 Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to welcome our guests who are here from the wonderful program of Leaders in Democracy Fellows. I know it's a good program. I've been joining Aubrey and the group every year for the last three or four years. So I know you're an excellent group. I look forward to getting to know you and to having you also have an exchange of views with our two panelists. And I also want to welcome our colleagues who are on the webcast. We're very glad to have you with us to celebrate International Day of the Girl. And our forum here at USIP is on how girls can advance peace and equality around the world, how they can be an important part of peacebuilding. You will be able to ask questions when we get to that point. First, we'll have our two panelists say just five minutes of remarks. And then we will have them have a discussion with each other for all of you to hear. And then we will turn to all of you, those of you online and those of you here. And if you're online and want to submit a question, it's hashtag youth, peace, equality. On Twitter, youth, hashtag youth, peace, equality, okay? That should be clear enough. I want you to know that our president, of course, issued a proclamation today on the day of the girl, father of two daughters. So and the photo with his two daughters and that's available for your reading. And also Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement as well. The president pointed out that nothing should stand in the way of strong girls with bold dreams. And I certainly agree with that. And Secretary Kerry pointed out that, of course, the reality around the world is that that's not yet the case in many, many countries, many parts of the world. There are many, many problems facing women and girls, many barriers to their education and to their empowerment. And we have had a strategy and work with partners around the world to try to overcome these challenges. And part of this is the Let Girls Learn program. And we're doing our best working with others with champions of democracy like yourselves in this room and on the web to try to empower girls and women around the world. Not an easy task, but I do think a lot of progress has been made. And it doesn't take just governments, I also want to emphasize you people who are from civil society, a lot of you. Some of you may be governmental as well. We need your help. We need men and women working together. We need boys and girls working together. And our government has also started a dad's and daughter's social media campaign in this regard to have them out there working together. And hopefully you know that tomorrow, is it on PBS tomorrow, Audrey? The We Will Rise program? Not CNN at 9 p.m. tomorrow night on our CNN. Michelle Obama is involved in this and there'll be a very good video. So I hear called We Will Rise. With that, I want to turn to Henda Marfi. Oh, hi, Jen. You still want to go in this order? Okay, I'm glad you're here. Give me a chance to relax. We'll go ahead and the first. Henda is an activist from Tunisia. She's a member of your wonderful fellows in Democracy Leaders in Democracy Program. She's an activist as I understand with Girl Scouts as well. And you also have led a Stop the Violence campaign. So over to you. We'd like to hear about your work. How you're doing? What are your challenges? And you can get our conversation going. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. I'm Henda Marfi from Tunisia. I'm here today as part of the Leaders for Democracy Program and as the International Commissioner of the Tunisian Scouts. I'm so glad to be here today to raise women and girls' voices, especially that it matches with the International Day of Girl Charts. So I would like to talk about my commitment about the topic of gender equality and especially about the Stop the Violence campaign. My commitment started from an early age because my dad is a scout leader and he encouraged me to be so engaged with the civil society and to make a change from my early age, from my six years old. So then I start learning from him and learning from the civil society environment in which I lived. And I was so, so interested in gender equality, especially that I saw a lot of violence around me. So that's why what I saw that there is a lot of violence. Women and girls today in the world are suffering from violence in their communities, in their societies, in their home play, in their classrooms. So what should we do as people to stop this harmful, to stop this harmful stereotypes? So what we did, as Tunisian, we are part of the world. We need to contribute in that and we try to see what the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, which is the biggest association of girls in the world, with its 10 million members, launched a curriculum of activities. It's based on non-formal education because we strongly believe that we have to start from the early age for young girls and boys and use a participatory way with a fun way so people can learn while they practice. We took that campaign to Tunisia and we started with more than 100 girls and boys from different regions of the country and we gathered them together and we presented very fun activities. So the girls learned their basic rights and the boys learned that they play a role to stop this harmful stereotypes for the girls. There is also some other activities for let's say teenagers from 12 to 17 years old. They came together, they learned what's violence, the different types of violence, the sexual, the verbal, the psychological violence and they got a lot of training and when they went back home, they tried to advocate. So they made advocacy campaigns in their schools, within their families, within their neighbors and cousins to try and to contribute even a little bit in their environment to stop that. And on national level, we started a national program for the scouts in which trainers came and learned from this curriculum and all these activities and