No Women, No Peace:
UN Initiative Gathers Women Peace Experts in New York and DC

A group of remarkable peacemakers, working at great personal risk to end bloody conflicts, from Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sudan, and Rwanda, are among the 5,000 women gathering in New York and Washington DC to attend the 49th Session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women.

These women peace experts—directors of UN initiatives, leaders of non-governmental organizations, activists, journalists—are available for interviews to discuss their firsthand experience in peacemaking efforts and to highlight the vital role that women play in resolving intractable conflict.

Women are vital to preventing conflict, stopping war, and stabilizing war-torn regions, yet despite the mounting evidence gathered by organizations such as Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace, women are largely excluded from formal efforts to resolve conflicts.

Experts such as Rina Amiri from Afghanistan, Awut Deng Acuil from Sudan, Visaka Dharmadasa from Sri Lanka, Luz Mendez from Guatemala, and Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls from Fiji will join Ambassador Swanee Hunt, founder and chair of Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace, to press the issue of women’s leadership in peace building to officials at the United Nations and the US State Department.

Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace (Waging) advocates for the full participation of all stakeholders, especially women, in peace processes. Since 1991, Waging has connected more than 400 women experts with over 3,000 policy shapers to collaborate on fresh, workable solutions to long-standing conflicts across the globe.

Swanee Hunt is founder and chair of Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace, Director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and author of This Was Not Our War (foreward by William Jefferson Clinton).

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