LarkAbroad: Swedint

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Sweden Day 12: Crazy...possibly!

Sometimes during the Gender Field Advisor course, things were quiet serious. By the end of the course, we all needed to relax and unwind a little. In an effort to facilitate this process, I asked my colleagues to "make a crazy face". Most were willing to oblige.

Sweden Day 12: Tribute to the gods

The following post is about a Swedish traditional ritual about paying tribute to the gods. It involves the consumption of two different types of alcohol (sorry, I have no idea what they are). Below is the explanation from the Swedish gentleman appearing on the left side of this series of photos. An interesting part of Swedish culture, to say the least!

Viking gods are termed Asa gods. When you want to speak with them you need to drink a lot to get "drunk." We paid tribute to Odin and Thor by raising the glass and saying: "Hail Odin and Heil Thor" :)

Hail Odin

Sweden Day 12: Graduation Dinner

Today I graduated from NATO/Sweden's Gender Field Advisor course. This 2-week training course was intense and amazing. We looked at how to incorporate the gender perspective and gender tasks at all levels of command.
Gender perspective is when planning and operations are conducted with specific attention to how all aspects of the operation affects women- both within our troops and for local nationals- security forces and civilian populations. This includes work like security sector reform (ensuring our own militaries don't exclude women, have facilities and equipment dedicated to women's needs), disarmament demobilization & reintegration (taking special care to ensure plans and policies do not exclude women soldiers (rebel groups/freedom fighters) and children taken as slaves or child soldiers in recovering from armed conflict, and other plans and policy that ensure that rape is not a weapon of war or being used to create genocide.
International law requires that all governments and militaries, all states, increase the appointment of women to positions of leadership, enable women to participate at all levels of planning, peace building, and conflict resolution, and ensure access to judicial systems and protections from sexual violence- particularly during and after armed conflict. Rape is a human rights violation and is NEVER acceptable. Forced prostitution, forced labor, child pornography, and other forms of enslavement are also illegal according to international law and states must take a zero tolerance approach to these forms of human trafficking.
You can see the national action plans for supporting these laws on this website.
This topic is so serious and heavy, but we've had a beautiful experience in navigating these critical topics. Thanks to my course mates and instructors for the things you've taught and shared with the rest of us. Gender work matters. Your efforts make direct impact in the world. A small selection of photos from the evening's events appear below.