they went back home in their regions so they talked with the governors, they talked with the municipalities and they start advocacy campaign so people start at least thinking what is violence and how can we solve this problem. However, and despite all this, Indonesian women have their rights but unfortunately most of them, they don't really know their basic rights. So it's a big challenge for the civil society to raise awareness and to let them participate and because they are powerful, they are strong, they are smart and they can make a change. Thank you. Thank you, that's really good work. And by the way, this meeting and the day we're celebrating today fits in also with our own program at USIP, which is a 60-day campaign, sort of bringing together issues on gender, peace and security because that is what we're all talking about here today. And you all know the famous UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which is women, peace and security. And having that S-word there, security is really important because I think it begins to give us the possibility of getting the attention of men to show that women's empowerment or the denial of women's rights, these are security issues one way or the other and we need to get men's attention that way. So now I'm going to turn to my friend, Jin N. Jin is a global citizen and actionist. She has a wonderful NGO called Four Girls G-Local Leadership. The goal is to empower young ladies, girls around the world. She's going to brief us on her empowerment survey, which she has done globally and you've got a PowerPoint too, right? Instead of a video. Well, there is a video, but I didn't want to spend more time. Okay, let's go with it. Jin? So it's delightful to be here on this day because I was in Washington. I started my first professional life with the US government and I championed for this day over a decade ago and they said it wasn't possible and four years ago I saw it happen. So yes, we can. And today I actually exercised the power of girls because I was stuck on the metro. So literally it was yes, you can. I took a taxi and then we got stuck. So it was like, yes, you can. Every single step of the way was challenging me that yes, we can. I want to thank one person who's not in the room here, actually, unfortunately, but I do want to say it publicly because she brought me, although I've been championing girls, she brought me to the space of women, peace and security and that is USIP's own Kathleen Kunis. She told me to come into this world and bring your expertise and I have learned so much about war, sadly, and why girls and young women are a unique source, but actually I would argue the most powerful force for changing the world. So I want to start with PowerPoint because it makes easy about why we even need an international day of the girl. So I'm going to ask you a very simple question. I ask this everywhere I go and everywhere I speak. How many people think there are more males and how many people think there are more females on the planet today? So if you think there's more males, raise your hands. So for the people on the webcast, zero people raise their hands and how many people think there is one person and how many people think there's more females on the planet? So that was everyone else, just one person alone. We're going to need to talk because here is the answer. There is actually more males on the planet. In fact, there is so many more males that if we put them in created a country, it would be the 24th largest country on the planet right after the population of United Kingdom. That's how many more males. So how do we get to this? Because there has been more, we have killed more girls aborted and neglected to die than the total number of people who died in all the wars of the 20th century. Another way to see this is that we have killed more girls than the total number of deaths from all genocides of the 20th century. So let's just look at one example. How could this be? If we put the top five genocide of the 20th century, here they are, that equates to about 20 million people. Here's the number of girls we've killed. 17 times that of the Holocaust is how many girls we've killed. So the number that we just saw earlier, why there's more males, that's not a surprise. And in fact, this issue is getting more attention. This is an economist front page that said that 100 million baby girls are not alive. So what's interesting is I like showing this slide because one campaign just launched this report with the top 10 toughest country to be born a girl. Why do I believe this transformation is possible? Because my birth country where I was born, it was, I would be right below number eight. That's my birth country. The GDP of my birth country was less than that of Côte d'Ivoire. Today it's South Korea. So I know transformation is possible and I also know what happens when you don't invest in human resource, that's North Korea. And a powerful example of this is just five countries this by the way is a World Bank report. Five countries if you focus on girls investing in their healthcare, their education, their economic opportunity, what would that do? That is if you equate all of the numbers that is half a trillion dollars into the global economy. Half a trillion dollars. That's how powerful girls are. So if you want an economic development in your country it's to focus on girls and young women. Now why is this even more critical today than ever before? Because we are experiencing another crisis and that is a population explosion of young people. There is 1.1 billion girls and young women on the planet today. That's the largest number we've ever seen. It's actually the largest number of youth population. 90% of them are in what we call the developing world. So you could see that 60% of the Middle East which I believe many of you are here from is young people. Young people is anyone under the age of 35. So this is what's happening. 