I first got to know the Nobel Women’s Initiative when they invited me to attend the Summit on Sexual Violence in Conflict with them. I was floored by the invitation but even more floored when I was actually in the presence of this astounding group of women. I felt like I was amongst giants. These women are all Nobel Peace Prize winners. And their stories will change your life. Why we don’t have a myriad of biopics coming out telling their stories is something we need the movie gods to address. Their lives are the classic superhero narrative. But nonfiction. These women stepped out in some of the most horrific circumstances imaginable and made serious change, often, very often, at the expense of their own safety and at the risk of their lives. These are women we could call extraordinary, but they are also ordinary people who did extraordinary things. And continue to do so. They fight injustice across the globe daily and amplify issues that must be addressed. They need to be magnified, as the true superheroes of our time. And they remind us that we too, can do great things for others, steward peace around us, as ordinary as we may imagine ourselves to be. Too much in our current environment, we are inundated with the words and voices of those that history will not judge kindly. Yet they are who we see when we turn on the TV and when we go to our twitter feed. We don’t see the true heroes of our time. Hear their voices, receive their wisdom, allow the work they have done and continue to do to inspire us to get out there rolling up our own sleeves. These women are doers. They go into the direst of circumstances and enact change. I do a little quiz where I ask people to name just two female Nobel Peace Prize winners. No one I have asked so far has named even one. I challenge us all to get to know these women, follow the work they are doing, the people in the world they are bringing attention to, the issues they illuminate and the changes they fight to realize. These are the real Wonder Women, the Super Sheroes, the Avengers of our time. We should know their names.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative was established in 2006 by sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire. The six women decided to bring together their extraordinary experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman joined the Initiative in 2012.

Mairead Maguire (born January 27, 1944) is a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize.
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Rigoberta Menchú Tum (born January 9, 1959) is a K'iche' political activist from Guatemala. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's indigenous feminists during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting indigenous rights in the country. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998.
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Jody Williams (born October 9, 1950) is an American political activist known around the world for her work in banning anti-personnel landmines, her defense of human rights (especially those of women), and her efforts to promote new understandings of security in today's world. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work toward the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines.
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Shirin Ebadi (born June 21, 1947) is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's, children's, and refugee rights.
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Leymah Gbowee (born February 1, 1972) is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Her efforts to end the war, along with her collaborator Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, helped usher in a period of peace and enabled a free election in 2005 that Sirleaf won.
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Tawakkol Karman (born February 7, 1979) is a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist. She became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that is part of the Arab Spring uprisings. She is a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni, the first Arab woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Prize and the second youngest Nobel Peace Laureate to date.
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Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) was a Kenyan environmental activist. She founded the Green Belt Movement in the 1970s seeking to promote environmental conservation in Kenya and Africa. She became the first African women to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” After campaigning for the restoration of democracy in Kenya during the 1990s, she served as a member of Parliament and Assistant Minister for the environment and natural resources between 2003 and 2005.
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Betty Williams (born May 22, 1943) is a co-recipient with Mairead Corrigan of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work as a co-founder of Community of Peace People, an organization dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Williams is a founding member of the Nobel Laureate Summit, which has taken place annually since 2000.
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Call for Protection for Women Human Rights Defenders Worldwide

Human rights defenders in many regions are facing worse restrictions and attacks. The Nobel Women’s Initiative has been following the alarming number of abductions and/or kidnappings of women human rights defenders all around the world these past weeks. These persistent events, together with the assassination of human rights activist Salwa Bugaighis last June in Benghazi (Lybia), impel to take action.

Since 28 May, Iranian journalist Saba Azarpeik is detained at an undisclosed location. She was arrested during a raid on the office of the Tehran-based weekly Tejarat-e Farda, for which Azarpeik is a correspondent, but formal charges against her are unknown. She has been allowed to contact her family only once since her arrest and, when she appeared in court on 21 and 22 July, she was reported to be in a bad physical and psychological condition.

On 17 July, members of an armed group in eastern DRC abducted two women human rights defenders, Médiatrice Riziki and Angelica Navura, members of Ensemble pour la Paix et l’Encadrement des Femmes en Milieu Rural (EPEFMR), a human rights organization working with women farmers. They were released after four days, following intense negotiations. But as a condition for their release, their captors demanded that the organization cease all human rights monitoring activities in the region.

