Historically speaking, religious and conservative groups always wanted the control over the private sphere that impacts women most, as reflected by family law and women's access to resources and mobility. And often secular groups traded this for economic incentives and trade.

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.

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.

Stronger women build stronger nations.

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.

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

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.