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

Everything is give and take. The solutions are in the middle not in the extremity of the situation.

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

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.

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.

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.

It seems to me that violence against women has been tolerated for so long that the world has become numb to it.