Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.

Only 8 percent of peace talks have included women at any level.

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.

Like life, peace begins with women. We are the first to forge lines of alliance and collaboration across conflict divides.

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

From an economic perspective, women are treated unfairly: they perform 66 percent of the world's work and produce 50 percent of the food but they only earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.

Women in the Arab world have a rich history in their active participation in political change from the Algeria revolution against the French occupation to the most recent revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya among other countries. The question is not their participation. Their question is the incorporation of women's voices fully in the new definitions of the countries where change has happened.