ambassador hunt, and also i just wanted to recognize regina moore who won the u.n. correspondents association's elizabeth nufer award, the gold medal for a wonderful article she did for "the monitor" in-depth article on peace building, and so i know you knew elizabeth. >> yes. >> and gina is very much in elizabeth's shoes, that kind of a reporter. >> thank you. thank you, and gina welcome, welcome. john, will you turn the mike toward your -- yes, toward you. >> sure, sorry. >> there we go. >> i w57anted to pick up on masarat's point of this idea that there is so much effort that goes into peace making and as rebecca said, we've got to, you've got to make peace and then you've got to keep peace and then you've got to build peace, but it doesn't take much to have that cycle of violence return, right?

something can break it very quickly. and you've identified radicalization and the attempt to deradicalize young people. i wonder if maybe the general could tell us about this, too. is there anything that you've ever hit upon that helps to deglamorize war in the minds of especially young men? the because we know that's something that they're attracted to. have you had any thoughts about that? >> let's just open that up to anybody. anyone who would like to address that. right. >> i need some clarification for what you've been asking. >> it seems to me the whole idea of peace building is a rather -- it's complex. it's slow. you described a kind of a knitting together of societies.

but there is an attraction it does seem, especially among young men, to violence and war, so it doesn't take much attraction to simply ruin all of the work that is being done very slowly to build peace, and i just wonder if the general could address this. in watching people come through a penal system, for instance, is there anything that happens in which you can see their thought changing, so that they actually begin to support the idea of building society rather than taking up a gun and doing the glamorous or the romantic thing in their minds? >> i think it begins and ends in education. that's the point. if we have failed to that point and brought it to that situation, when they are in facilities or in community treatment, there is need to try and find alternatives. even you know, in prison, in the

juvenile prisons -- prison, only one in israel, you give them alternatives like even playing soccer or doing a lot of activities that will enable them first to be able to take all their aggression and frustration and then to give them some new skills and abilities. how to deal with tension. how to work, to channelize your anger to different way of, like art, like reading, like theater, everything that will be a replacement for that need to come -- sometimes you, they just want to be shown, to be influential. you can you can try to channelize it to a positive way.

sometimes you -- it goes, it wins, it succeeds. sometimes not, but never give up. >> i think in addition to that, i'd like to refer to the situation of south sudan, for example. i think violence is culture, as well as peace is also culture, so for example, south sudan, you are very much concerned about including it in the curriculum -- >> education. >> yes, for students. >> education again. it's education. >> maybe i'll continue from there, it depends on the objective environment in every country. there are countries where people suffer from injustices, and therefore, they will tell you, have been asking, like in south sudan, we wanted our independence, and it was not there, and we were subjected to

oppressive regimes and sharia islamic laws and all this. there was no way for people to pick up arms and say if it doesn't work with the dialogue we are going to tell you we are also strong, and that's why i'm saying it was with a cost, but again, violence usually is not good. that's why we hurried to say tell them you have oppressed me too much but i'm not for war. i want to move into peacetime, but again when it comes to the youngsters, i think that's where your question is, you mean people need democracies. if i could use that word in the general term. you need to be given your general space. you need your rights. if you are robbed of them then you open a space for people to say i have an opportunity now to go and fight. she mentioned the issue of peace education. if i go back a little bit, if you allow me on the culture in

south sudan, for example. we have our cultural way of peacemaking and peacekeeping. but because we were subjected to defending ourselves, then you find the youngsters going into the culture of violence, of being angry, of reacting. now what we are doing with the peace building is to ensure that they are educated more. the peace culture is there and con sal dated in such a way that their mind thinks of peace, of stability, of development, more than resorting to war. and it works for me a lot now in the ministry of general education that we want to include that in the curriculum. so that peace education is part of the curriculum. so that we move out of this thinking about joining those who want to rebel but those who are working for peace. so it takes a lot. debris with my colleagues, peace

