Zainab Salbi (Arabic: زينب سلبي; born 1969) is a humanitarian, media host, author, and founder and former CEO (1993-2011) of Washington-based Women for Women International.
It seems to me that violence against women has been tolerated for so long that the world has become numb to it.
While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul.
Only 8 percent of peace talks have included women at any level.
As women, we must speak out, speak up, say no to our inheritance of loss and yes to a future of women-led dialogue about women's rights and value.
If half the society isn't engaged on any number of sectors, success and potential will be limited. In that sense, I do definitely believe there is a growing movement and moment for women's issues.
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.
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.
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.
From joblessness to lack of education and professional skills to sexual and gender-based violence, women face a multi-faceted oppression.
I believe that leadership acts should be manifested by engaging in external work that can be observed and shared with everyone else.
Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff without knowing where you will land.
Changes don't happen in the world by playing it safe, taking risks is the way to change the world.
Believe in your passions and act on them.
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.
Stronger women build stronger nations.
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.
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.
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.
Growing up under Saddam's rule, I witnessed many injustices occurring everyday in my country and yet I could not do anything to prevent them.
I dont want to be someone in my sixties holding on to a group that I created when I was in my twenties.