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Mary Beth Levan: 'It didn't shock me'


Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 13/00) - Mary Beth Levan pulls out a blown-up colour photograph and lays it on the table. A group of women. One with short blond hair, one wearing a suit, one smiling.


Mary Beth Levan


They are 17 doctors, engineers, lawyers, professionals, staring into the camera. It could be a anywhere but it is Kosovo and behind every face there is a story about war.

Not the war on TV but a war only women know.

"It didn't shock me, it wasn't any different for me than working in remote Arctic communities," said Levan when asked about the impact of working with women traumatized by war.

"Women in the North have experienced the same things, the same trauma," said Levan.

Levan was asked to go to Kosovo with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)-- a United Nations sponsored group -- to help lay the foundation for democracy by educating Kosovar women in the art of politics.

Aside from the blown out villages and debris strewn fields, Levan said she wasn't shocked by the stories of torture, rape and murder the women told. They were stories she'd heard before.

For the past 18 years Levan has been working with victimized women in the North.

"The only difference there is that the UN and the global community have acknowledged what these women went through," said Levan."

It's not acknowledged here."

It's true everyone suffers in war but women's stories are rarely heard. A man being beaten and a woman being raped come across in the same sound-bites, but they are worlds apart.

"In this culture women are responsible for families. If women suffer, children suffer," Levan said.

Levan's OSCE team member was Audrey McLaughlin, former leader of the federal NDP.

According to McLaughlin, in Albanian Islamic culture if a woman is made a widow the husband's family can gain custody of her children and not be obligated to take care of her.

McLaughlin also said women are sometimes impregnated by rapists and their children face a future of rejection because of how they came to be.

"A man can get beaten for hours and survive and it's seen as a badge of courage," said Levan.

"In this culture women are expected to be chaste for marriage, if they're raped or sexually assaulted they're damaged goods."

Despite the insane violence that women face in war-zones, McLaughlin said that women often lead movements of liberation.

"In Asia, in Latin America women are important to liberation movements," said McLaughlin.

"Unfortunately after liberation women are relegated to traditional roles," she said.

In Kosovo the UN is trying to change that. As part of democratic reform, 30 per cent of a party's electorial slate for the upcoming municipal elections have to be women.

Whether the quota will inject more women into the political structure is uncertain. Levan and McLaughlin were there to give it a chance.

"Most political parties run top down with men at the top," said Levan. "But it's a start."

Levan said the trip left her with renewed resolve to continue the struggle to end violence against women, to end violence.

"Not one woman was self-interested," said Levan.

"They really wanted to build a better place."

Levan said that her work with women in Kosovo is an example of what happens when the world acknowledges the repressive situation of women. It was only in 1995 that rape was first considered a war crime.

"Human beings are tremendously resilient," said Levan, "but we still have a long way to go."

And Levan takes the photograph off the table and slips it into her carrying case along with maps and articles from Kosovo.