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.

Unfortunately, violence against women is not the only injustice women face globally; it is one of the many inequalities that impede the full development of socially excluded women globally.

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

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

The injustice is that women continue to be the main target of violence both during wartime and peacetime and yet there is still a lack of a public outrage.

Women still need higher political representation and to be included at decision making tables in all issues in order for solutions that relates from peace to food, to health, to basic stability in the world. We cannot continue to marginalize half of the population in the world in finding sustainable solutions that are good for all.

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.