Since a very young age, my mother made sure to tell me about the plight of women... As she raised my awareness about women's issues, she also made sure to ingrain in me the importance of being strong and independent and not to let anybody define me by their images of what women should be.

Women are not just victims; they are survivors and leaders on the community-level backlines of peace and stability.

Only 1 in 13 participants in peace negotiations since 1992 has been a woman.

My message to the world is that until we recognize that peace is not just the absence of war but the revival of life on the "backlines," where women are keeping kids in school, caring for the sick and injured, and daily negotiating space for the continuation of critical life processes of this nature, we're going to continue to miss the point.

I learned that victims come in all image - some raped, some witnessing an act of violence, some losing loved ones. I learned that the solutions come by both listening to the people impacted by the crisis and by learning from historical experiences in other places.

Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.

I grew up with injustice and could do nothing about it. But once in America, I had freedom of choice.