40,000 women have enlisted, many of them Afro-Americans or emigrants. Soldiers are taught to rape "enemy women" and women's bodies are violated as part of the structure of war. It is only recently that the raping of women during war became a war crime, but how often are the criminals brought to justice?

The multinational corporations which rule over the world have created international economic organizations to further their interests. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organizations are their instruments. They work for the big capitalist countries and marginalize small countries like Egypt and Greece.

These multinational corporations rule the world through their unlimited economic power. Their capital moves freely in the global market, engages in speculation, in currency operations, in laundering the money of international drug cartels or prostitution networks, engages in selling and buying children, in the arms trade, in tax evasion, hides in the tax havens created by so-called free trade areas, transfers its investments from countries where workers strike for their rights. Nobody controls them, or regulates their activities. They have set up their international economic organizations but no international political institutions have been established to regulate and control their activities.

In all these organizations, real power resides with the two hundred biggest multinational corporations and with the 435 richest men who control and preside over them. In Europe women are asking where real economic and political power will reside in the European Union. With the bigger states, like Germany and France? With their multinationals? With their men? How can the millions of women make their voice heard in this supranational body, play an effective role today and in the future to democratize its functioning.

Today this question of international political power has become more urgent than ever before, after the repeated failure of the United Nations Organization to preserve peace and fulfill its role in the defense of sovereign and human rights. Smaller and weaker nations are no longer able to defend themselves. On the contrary, their governments, bereft of control over their resources, are becoming police states. Their role is to defend the interests of the multinational corporations and the local intermediaries who work for them, to modernize their prisons, their security forces, their arms, their repressive laws in the face of a growing resistance from women and men made desperate by the continued marginalisation of their lives and their role, by the vision of a time when they will not be able even to find food.

We must become able to stand up against the forces of economic genocide and war. The people of Palestine are being massacred every day, are being forced out of their land by an Israeli army which possess the most sophisticated technology of was including 250 nuclear heads. Iraq, after twelve years of economic sanctions and years of inspection, was accused of possessing arms of mass destruction. Its cities have been destroyed by tens of thousands of bombs and missiles, its land occupied by invading armies, but no weapons of mass destruction were found.

The Bush administration should be tried and condemned for its war crimes. The invading armies should be made to withdraw. The oil of Iraq belongs to its people. The thirty billion dollars of money accumulated in the United Nations from the "food for oil" program should be restored to the suffering women and men and children of Iraq. Millions have already died; millions are sick and deprived. What kind of a world is this where the innocent are killed and the criminals go free?

Women everywhere are struggling for their rights. Women are organizing, marching down the streets, fighting for justice and for peace.

Let us hope that in the European Union they will occupy their rightful place.

The European Union has concluded mutual participatory trade agreements with Arab countries like Tunis and Egypt. Tariffs will be lifted and goods will flow into our countries to satisfy the needs of the more affluent, to extend the free market. What remains of our national industry and agriculture will suffer from competition by the powerful. Already 20% of the active labor force is unemployed. Two and a half million educated youth are without jobs and more than half of them are women. Five million women work in an informal sector, in small trade or in small industries. Their average wage is 100 to 120 pounds per month, the equivalent of 20 to 30 Euros.

So the question which arises is: Will the European Union be a source of development, of progress for us, or an instrument for accelerated exploitation of the service of a powerful few?

Nawal El Saadawi