education, keep on working on it, consolidating, building it, making it strong. let them sing it. let them think about it and let them follow the nonviolent approach. we need that for the generation to come. >> i'm just struck, as you all pass this conversation down the road and here we have a spectacular woman leader from sudan and then from south sudan. and you all were at war, your countries were at war for so many decades. so many deaths and then came back to this peace agreement with the referendum six years later and then a secession. the struggle between these two peoples and here you are. you're like sisters and i want to personally applaud you and say that the strength of your coalition is an example for the whole world. [ applause ]

yes, we have a question here and a question there, yes, and please identify yourself. >> sure, my name is arya, i'm a student at the mpa second two-year program here at harvard kennedy school. i just wanted to thank everybody for sharing a glimpse of your amazing experiences. it's inspirational. my question is for miss ami amir hamidi from afghanistan. you told us the experience of being at the jirga and the rockets hitting. i was wondering how -- as an afghan woman, i'm concerned about how the peace process is going to affect my fate and the fate of my daughter if i have any in the future because something that i'm seeing is that the peace process may involve a couple of compromises. one of which might be with regards to women's issues and women's rights in afghanistan. we hear again and again yes, the

constitution would be followed. but with so much uncertainty with regards to the peace deal and how it's being taken care of and the afghan government is not even in the picture and how you as a woman who has been in the middle of all of this with leading a network of women with 80 women organizations and 5,000 personnel across the country, what is your understanding and analysis of this peace deal and how hopeful i should be as a woman. >> thank you very much. very interesting question. at the same time very difficult. very technical. very challenging. yes, thank you. i was looking for the word. well, the peace process, yes, has started. and the peace process is something that has come based on

the recommendation of we, we got together with the jirga and we recommended that we wanted to go for a peace process, and then we sat on a royal jirga november 2011. again, we say how the peace process should go. yes, there is a change in the policy of our government. every day something is happening, but i don't think afghan women rights to be sacrificed, our achievements will be sacrificed, because we are not the women of 2001. this is what i have been saying in the conference. which just took place on 5th december 2011. >> and you all wore green scarves. >> absolutely. we had our green scarves and we were actually meeting a number of policymakers, foreign ministers, delegations, telling them that we want to be part of the development of our country.

we want to see a real transition in afghanistan where we afghans take the lead. we will be making mistakes for sure, but we will learn from our mistakes. so where i see the afghan woman now, and where i have been seeing them in 2001, i am just telling you, don't worry about your right that will be negotiation, because we will not let that happen. [ applause ] >> i have to add, we had 11 women leaders from afghanistan who were brought here, michikovic was involved with pulling this all together and michelle barsa who is a kennedy school grad and we put together 20 meetings in washington and they were featured on the news

hour, et cetera, at the pentagon, white house, et cetera. it was striking to me when one of the women said, look. she was being asked i think it was in congress by a senator, asked what are you going to do? you can't have the taliban at these talks. >> she said, look, these are our family. if my arm is hurting me, if my arm is wounded, if my arm is diseased, i don't cut off my arm. she said put them at the table, put us at the table, and in three days, there will be a difference. and you know, that's something that we have a very hard time understanding and imagining. please, sir. >> thank you. my name is sheikh mohammed delal, i'm from bangladesh attending this media career program. as you said many things changed. one of the things that happened to me coming to this school i started asking all kinds of

difficult questions, so i think, i seek your advice indulgence, my question if you find it a little bit awkward. the term i think the freedom fighter, i have, i don't know the last time when i heard it. the first time i think i heard it and you used this term for the first time today, after a long many years. when we were growing up in the '70s and it was school time, this is the term all around. so all of a sudden i came to see that term hardly around us, so i would like to see why the evolution of this term freedom fighter, how it's transformed

and what made some freedom fighter convert into revolutionary or mercenaries and why is murdering ministers as a freedom fighter, why a colleague of the taliban or hamas in palestine are not? >> let me see, let me make sure i understand your question. i'll restate it very differently. how do you use a term like freedom fighter, which is so positive, in one situation, and then you talk about other groups as terrorists. >> yes. >> is that in short? >> well, my understanding is i call someone freedom fighter who is fighting for something which is taken away or which he or she thinks that wrongly she's not allowed to enjoy.

