If half the society isn't engaged on any number of sectors, success and potential will be limited. In that sense, I do definitely believe there is a growing movement and moment for women's issues.

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.

Growing up under Saddam's rule, I witnessed many injustices occurring everyday in my country and yet I could not do anything to prevent them.

From joblessness to lack of education and professional skills to sexual and gender-based violence, women face a multi-faceted oppression.

Women are part of peace keeping troops in countries like Liberia.

I don't have a child, so Women for Women is like my child. But I always said I would step down after 20 years. I didn't want to be a 60-year-old woman holding on to something I created when I was 23.

Since war often enters homes through the "kitchen door," we need to understand women's attempts to keep life going in the face of shortage of food, closing of schools and reduced freedoms.