66%, 70% from Sub-Saharan Africa. And in certain countries we're even seeing a greater portion of young people like Syria, Iraq, countries that are at war and conflict. So why did I start the work that I did? Because I realize that the root of every single issue whether it's women's issue or girls' issue, these are not just women's issues and girls' issues. Sadly it's a human issue and it is a human rights issue. So rather than targeting every single issue because these issues are only getting longer, I realized that a fundamental change needed to happen. And that is the mindset. What do we see girls? From seeing girls as human trash to a powerful force for change. As leaders, as change makers, as people who are going to transform their society, clearly, and as one of them. And what do I do now? I used to work on the ground. I used to work with girls and young women and the number were just extraordinary. There were so many girls and young women who we really needed to bring up. So now I focus on work. 4GGL has become a unique collaboration creating a movement of valuing girls, this valuing this population, not because they're an economic incentive, economic booster, but we'll soon talk about in peace and security and even creating peace and security in our own world. So not just the countries that are fighting, but also in the ones that we think is stable like United States or Western countries. This is just as critical, but really to show the world we become what we see. And in fact, I realize two thirds of our brain and our synapses is related to vision. So how we see and what we see in the world is very critical in changing mindsets. So that's what I focus on, is showing girls and young women leading change. So 4GGL is an online magazine. And the other word that you might have seen earlier is the word empowered. I realize this word is used so prevalently, but what does it actually mean? So I needed to actually go out and survey this and understand more about what empowerment is and actually are women and girls empowered. And I'm not talking about just getting more girls to school because we know from Western countries that girls can go to school and in fact in most of the Western country girls are outnumbering boys in school, but are they actually empowered? So here are some of the countries and young women who participated. And we actually focused on what we call millennials. This is an interesting group of generation that's very, very powerful. Not only are they powerful worldwide, but I can make this argument in the United States as well because now there's more millennials in the workforce as well as number-wise they have, there are, there's more millennials than what we call baby boomers, which has been a huge number as well. So when we ask, here's just a snapshot of the questions. We asked certain questions about, do they have a voice and are their voice encouraged? And how much control do they have in their lives? What would they like to change? Who is most, who makes the most contribution in creating that change? And if you have already created change like Henda, what costs you to create that change? And then we also asked young women, what is the most important issue in your society? So what is the number one change they want to make? Interestingly, we asked about career options, schools, health, livelihood. This was the number one answer. Personal growth and development. That was what they wanted the most. Who is most responsible for this change? And we thought government, your parents, your society, your family, me, they are holding themselves accountable for this change. And then of course, for those who wanted, who have already created change like Henda, what was the number one contributing factor to that change? Well, here we are. Self-awareness and knowing who they are. There's a famous quote that Socrates says, no thyself. This was the most contributing factor. In fact, here's how it broke out. So family and friends contributed 7% education, which interestingly is what many of donor governments and multilateral organizations, international organization focus on, was only 17%. Experience, just like any muscle in your body, the more they practice in creating change, the more they're able to create change. And then number one answer was really knowing who they are, their purpose in life, a greater meaning to life. We're not surprised by this. So the full report, you can go to 4ggl.org and there's lots of other questions we asked about their lives that you can find. Now, the most important and the most powerful example of this I have learned, and it's in this space, it's actually in peace and security. And we've already seen these, and this is my latest column that I write for the Huffington Post, that they are actually the most powerful antioxidant against the cancer of terrorism. How do we know this? Because we've already seen examples. This is actually an example in the United States where she stopped with our own violence here, right in our homeland. And recently, I met this young lady. She is the first UN Goodwill Ambassador for sex slavery. She is actually a survivor of ISIS, and she spoke very eloquently, telling the world leaders, you decide whether you want war or peace. So that's exactly what we're doing. I've partnered with Google and YouTube, and we are looking for seven bold women, young women who are creating change in the most violent countries. Many of them are ones that we don't have to think about, like Syria and Iraq and Iran, but we're also looking for a young woman right here in the United States because this isn't just their issue, it's our issue. It's every one of us. So you are all young leaders for democracy. I'm going to challenge you with these two statements, and that is, if not now, then when? If not you, then who? Well, yes, we can. There we go. So I want to invite you to join our movement, help us find these seven bold change makers, and I look forward to the dialogue. Thank you, Jen. One of my colleagues here, who many