NEWSBYZAINAB SALBI

"Hope is dying in Afghanistan."

These are the words of my colleague, Sweeta Noori, who directs Women for Women International’s Afghanistan programs. These words from a woman who has seen it all: from socialist government, to Mujahidin rebels, to Taliban control. She has seen more than three decades factions vying for power, of popular hope for peace, of alternating promises to curtail or to create women’s rights. Only now is the last of hope evaporating for the women of Afghanistan.

As I celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day this March, Sweeta’s words resonate in my mind and my thoughts turn to my sisters in Afghanistan. It strikes me that if hope is dying in Afghanistan, our celebrations are premature.

This centennial anniversary of International Women’s Day, Afghanistan is for me a stark reminder of the distance we have to go in ensuring equality for all: equality economically, equality politically and equality socially. Women and their children are still 70% of all civilians killed in war and 80% of all refugees. Only 8 percent of all peace talks have included women at any level.  International Women’s Day is a time to come together and see how far we have come but to not get caught up in the remembrance; it is also a time to move forward. It is a time to recognize that women are standing up on their own and that we as the international community need to honor that act of courage and support them and protect the space in which to do this.

Zainab Salbi, Founder and CEO, Women for Women International, is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

Today we are facing a global food, nutrition, and climate crisis. Over the past few years, nearly 100 million people have been added to the global count of chronically hungry worldwide. Food prices have jumped almost 80%, pushing thousands of families on the brink into poverty and hunger. Environmentally damaging agricultural practices such as deforestation compound the CO₂ emissions that are causing greenhouse effects. Chemically enhanced fertilizers contaminate the ground and strip the Earth of necessary nutrients.

We cannot build sustainable democracies, economies, or solutions for climate change and food shortages if we do not fully incorporate women in policy responses. There isn't a better story to illustrate the disconnect between the reality of women and the theory of policy than this food crisis and the agricultural strategies that aim to address it.

Zainab Salbi, Founder and CEO, Women for Women International, is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

On the 99th annual International Women’s Day, activist Zainab Salbi says the world should be ashamed of the violence and poverty women still face around the globe. Here’s how to reverse the startling statistics within the next 10 years.

As I reflect today—the 99th annual International Women’s Day—on a century of progress, I am given pause when I consider the harsh reality of life for millions of women around the world, women for whom survival remains a supreme challenge and empowerment remains a foreign concept. These are the women of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, who have endured rape by the hundreds of thousands in a conflict that has claimed more than 5 million lives. They are the women of neighboring Rwanda, where a genocide that killed 800,000 and raped up to 500,000 more than a decade ago has left thousands of the country’s women and girls HIV-positive and still struggling to feed their families. They are the women of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which thousands of women were forced into rape concentration camps in the early 1990s and where today, women face forced prostitution, trafficking, and—among the women with whom my organization, Women for Women International, works—an unemployment rate of up to 80 percent.

Zainab Salbi, Founder and CEO, Women for Women International, is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

You've probably heard of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that took 800,000 lives and witnessed up to 500,000 rapes in only 100 days. You may be less familiar with neighboring DR Congo, where the same roots of conflict have fostered a war more deadly than any since WWII, where hundreds of thousands of women are estimated to have been raped and where the violence wages on today. Yet despite this brutal history of conflict, poverty and loss, it is on the border of these two countries — Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo — where less than one month from now thousands of survivors of war, genocide, torture and rape, will gather — not in mourning, but in unity, determination and celebration.

100 years after the declaration of an international day for women on March 8th, women worldwide have yet to reach full equality in all aspects of life. In times of war, they are still the targets of massive rape, torture, displacement and pillaging. The difference this time is that women are speaking out and stand united as they break their silence, demand an immediate end to war and the building of sustainable peace that can allow them to plant, harvest, go to work, send their children to schools, and dance, live, and eat without any fear.