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

I find it amazing that the only group of people who are not fighting and not killing and not pillaging and not burning and not raping, and the group of people who are mostly — though not exclusively — who are keeping life going in the midst of war, are not included in the negotiating table.

When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together.

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

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.

I dont want to be someone in my sixties holding on to a group that I created when I was in my twenties.

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.