of you know, Manal Omar, who's a great activist for peace and democracy and for women's rights in the Middle East and beyond, has always said, I'm not going to name a country, but she had a particular country in mind, that often women are out in front, like when there's a revolution against a dictatorship, and then they're respected and appreciated, and then when sometimes these revolutions succeed, women are pushed to the back again, and they're told by the men, the leaders who are male, not now because we have other priorities, but as Manal says, not now generally means in their minds, never. So it is now that things have to be done. I'd like to just ask the two of you now a couple of questions to get a conversation between you going, we won't take long on this because we want to turn to this very good audience that we can see and to the online audience that we can't see, but I imagine they're very talented and into this as well. So one thing I want to ask is, already I see one way that you two can or have worked together, and that's you're both having an identification with the Girl Scouts movement and Girl Guides, right? Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Girl Guides are the younger group. Tell us how you work on that and ways that you can work together and with the activists here. How we are doing that? Yeah, I mean, what are the Girl Guides doing now to empower young ladies, girls around the world? Okay, as we have different, so the girls are playing. They don't really know that they are playing to learn something, but at the end of the activities, they can understand that what she did or what her friend, the boy, did is bad or wrong, like about stereotypes, for example, we can distribute for them some toys on paper and let them ask them to divide them or decide which one they like. And most of the times the boy decides the ball, however, the girl decides to choose the Barbie girl. And then we ask them, why did you choose this? And she said, oh, because I'm a girl. And the other guy said, yeah, but I also would like to play with this Barbie girl. And the girl said, I would like to play with the ball. And then we can start telling them that we are all equal and those are just stereotypes. So they learn that and then when they go back home, they tell that to their parents, they tell that to their sisters, to their brothers, and to their classmates. Those are the young girls, but we have also different activities for teenagers and also for adults. And about the adult, most of the time participate in sessions in which they can talk in safe space so they can say what they really want to say and they can understand their basic rights. Thank you. You've got a position with the Girl Scouts, right? No, I no longer work with them. So I did see an amazing model. I mean, I'm not championing girls and leaders because I think this is a good idea, although I'm sure many of us are thinking intuitively that isn't this a good thing. We actually have proof. So I went from working for the U.S. government and the U.S. Secretary of Health to championing and starting the Global Department at Girl Scouts in the United States, but it's part of the World Association of Girl Guides which is in 145 countries, 10 million girls around the world. So what does this look like? The year that I joined and I was asked, it showed that 93% of women in Congress, 93% were former Girl Scouts. So this is the impact on a societal level of what happens when you are developing, actively developing and helping them develop the skills of not only leadership but finding these leadership positions. At the end, they actually become leaders. It's amazing. So I knew I had a model and downloaded a very efficient model that what does this take to do it? So I definitely do believe, I mean, here's one who is a model of investing in girls but I would actually say I am an example. I'm no longer a millennial but nevertheless, I'm an example. If people didn't believe in me and I have obviously my own story of why I got into this work, it wouldn't be possible because I was born in one of those 10 worst countries to be born a girl the year that I was born. So there's enormous proof and I showed you much of it on the slides. So I do think that it is very important to empower girls but we also need to know what actually empowers people. It isn't, we must go beyond education and it isn't just about bringing people to the table to really truly not be able to participate. So we really need to understand more about what really empowers human beings because those same things that empowers women actually also empower men. So what are those tools and what are those skills and what are those experiences? I think we need to know more about that. Thank you. And to your comments, make me think of some of the work we do here. You all know the agenda of women peace and security. We also have an initiative that's about three years old now which we call men peace and security. And it is very much based on looking at the UN Security Council resolution. We feel that no country that has gone through violent conflict is going to succeed on 1325 or have a successful national action plan as required under 1325 if they don't have a very organized concerted program to reach out to boys and men to make them understand and respect, support the rights of women. And the way that the training in this field is done is not by getting young men in a room and countries that's gone through violence like Afghanistan is one country where we have a program going on now. You don't get them in the room and say, hey, you have to think about women's rights but you get them in the room and you have them learn about the values of peaceful masculinity. What a man, a boy can accomplish as a positive peace builder in his family, community and in his country, including countries that have been racked by terrible violence. And part of the training, and this goes to what you said about, the little boy chose the