Zainab Salbi Quotes
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I grew up in war-torn Iraq, and I believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen one side of it. We only talk about one side of it. But there's another side that I have witnessed as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in it.
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The single thing all women need in the world is inspiration, and inspiration comes from storytelling.
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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.
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In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what they believed was right for them. This phenomenon has never been related to how rich, poor, successful or not successful the woman may be.
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They are women who are standing on their feet in spite of their circumstances, not because of it. Think of how the world can be a much better place if, for a change, we have a better equality, we have equality, we have a representation and we understand war, both from the front-line and the back-line discussion.
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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.
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Since a very young age, my mother made sure to tell me about the plight of women... As she raised my awareness about women's issues, she also made sure to ingrain in me the importance of being strong and independent and not to let anybody define me by their images of what women should be.
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We have been so consumed with seemingly objective discussions of politics, tactics, weapons, dollars and casualties. This is the language of sterility.
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I believe that a lot of progress has been achieved to address gender inequality: We have moved from a time where women in the US could not apply for credit card without their husband's signature to a time where women are the owners of their businesses.
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Working with women survivors of war has taught me that we need to listen to women's perspectives on war in order to understand how to effectively rebuild a country, a community and a family.
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My message to the world is that until we recognize that peace is not just the absence of war but the revival of life on the "backlines," where women are keeping kids in school, caring for the sick and injured, and daily negotiating space for the continuation of critical life processes of this nature, we're going to continue to miss the point.
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One year of the world’s military spending equals 700 years of the U.N. budget and equals 2,928 years of the U.N. budget allocated for women.
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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.
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When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together.
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It appears easier to talk about protecting women than it is to fully include women at all decision-making levels in peace talks and post-conflict planning.
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War is nothing but a microcosm of peace... it shows you life in a more intense way and that's how I continue to live it... for good or bad reasons.
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Leadership is not about having the charisma or speaking inspirational words, but about leading with example.
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The injustice is that women continue to be the main target of violence both during wartime and peacetime and yet there is still a lack of a public outrage.
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I believe that leadership acts should be manifested by engaging in external work that can be observed and shared with everyone else.
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I believe that there is an urgent need to restructure the discussion of war to include the impact it has on women.
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Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.
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Women are not just victims; they are survivors and leaders on the community-level backlines of peace and stability.
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Since war often enters homes through the "kitchen door," we need to understand women's attempts to keep life going in the face of shortage of food, closing of schools and reduced freedoms.
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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.