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.

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

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced.

Without women's full inclusion at the decision making table, we cannot have any healthy decision making that is good for men and women alike.

Living in war is a co- existence with death.

I have come to understand that in order to effectively advance women's rights, we need to galvanize a global women's movement.

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.