ball. There's one part of the training is how to get out of the man box. Because men in all countries here to grow up with certain expectations of what it is to be a boy and to be a man, like boys don't cry, you don't show your emotions and we are sort of imprisoned in these stereotypes. And so part of that training is how to step out and be proud of stepping out of this man box. So other parts include how to deal with your anger without creating violence against other people, without hurting other people and how to be a positive peace builder. So with that, I'd like to ask each of you what do you see as the particular challenges? How well are you doing in engaging boys and men to support this work? Actually there is, I think that there is a lot of challenges in which we are living. It's the culture barrier and the stereotypes and girls and women are most of the time, they have a fear to dare and to initiate their activities because they are afraid that they will be judged from the society and the communities in which they are living. So that's why we always say that men and women complement each other and we cannot live separated and we need to give the same opportunities to women and men, to girls and boys because we are all equal and also we have to tell the girls and women that they are powerful and they are smart and they can do what they, everyone can fail in doing stuff but then we can succeed, succeed. Great, Jen, you want to? Yes, so I actually will champion men because most of the countries when I did work on the ground, we partnered with men, organizations that wanted to champion girls. So I would hate for people to think that this problem is men who are subjugating or who are oppressing. Society is made up of both men and women so it is about really creating the awareness for gender, both, everybody. At the same time, I also want to, I advocate for and why I put even in my bio that I am a committed global citizen because this isn't just issue in those countries over there, I actually don't know where those countries are because it's only this world and this, our life, what we perceive and even in the United States, we are seeing amazing gender stereotype even sadly from our politicians that is coming out and that we're about to elect very soon. So this isn't issue that we only see in one country and it isn't an issue we only see with one religion and it isn't just issue that we see with one ethnic group, it is everywhere. So it starts there but as far as girls are concerned why I think this is such a unique group to target is that when I really envision the seven young change makers and the women, young women who are creating powerful change, you think we have to go out and make them or help them do this? They're doing it. I showed you pictures, there's one here, there's probably many in this room. They are already doing it. What I would like to do is scale this, show the world who they are, what their lives are and actually when you look at their lives it's very ordinary. They just envision the extraordinary and they are out there creating change. So more of this needs to be replicated and why I say our action is all about show and scale, show and scale. When I thought about those seven young women because I worked with them, my friend said, how can we show their power? And I said, do you have a large platform? And she said, yes, YouTube, one billion YouTube user. And we're just going to desensitize all of them and what they think about girls, we're going to really revolutionize them. I wanna turn now to first you in the room and also invite questions from people on the website. But I wanna add one thing because of the comments that you two made. When we do this training with men, particularly young men on peaceful masculinity, we don't go in with any attitude that we wanna tell them the men or perpetrators of crimes against women or other crimes. It's a positive outlook that shows what a positive peace builder you can be. And it's not accusatory. And I think it's very important for those of you who wanna get into this kind of work with men. Yes, sir. Please identify yourself. Yes. I know you're in the program, but tell us your country. My name is Mahmoud. I'm Palestinian from Lebanon. Thank you very much for this. And yes, I believe that empowering girls starts from ourselves, starts from me. I have three daughters. They wear blessings when they were born. And you know that the children, for example, in Lebanon, in the Palestinian camp or Shadiah, they have no places to play and especially the girls. So we established like an organization to target the girls, especially. And we have now a football team for girls and basketball teams. And these, they were very happy. At the beginning, we have cultural barriers. And even we found some like taboo, how you are dealing with the girls, being them football, basketball. And we started to take them outside the camp. Even we went to the Lebanese areas, Lebanese villages. And recently a football team from, even from Arcadia for girls. And you went to Norway and they went there and they played their football. So it's very important to engage the girls and to empower them. And this is very important for this. