In The Hague where 100 years ago this week over 1,000 female peace activists gathered from around the world to call for an end to war. The extraordinary meeting, known as the International Congress of Women, took place as World War I raged across the globe, and marked the formation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. It was organized by Dutch suffragist Dr. Aletta Jacobs. The event took place in The Netherlands because of its neutral position during World War I. Two future Nobel Peace Prize winners took part in the U.S. delegation: Jane Addams, the co-founder of Hull House, and the sociologist Emily Greene Balch. “They saw, quite rightly, that the absence of women in making decisions in government meant there was greater likelihood of war. And they were right,” says Madeleine Rees, WILPF’s secretary general.
Madeleine Rees talking:
A hundred years ago, 1,200 women, in The Hague. It’s quite incredible, when you think that in those days there was no possibility of just SMSing each other or sending an email. It wouldn’t have happened, but for the suffrage movement, because you don’t just start a mass movement. You actually have to have an organizational structure to make that happen. That had started with the suffragette movement. Every single one of those women who went to The Hague was suffragettes.
From Britain to the United States, every single one of them were demanding the right to vote, because they saw, quite rightly, that the absence of women in making decisions in government meant that there was more—greater likelihood of war. And they were right. So they organized. They were in touch with each other. As you said, it was Aletta Jacobs who was the one who was the main organizer here in The Hague. She had a thousand women helping her to try to bring women from all over the world to protest war. And the Americans came by boat. Again, that was Jane Addams, who was the organizer, organizer of that. They got as far as Dover and had to stoped in England. They go as far as Dover, had to stop. Because of the militarization of the channel, there were activities going on, they couldn’t not cross. They had to wait four days there. A hundred and eighty women wanted to come from the United Kingdom to protest. They were stopped by the United Kingdom authorities, who prevented them traveling, because, goodness knows, it’s not good to have women protesting war when you have got a propaganda machine rolling out the glories of the conflict. Eventually, several of them were able to make it to The Hague. And—
120 British women were stopped and prevented from attending. So, eventually, people made it to The Hague, 1,300 of them. They had to organize originally at the zoo, because it was the only space available for them. It is not a zoo anymore. then had the congress. And at that congress, they made the demands, which were as relevant then as they are now.
So they wanted immediate cessation of hostilities. They wanted the neutral powers to engage with the belligerent powers to stop the conflict. They were actually bringing their demands at a time where over 100,000 men were, at the very days, being slaughtered at the Somme. So what they wanted was universal disarmament, a complete commitment to addressing root causes of conflict. They saw that the colonialism was one of those root conflicts, so they—root causes of conflict, so they demanded there be arbitration to understand the power dynamics in the decolonization process. And importantly—and I think, for us, particularly today—they wanted democratization of foreign policies. They wanted to make—they said that war was too profound an act to be left to those who had power and who would use it for wrong. So they wanted “we, the people” to be in charge of those foreign policies and making those decisions. And, of course, underpinning all of that was the demand for universal suffrage for women.
— source democracynow.org
Madeleine Rees, secretary general of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She is the former head of the Women’s Rights and Gender Unit for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.