Women peace builders from two sides of Kashmir meet in Muzaffarabad

A delegation of women from Indian-held Kashmir is meeting in Pakistan-administered Kashmir for peace dialogues. The Dawn newspaper announced that a ten-member delegation of prominent women arrived in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Monday November 4 through a crossing point along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, where they were warmly greeted by their hosts.

The delegation is attending a two-day intra-Kashmir women’s dialogue, sponsored by the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) and arranged by the Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) Women for Peace Organization.

The AJK administration allowed fourteen members of AJKWPO of Pakistan-administered Kashmir to receive their Indian-held Kashmir guests at the crossing point instead of the bus terminal 800 metres before the bridge. The Kaman Bridge is 60 kilometres south of Muzaffarabad and is the crossing point between the Chakothi sector of AJK and the Uri sectors of Indian-held Kashmir. From the bridge, the guests were taken to the girls’ inter-college in Chakothi to a chorus of singing school children.

In addition, three Indian members of the New Delhi-based Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation (CDR) also attended the women’s dialogue conference. They arrived through the usual international border between India and Pakistan.

Hence 70 participants attended the conference, which officially commenced on November 6, to hear women’s narratives on Kashmir, their experiences in the conflict, and the role they can play in peace building. Women’s conferences for peace in Kashmir have occurred since the first intra-Kashmir meeting in 2007 in Srinagar, India-held Kashmir. The difference with this 2012 conference is the permission by India and Pakistan to permit participants to travel through the crossing point along the Line of Control, rather than the international border between the two countries.

http://dawn.com/2012/11/06/peace-delegation-from-indian-held-kashmir-arrives/

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