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, your excellency, the ambassador. First of all, I would like to thank my friend, Hinda. I'm really proud of you. I'm proud of your work. You've lost your name. My name is Ahmed. I'm from Jordan. I work in actually the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs. Part of my work is to empower women, especially in political life. So I'm proud of my colleague, Hinda, and about her work. My question for Hinda is you just mentioned that you have a printed curriculum based on non-formal education. Is that available for publics and websites or something? Yes, there is four curriculum for different ages. And they are available online. So you can just download them and you can use them within your community. Okay, thank you. My question for Jean, during your work on some countries, do you deal with governments more or with civil society? And what the kind of cooperation with governments? Have you faced, for example, some negative pressure for governments on some countries? Have you worked in Jordan, for example? Thank you. Sure, thank you. Actually, so I started this work with the US government. So at that capacity, I only worked with governments. I almost became the poster child for girls and I was going, speaking with foreign ministers or Minister of Health, Minister of Education, and briefing them about their girls and also telling them about our program and why it was so important to focus on girls. And then I went to the civil society and became part of the World Association of Girl Guides, 10 million girls. And then that was local action on the ground, working with programs, creating safe spaces, just the way that Henda had described, creating programs that really, the safe space is so critical. But what's interesting, then I saw, is I went to part of the world where it was all separated. The genders did not, the girls and boys did not interact at all. So although in Western countries, we can't understand and we think girls need their own separate space, there's a whole culture that's growing up without actually, that's how they're raised. So really, in that instance, they also need to learn integration. So I've seen both. What I have realized in life, and now I'm a seeker and a learner of really what creates social change. I'm not interested in doing nice projects anymore. I wanna create a transformation. I wanna create something that and be part of because I'm not the only one alone and never did I ever imagine that there would be day of the girl. This is happening everywhere. The awareness and understanding about not just girls' rights, but they are truly a powerful force for change is happening everywhere. So how does social change happens? Not top down, we know that. But sadly, also not bottom up because bottom up has a feeling. Social change happens when the top down meets bottom up. I call that global. It is that global thinking, local action that meets it together. And so that's why I intentionally called the movement for girls' global leadership. Hello everyone. I'm Amani from Palestine and I'm glad that I'm here today. I can confidently say that I'm a champion because I could make it and I'm here right now. As I came from, I can call it masculine or male society in Palestine where women still suffer from many issues that should not be suffered from these days. Like honor killing is still existence in Palestine. Also the stereotypes in all life aspects like in politics, in the social life, in the economic life. So there are many challenges in front of any woman who dream to be successful in her life in Palestine especially as women live under occupation in Palestine which makes it harder for them to achieve what they want to achieve because people or families are not just treating women like this or preventing them from practicing their freedom just because of their honor or the traditions or the close-minded culture. But because also they are all the time, they're worried about their daughters and their sisters and their wives because of their restriction of movement we have everywhere. If we want to move from a village to a village we face many challenges and we face many threats. So, but in spite of all of the facts that we have many challenges and we have the cultural barriers and the traditions that embed women from moving forward but we still have many success stories that should be exposed to the whole world because women who are living under such circumstances very tough circumstances and they're fighting to improve their lives, their children's life, their society's life should be exposed to all people to influence the others because they are very influential but they need more focus and their lives should be spot on them. I'd love for, I'm very impressed of your work and the organization you're working for and I'd love if we have some cooperation with your organization to spot the light on these ladies and these successful women who made the change, who are working on changing the mentality of this society. So, there are a lot of women who deserve the attention and deserve their stories are shared with the whole world. So thank you, I really appreciate what all of you are doing and thank you for having us today. Thank you for being here. Congratulations on being in the split program. One more lady. Well, I do wanna say that, so for GGL, I've let it go a long time ago and the great thing about it is, is not just my organization, this is a mission for the world and I'm inviting you, I'm inviting every single one of you, there's what, 2025, I would welcome your partnership and those examples, I said it is also an online magazine of showing girls and young women leading change we have quarterly issues. We would love to spotlight your work and the work we do with girls because again, more we see, we become. There's a saying, seeing is believing in English, it's really true and what people see, they believe it. I have three questions. First of all, there's a lot of criticisms in today, these days about the term empowerment because it's one of the approaches that the other side is powerless. So I would like to hear why some NGOs and civil society still using this term, although it's a very problematic one. And the second one that your human interest that there is your approach is to work also with women and men and a lot of NGOs are working only with women and it's like keeping, victimizing the victim twice. So what kind of work you are doing with the men and how you approach it and what challenges that you have with the work with the men and not only the women. And the last question is that there is a lot of change and we see a lot of women in different position. What I wanted to ask, why we still not seeing women in a peace