Back in January 2017, armed men attacked and kidnapped Miriam Miranda, the coordinator of OFRANEH (Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondurena), together with some other members of the Garífuna community in northeastern Honduras. Drug traffickers and organized crime in the territory felt threatened by these activists that peacefully claim their right to remain in the lands of their ancestors. Fortunately, the activists were able to reach the media, mobilize their own communities and gather fellow activists, so a few hours later they were released.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative seeks to foster peace with justice and equality. The initiative founded by Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams, and Mairead Maguire envisions a world transformed through a rejection of war, violence, and militarism where global security is built around human rights, justice and equality for people and communities—human security—rather than the security of the nation-state. It is a world where sustainable peace and protection of the environment on which all life depends is our collective priority.

Their mission as women recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize to work together to use the visibility and prestige of the Nobel Prize to spotlight, amplify and promote the work of grassroots women’s organizations and movements around the world. They work to strengthen and expand feminist efforts to promote nonviolent solutions to war, violence, and militarism.

They believe change is possible because individually and collectively they have had the privilege of participating in and witnessing extraordinary human efforts to transform our world. They know that the seemingly impossible is possible when women work together to make it so.

Nobel Peace laureates Jody Williams (left) and Leymah Gbowee visit the University of Illinois at Chicago.

They approach change by:

• Convening diverse groups of grassroots women activists and organizations to share women-led strategies and solutions, and then linking these grassroots women activists and organizations to policymakers and other decision makers.
• Creatively using media to amplify the alternative narratives and solutions of grassroots women activists and organizations to policy makers and decision makers, as well as powerful civil society partners and the public.
• Working with grassroots women leaders to shape their messages and access media, as well as strengthen their capacity to conduct direct advocacy at the local, national and regional levels.
• Leveraging the prestige and visibility of the female Nobel Peace laureates to bridge grassroots women leaders’ messages and solutions to a global audience.

A UN education program on the dangers of female genital mutilation has empowered Emberá women in Colombia and put midwives on the defensive. Photo: Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo.

In Colombia, efforts to end FGM are empowering women to be leaders.

BOGOTA, Colombia – Solani Zapata first heard about female genital mutilation (FGM) when she gave birth to her daughter. Her mother-in-law insisted she had to cut her newborn’s clitoris. Shocked, Ms. Zapata refused. She and her family are Emberá, a historically impoverished and marginalized indigenous group. Many lack access to health and education services. The most isolated communities have little knowledge about sexual and reproductive health or human rights, leaving them vulnerable to harmful practices like FGM. FGM is by no means universal among the Emberá. Ms. Zapata, who was born in the western municipality of Marsella, says her mother and grandmother never spoke of it.

Yet among communities that do perform FGM, the practice is persistent. Called “cutting the callus” or ‘curación’, it is intended to prevent a girl’s genitals from growing into those of a boy. It is also believed to prevent infidelity. “That's why they used to cut that thing,” Irene Guasiruma Rioverde, in the Valle de Cauca Department, told UNFPA. “Because if they cut that, they won't have any sexual excitement.” But the practice is dangerous. "There are grave consequences,” explained Gloria Patricia Morales Medina, a social worker at the San Vicente de Paul hospital in Mistrató. “Death, major infections and loss of sexual satisfaction.” Severe pain, hemorrhage, childbirth complications, and a host of other problems can also take place.

Top Left: Solani Zapata, a member of her region's indigenous council, says talking about FGM sparked conversations about women's role in society | Top Right: Some estimates indicate that among some Emberá communities, two out of three girls have been cut | Bottom Left: Community dialogues and training sessions have helped raise awareness of the consequences of FGM | Bottom Right: "Girls should grow up as they were brought into this world,” Marinela Panchi Cortes. © UNFPA/Daniel Baldotto

Emberá communities that perform FGM do so quietly, so there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are affected. But in areas where the practice is known to occur, as many as two out of three Emberá women have been cut, according to 2012 estimates from the Colombian National Indigenous Organization (ONIC). And the worst cases make their way to the headlines: In 2007, two girls in the municipality of Pueblo Rico died from infections caused by FGM, bringing public attention to the practice. In response, UNFPA, together with the Colombian Family Welfare Institute and the Risaralda Indigenous Regional Council, launched the Emberá Wera – meaning Emberá Woman – project. The programme works with women, grandmothers, traditional birth attendants and indigenous authorities to end the practice.