and by that definition, i tend to believe that most of the terrorists who are now being branded as that they also have a cause that they're fighting for. >> yes. >> but we don't call them freedom fighters. >> yes. >> so i would like to see what is the difference between this freedom fighter. what is the bottom line that we'll call them freedom fighter and we'll not call them freedom fighters. >> yes, thank you. thank you for asking that. i am going to see what comments you all have, because you're living in the situation. i can answer in terms of in my own mind, but, please. yes, please. >> okay. you are rightly saying, when you say freedom fighter, it's positive. it means somebody is fighting, is expressing, is demanding their rights, because they have robbed of their rights.

that's also how i understand it. and that's why i use it very proudly, because i don't want to go into details, but with the situation of south sudan, as i said earlier, it was clear, the injustices were very clear for south sudanese. the laws were enforced on us. we were never given time to develop ourselves and we are starting it now. that's why today when we talk about reconstruction and rebuilding, we say there is nothing to reconstruct. there is nothing to rebuild. we are starting fresh. all that was happening was our resources were being robbed, were being siphoned. even our oil which was discovered in south sudan was being taken through a pipe to be taken to a refinery outside there. so we're not given an opportunity to exercise even our political rights, so that's why

we call ourselves freedom fighters. that was what i would say fighting for a cause, but you are not fighting for the sake of fighting and killing somebody else. you are defending yourself. somebody who has come to rob you of your right and you are saying no, i will not allow you, and it is a human right. so these are the freedom fighters, and maybe just again to confirm is that if i were talking like ten years ago, you would have said, you are just like any other terrorist. you are just trying to kill others. you have no cause. but today we have accepted to sit at the negotiating table, discuss the issues and we sat and sat and sat for years until we managed to reach the process of elections and referendum and independence and the new country has been declared, we said, fine. we don't want to fight anybody else. so that's what it means to be a freedom fighter.

there are other groups that would want to fight for the sake of imposing. it's just the other side of the coin. if somebody -- it's the other side of the coin. for me it was fighting for my rights. on the other side, somebody was bombarding our villages, were coming to take our rights and these are the people who want to encroach on your right. so they are the ones who want to fight. so i think the difference then is that someone wants to terrorize, someone wants to impose their own opinion. someone wants to rob others. these are the ones who are not freedom fighters, because if you ask them, what is it? why do you want to abduct children, if i go back to what she was saying? these young people who are supposed to go to school. they are supposed to grow. it is their right. they go and they are inducted or

contradicted into a movement or an activity which at the end of the day the children or young people are asked to go and commit suicide -- throw bombs, suicidal attacks. this to me is negative. so it has to be very clear, even for us as freedom fighters, we wouldn't want to be mixed with the terrorists and people who just want to fight, so there is a positive aspect of it, but it must be short term, and then you must be thinking towards a solution, and i think we tried our very best to work. today there is a political will, and that's why i think having it positive is very, very important and it must end with education, with transformation, with peace building, with development. >> and i agree with everything you said, and i can also very much i think sympathize if your point of view in that question

because clearly there are very few people who say, "and i'm a terrorist," you know. right? they they feel they are also fighting for a just cause and others are calling them terrorists. terrorist and after the fact those terrorists become freedom fighters or the freedom fighters become terrorists in the eyes of other people. i will tell you that it is striking to me that the name of elizabeth newfor was called this evening, because elizabeth worked in rwanda and worked in bosnia, she died in iraq. i think she would be right with me saying that intervention should have happened much, much sooner and what do we mean by intervention? we mean bombs and we mean bullets.

if you stand back and i was advocating for that as ambassador. i was there '93 to '97 advocating as hard as i could inside the white house for military intervention. what does that make me? when you get to a point where the least violent option is military intervention, what a failure. what a failure. we should never be proud of that moment when that is the only option. we could have somehow done something, even putting our lives on the line in the hundreds of thousands if that's what it took. if that's what it would have taken to earlier on have stopped the political figures with their

