With millions of ordinary people killed in conflicts during the last decade, the United Nations is devoting International Women's Day on Wednesday to the personal loss and devastation caused by war.

Entitled ``Women Uniting for Peace,'' a U.N.-style town meeting includes professors advocating women intervene in peacekeeping to children organizing against war to films of widows on both sides of the Vietnam conflict.

``To this day, the strategies that have been applied to peace negotiations have at least one thing in common: they have almost entirely ignored women's visions for peace and social chance,'' said General Assembly President Theo-Ben Gurirab, Namibia's foreign minister.

``Women are half of every community. Are they therefore not also half of every solution?'' Gurirab said in a statement written for the occasion.

Countless civilians have died in civil conflicts since the end of the Cold War a decade ago in such places as Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia, Sudan, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Bosnia, Colombia and Afghanistan.

The wars have killed 2 million children, left 6 million maimed, created 1 million orphans and 12 million refugees and uprooted 30 million people from their homes, the U.N. says.

Women in Black, a loose organization, that began in Albania and held vigils in Belgrade, plan to stand silently in the United Nations courtyard to mourn for war victims.

Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited.

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