Tuesday, May 7, 2019 – 6:00pm The John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Twenty-five years ago, the African nation of Rwanda was ripped apart by a genocide that left nearly a million dead. The untold story is that when the bloodshed ended, women not only buried the dead and cared for orphaned children, they drove a […]
Women’s participation in drafting constitutions leads to more equitable legal frameworks and socially inclusive reforms, laying the groundwork for sustainable peace. Yet new research from Inclusive Security reveals that while 75 conflict-affected countries oversaw significant reform processes between 1995-2015, only one in five constitutional drafters in these environments have been women. As actors from Syria, […]
US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power; Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer of Pubic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Ambassador Swanee Hunt; and Chantal Kayitesi, genocide survivor and co-founder of AVEGA AGAHOZO Rwandan widows’ advocacy organization; come together to discuss Ambassdador Hunt’s new book, Rwandan Women Rising.
For the annual Lowell Lecture on March 7, 2018, Ambassador Swanee Hunt shared the story of how Rwandan women came together to help rescue their country after the 1994 genocide. Survivor and women’s organization leader Chantal Kayitesi joined Ambassador Hunt in discussing Rwanda’s lessons for other nations, including the United States.
Our Founder and Chair, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, and Rwandan Ambassador Mathilde Mukantabana discussed Hunt’s book Rwandan Women Rising, the story of how the women of the tiny African nation led that country’s rebirth after the horrific 1994 genocide that left nearly a million dead. Click here to watch the video
Leymah Gbowee, a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who led a peace movement that brought an end to the second Liberian civil war in 2003, delivered the keynote address at the 5th annual Women, Peace and Security Conference at the U.S. Naval War College earlier this month. Here’s a clip of her incredible speech.
Stella Sabiiti was a university student in 1976—newly married, with a baby on the way—when soldiers of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin kidnapped her from her dorm room. They tortured her for hours, accusing her of crimes she had not committed. She thought she was going to die. But instead, she looked the soldiers in the […]
Fatuma Abdulkadir Adan grew up in volatile northern Kenya, the daughter of parents from two warring tribes. In 2005, sixty people, including dozens of children, were massacred in her hometown of Marsabit. In this video, she relates how government leaders ignored women’s warnings about impending violence.
During the Northern Ireland peace process, Monica McWilliams Williams co-founded the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and was elected as a delegate to the Multi-Party Peace Negotiations. In this video, she reflects on how women transformed the peace talks by reaching out to marginalized groups and raising issues critical for long-term reconciliation.
In response to a massacre of more than 500 women and children three miles from her home in central Nigeria, Pastor Esther Ibanga organized a march of Christian women for peace. The killing continued. So she reached out to a female Muslim leader, knowing that joint activity would be more powerful. In this video, she […]