power grabs. my sympathies are with you as you ask that question and i'm very, very glad that you asked it. thank you. we probably can do one more. i'm getting a sign from the back and you were first. i believe. was she first or were you first? who was first? you were first. okay. sorry. you snooze, you lose. >> i want to thank you all so much for sharing with us. as a journalist, i have been a guest in many communities in many countries that contend with conflict and over time, you flirt a lot with cynicism and i didn't hear a note of that tonight which reminds me that cynicism is a luxury for people who think about conflict and not people who are forced into living with it. that for me was very powerful, so thank you. i was also really struck by what you said, rebecca, that after the war, you need to give the eggs back to the villages to

sort of paraphrase this thing that you said much more lovely than i did, and i was struck because i have interviewed so many freedom fighters, whatever we call them now. once they have ascended to power or ascended to power and then lost power, and they talk about the right to power that they earned through fighting, and you talk about the responsibility that fighting gives you to the people who helped you get there. i wonder if your male freedom fighting colleagues share this perspective and what it looks like in that way from other countries and how we can get more people thinking like you after the fact. >> yes, yes, it's your question. you said something really extraordinary. they gave us the eggs and the chickens, we are going to give them back peace and stability. is that the general feeling shared, do you think? let me put it this way. is it as easy for men to get to

that point as you described? as you think it is for women? >> i'm sure it's not easy, but again, with respect to south sudan, again, just going back to say that i wish we were not pushed into war and into fighting. but -- and then again, i don't want to think that women are the angels and men are the devils, no. if you fight for something, you must carry it forward. you agree with me, we go back and take responsibility. today there is a government in south sudan and one of the things, examples i would give as how i think our government is considered even if they are males is that for instance, men advocated for affirmative action

for women. if our men were really completely thinking otherwise, they wouldn't have allowed that space for us today. that we manage to enshrine affirmative action in the constitution and when it comes to filling the seats, there was a time we unseated the men who took our seats and who our government never said no, you can't do that. it was our right to do that. so i believe they share with us the feeling that it is our right and we have to take our right. it's the same thing when we talk about having women in the cabinet, for instance, or in the legislature. i remember when we were appointed by decree in august. when we were swearing in the president saying i know you women are looking at me during this swearing-in ceremony. i am talking about the political will so we don't think all men don't have a heart.

he said for you, deputy minister, there are ten of you which is more than 25%. i think that was very considerate. he said during this swearing-in ceremony, i'm happy that i managed to give you your right. you fought for it and it's your right. for the full ministers, not the deputy but full ministers, there are five of them. i know you have a bone to pick with me. i think that was very considerate of him thinking of that. also the area of development in general i think with our government now, development is key, education is key, agriculture is key. but i think the most important thing i want to bring in so that again, i come back to the perspective of women and what was said earlier is that we have that soft skills.

our antennas are always picking areas that are not seen by men sometimes so we keep vigilant, we talk, when things are not happening, we talk about them openly so we continue to sensitize. that's why in our movement and our coalitions as women, we don't leave men out. if they don't have that soft -- soft what? soft skills, soft skills, we make sure that they are there, that we are reminding them, that we need to give the chickens and the eggs back to the community. they know that. it's part of the policies in the government. i know it's happening but again, that reminder, we have to keep it going. we have to make sure that the construction, the building, the sensitization is going on because it's for the good. you cannot rule or govern people without giving them their rights, without giving them this ability they need and it's happening with our government.

i'm happy with it but again, we have to keep vigilant, we have to keep reminders and we have to be persistent and we have to keep on giving people back their rights. >> and the general -- >> short comment, maybe from social point of view. the first population to be -- their attacks and their violence are children, women and elders. so women have that awareness in a natural way because they can play both roles and our role as women is strong women, is women who have made it, is to increase awareness among our male colleagues because then the next time they will be able to see it as fast as we might do it. >> so this has been fabulous, as always, and rebecca, you ended your time in our class because i

was teaching, am teaching inclusive security here at the school, you ended your time in our class in an extraordinary way. would you end this forum? i want you to do what you did. >> is everybody ready? >> everybody is ready. okay. do it. do it. do it. okay. >> okay. i think we need to celebrate the women who won the nobel prize. the problem with me is that i don't celebrate when i'm sitting. i like to stand, i like to move. it's the same way i celebrated everything and i celebrate the women. for you in the balcony up there, are we together? >> yes! >> do you have the energy? remember, you are dealing with a freedom fighter.