Women’s International Move For Peace

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30143, 29 May 1963, Page 2

Women’s International Move For Peace

The first venture towards International Co-operation Year, “mothered” by the Voice of Women of Canada and the United States and supported unanimously by the United Nations late last year, is an international travel mission which will begin next month.

Nearly 30 members of V.O.W. will visit London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo, Leningrad, Moscow, Warsaw, East and West Berlin, Prague, and Munich, to discuss with the women there proposals for the International Co-operation Year’s programme.

The itinerary was a significant one; it would enable women of the East and West to reach out to each other across the boundaries of ideology in an effort of understanding, said Miss Barbara Dodds (Dunedin) in Christchurch recently. Miss Dodds was appointed a “roving ambassador” for the Voice of Women when in Canada last year.

She attended the V.O.W. Conference at St. Donat, Quebec, Last September when the blueprints for International Co-operation Year were evolved. More than 60 women from 17 countries then had four days' intensive discussion. After this session, they spent two days in open conference at the Catholic University of Montreal. It was the first international conference for peace initiated by women of the Western world. It was non-political. The conference was opened by the American anthropologist, Dr. Margaret Mead.

Women from West Germany sat opposite women from Russia and, at first, they were "at each other all the time,” Miss Dodds told a meeting of Women for Peace in Christchurch recently.

"At the end of the conference they were embracing each other, saying: "This

is it; this is the way to understanding’,” she said. Members of the conference were of different background, philosophies and experience, Miss Dodds told the meeting. They assembled as women who, because of their natural concern for children and their common interests in the world family, were particularly fitted to help create a world-wide climate of opinion and trust, without which the most carefully negotiated agreement was no more than a piece of paper They agreed that all nuclear tests by any nation should cease immediately, after which a test-ban agreement should be made on the basis of the proposals of the eight non-aligned countries at the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1962. Outlaw Destruction All other means od mass destruction biological chemical and by radiation—must be outlawed and eliminated. they agreed. They contended that, dur-

tag 1963, governments should take a sufficiently big first step in the direction of general and complete disarmament to eliminate the risk of surprise ait tack and accidental war. The conference suggested that governments should

then use this “breathing space” to engage in serious economic pfenning for prosperous peace-time economies, in line with the United Nations’ report on the econ-

omit and social consequences of dtaurmament. Any final disarmament agreement which did not include the People's Republic of China would be unrealistic, a report from the conference said. Members demanded that this country be given its place in the United Nations and its specialised agencies. Some proposals made at the conference were: An international press bureau, which would assemble, verify and distribute news and information durtag International Co-operation Year. A communications satellite to be used jointly by the major Powers to strengthen peaceful relations during the period. A film entitled “The International World of Women” to be made for International Co-operation Year. Programme suggestions for the year included: A world family jamboree in 1965.

Residential exchanges of children for one year. Association of cities, for exchanges of correspondence, official and private visits, cultural interests and the publication of directories of similar interest groups. The founding of international universities for traintag men and women for world leadership and responsibility. A tentative date for International Co-operation Year is 1965. The original proposal for an Intemationai Co-opera-tion Year was presented to tihe United Nations by Afghanistan, India, Ghana and Nepal.