European Gathering - Natasha Dokovska

The involvement of women with peace has long hostory. They are always mentioned as  peaceful and are initiators on finding solution. One explanation of the relationship between women and peace is that women are naturally more peaceful. In contrast, men are portrayed as makers of war and perpetrators of violence.
The question is what the women can do in the world of men where the armament, militarisation and violence is part of their mentality?
The figure which we have shown us some other picture, picture of militarized world in which the women MUST do lot of things to change the world.
The current global military expenditure is 1.2 trillion US dollars - but we cannot afford every day to be pay day for military corporations. Lot of money is used for the war in  Two weeks spending in Iraq is the equivalent of what the OECD countries allocated to gender empowerment projects for the last 5 years on 1996 figures. We can have one combat ship for the same cost of sending 6.8 million children to school in Afghanistan for 9 years. One year of global military spending could buy 600 years of the UN's regular budget.
If we are looking where the money is spend, the pictures looks like this: 26,000 nuclear weapons, 'conventional' bombs, guns, cluster bombs and landmines will not deter or remove the threat of a Tsunami, a hurricane, a flood, a virus, climate change or a water shortage, the real security threats of our times. And until governments are prepared to face these cold hard facts, they are going to face some serious campaigning about this theft, this organized crime, this corporate welfare, from women. While outdated military security doctrines and budgets of the Cold War prevail, the vision of Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security cannot be fulfilled.  And this is the only tool for fulfill our aim. Resolution 1325 recommended mainstreaming a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations. To that end, the resolution set a new threshold of action for UN and all governments by calling for institutionalizing the participation of women at the peace table, and in the post-conflict processes of peace-building and reconstruction.
Unfortunately only one pays on Balkan is NAP for this Resolution. The government of the other countris are not interesting at all. They are interesting only for bauyng the arms, for armament and shown who is more power than other.
Whether high levels of military spending detracts from citizens’ quality of life by limiting spending on development or social programs is a major concern, particularly for developing countries. There is an inherent “opportunity cost” with all government spending – money that is spent in one area cannot be spent on another. The choice between government spending on social issues and the military is sometimes referred to as one of “guns or butter.”
In industrialized countries and developing countries, total government expenditure makes up a significantly different percentage of the GDP. In industrialized countries, total government expenditures account for about 40% of the GDP on average, while in developing countries it rarely exceeds more than 25%. Consequently, industrialised countries almost always spend more than 4.5 % of their GDP on education, but only a small percentage of developing countries spend that much. In Macedonia, it is spend 6.6 million dollars for military and less than 3 million for education. In Bosnia while they spend more than 10 million for military, for health they spend only 2,6 million.
II give this figure only for make a picture how it is the situation in the Balkan Peninsula, where the military expenditure are yet more under the all the other issues as gender empowerment, education, health…
Developing countries are faced with the same problems. I’m using the cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia because they are faced with lot of problems regard military expenditure. In Bosnia in 2007, for military expenditure were spend $234.3 million, but for health only 2% percent of total budget. The situation in Macedonia is worst, because in the wish to be part of NATO they spend lot of money for modernization of the national army, instead on the expenses of gender equality, education, health, empowerment, youth employment…
During the forty five years of the Cold War few European states were not members of either of Europe’s two blocs. The small handfuls of exceptions were Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia on the continent, Malta and Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
Now, the geopolitical picture is different. Ex-Yugoslavia don’t exist more, the others are part of European Union,
After the April 4th 2008, for us, the countries Balkanik who where part of ex-Yugoslavia, all is diiferent.  Croatia followed Slovenia in gaining full NATO membership and the other four former Yugoslav federal republics – Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia – are members of the Partnership for Peace program.
The money from the budget simply disappear at the expense of improving the image of both countries before the gates of NATO.
Militarization remains a problem and threatening positions in the region, because the more a country deals with weapons, and have neglected other spheres of life, the victims are citizens. On the other hand, when you take that most vulnerable groups are children and women, it more than clear that they are the first blow in a country where the supply of weapons is a priority of everything else.
On the other hand, the rise of nationalism and intolerance among the Balkan countries to make people feel unsafe, states are armament and put the economy on his knees. Again, as after some unwritten rule, victims are primarily children and women.
But if we understand the peace as equivalent of non violence and creativity, and if the women are more creative than men, the peace building process is in the women hand. Just for this I call all of you to support Balkan feminist caravan and in the frame of this group the exchange the militarism, nationalism, intolerance with peace, tolerance and international coexistence…The Europe break the border between their countries, we the women from Balkan countries we MUST do the same, only another Balkan is our future within one new Europe.