Women leaders are essential in this effort. But only a few years earlier, such a step might not have been possible because the regional indigenous councils were dominated by men. “Women would simply show up and sit quietly while men talked a little about everything,” Ms. Zapata explained. “We didn’t want men to continue to lead the efforts to address women’s issues. We have capable women who can do that.” Women were not allowed to assume key positions without their husband’s permission. But Ms. Zapata was separated from her daughter's father. “You can do it,” other women told her. “You don’t have a husband.” She became the regional advisor for women’s issues on the Risaralda Indigenous Regional Council.

A traditional house in an Emberá reserve in Colombia’s Risaralda department. Photograph: Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo

With UNFPA’s support, Ms. Zapata and a handful of other women began to travel to different Emberá communities, promoting dialog and education about the consequences of FGM. “In the beginning, it was really difficult,” Ms. Zapata said. “Nobody wanted to talk about the subject.” But slowly, people began to open up. The topic led to conversations about related issues, including sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, and gender equality. Gradually, the process led women to reflect on their rights and their role in decision-making, Ms. Zapata told UNFPA. It gave her, and many other women, the confidence to speak out, demand change and become leaders, she said. UNFPA also worked with hospitals and indigenous organizations to promote early detection and reporting of FGM cases. And training sessions were organized to help government officials and community members – including traditional health workers, healers, and others – learn about FGM and related gender issues.

The practice has since been abandoned in many communities. "We don't do it here anymore,” said Amanda Guasiruma Gaisama, in Valle del Cauca. “The adults know that if it's done here and something happens to the girl, there are consequences… We know it is not normal for a girl, even if it’s part of a tradition." Still, the practice survives in pockets around the country, with health centers periodically reporting cases. UNFPA, indigenous authorities and women like Ms. Zapata are continuing their efforts to end FGM once and for all. “We as women can't mistreat our children, our girls,” said Marinela Panchi Cortes, an Emberá woman. “Girls should grow up as they were brought into this world.”

DVIDSHUB/Flickr.

Afghan Women's Names Aren't Used in Public, But These Women Want to Change That

In Afghanistan's patriarchal society, a woman's name should not be revealed, even on her grave. "Mr. X's" mother, daughter or sister, the headstone might read, rather than the name of the deceased. Openly using the names of women is regarded as inappropriate and even an insult in the conservative Muslim nation. On a birth certificate, there is no sign of the mother's name. On a wedding invitation, the bride's name is not mentioned - only the names of her father and husband-to-be. But a women-led campaign on social media is starting to challenge the old Afghan tradition.

#WhereIsMyName, recently launched by a small group of women's rights activists, wants to bring women's given names to official documents and to the lips of Afghan people. "Our society is full of injustice for women, basically everything is taboo for women," activist Bahar Sohaili, a prominent member of the campaign, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "With this campaign, we aim to change many things for women and social media has opened a new window to Afghanistan's young generation." Popular Afghan singer Farhad Darya has supported the campaign, posting a picture of himself with his wife and the caption "Farhad and Sultana Darya". Thousands of Afghans, including authors, journalists and musicians have backed the movement on Facebook and Twitter, aided by widening access to the internet in the country.

US Embassy Kabul Afghanistan/Flickr.

"I went to a private bank office to fill up the form, when the manager asked my mother's name, I paused for few seconds, because I had actually forgotten my mother's name. Nobody in all these years asked or called her by her name," said Batool Mohammadi, a member of the campaign. The practice of erasing women's names is rooted in Afghan customs, rather than Islam, the dominant religion. It is a symbol of women's second-class status in society, where decisions about their education and marriage are left to the men of the family. Since the ultra-conservative Taliban was overthrown in 2001, Afghan women have regained the right to go to school, to vote, and to work. But violence against women in the home is widespread, and often goes unpunished. #WhereIsMyName aims to challenge attitudes that allow men to make all decisions and leave women invisible and powerless.

"Many times I meet wonderful women with bright thoughts and opinions during my work trips, but when I want to interview them or take pictures they say to me, 'Let me ask my husband, father or brother if they allow me to talk or be pictured,'" said Farzanah Wahidi, a female photojournalist from Kabul. Bahar Sohaili and her friends are fighting for the day that a woman's name and her identity will no longer be shameful. "We aim to put pressure on the government to enact laws to protect women's rights. Whenever we demand our rights before a court or in parliament they (officials) use the pretext of religion to put us down," she said.