building process that they are taking a position in this process in the world? Why we still not see this change in the world? I'm Wafa, I'm Arab Palestinian citizen of Israel. Well, I can take the first two question and then we can talk to people who are actually working on 1325 in peace and security. Maybe they could answer that question, Steve. But the empowerment, I love that question. And in fact, in our survey, we did not use that word because sheer fact that that word does not exist in most language. So when we translate it into Arabic, doesn't exist. When we translate it into Chinese, doesn't exist. Even when we translate it into French and Spanish, it came close but it doesn't exist. So what do we measure? Well, I encourage you to go to 4ggl.org and read the whole report. But we measured agency. What helps or why can't people create change? And we looked at two fundamental indicators of that helps with agency and that is voice and the other is choice. Now, we're gonna launch another survey to scale it also but now I'm even interested in, we learned two caveats of the voice and choice and I'd be happy to talk to you after the webcast because really this issue is so fascinating. That's why I'm a continuous learner in this process. Now the thing about empowerment and why we use that word because there is kind of a common understanding when we say it, especially in English speaking sectors, what that means, but it's also an opportunity to ask each one of us what does that mean to you? I'm a huge fan of anything that has in, it's my last name, in power, in vision. And that actually means the ownership belongs to you. It's restoring power back to people where that power has been taken away. And same thing with in vision, it's seeing a vision that other people can't see. So it is really asking and I would ask you that question. What does empowerment mean to you? And I welcome your answer after this session. About girls and women or why not boys or how re-engaging and I agree with that as well. I've studied because I'm so interested in creating social change and not just about projects. I actually looked at movement. I've studied a lot about what creates social change, what creates social movements and why I can now make an argument, especially in this peace and security space, why it's so important. And that's because there's a global study that's been done and in fact Valerie Hudson wrote a book that the number one indicator of country at war is not democracy, it's not economic development, it's actually violence against women. It is a direct correlator to a country going to war. So what creates, what helps lessen violence against women. It's actually women themselves. It's them creating movements, creating change, creating awareness. So, and I showed you from our survey that this group, millennial women are so accountable. When we asked them who is gonna create this change, they didn't say our government. They didn't say, I mean, there are people who did say it, but they are holding themselves accountable and saying we wanna create the change. That's why I focus on the girls and young women. I believe that in every situation there's two sides and 50% for every side for the last outcome. I mean, when we say that the woman, I understand and I believe that this depends on the woman and that they can take the rights and do whatever they want to do. But I think sometimes that when we see this sentence, it's like giving the other side permission to keep doing what they are doing without taking any responsibility. I believe that woman should take the whole responsibility, but in other ways it's very problematic to me to hear this sentence and not comment about it because I think even in a very small or full percentage, the other side have their responsibility about the different situations that have been here. It's a very holistic way I see the situation and not seeing that only women can solve this or only women can deal with this situation. All right, well, this is my comment. And I'd be happy to speak with you. I think you misunderstood. I didn't say women are responsible for creating change. I'm saying they're doing it. Everybody is responsible for creating change. And generally when I'm speaking at universities or in conferences, I would act, especially many universities, it's majority men. So I'm telling them to also create change, help women and girls be empowered as well. So this isn't, I'm not saying only women are responsible for creating change. The young women are actually holding themselves accountable for their own change, not responsible. I would like just to comment about the peace building. I think that women are already in the process of peace building because when a mother is educated in her son and her daughter to respect the others and to stop the violence and to listen to others through communication and through dialogue, she's already raising a generation of people who will spread peace among their communities and their society. She or he can be one day in a high position and to spread the peace building on international level. So I strongly believe that women and girls have already a big role and they are playing a big role to the peace building process. I agree with you. Hi, I'm Yara, I'm Palestinian citizen of Israel. I live in Nazareth, which is in northern part of Israel. First of all, I want to tell you something that happens often in my country, killing women on the background of families' dignity. When it started first to happen, I remember my dad, we run the Arabic League of Radio Station authorized by the Secondary Authority in Israel. So we always want to make a change. We try to make a change via gathering like over 50 Knesset members signatures against getting women in families' dignity. And I was a little girl and I asked my dad, so why don't you have like a similar one but against getting women on the background of families' dignity? So I always thought men and women should be equal. And as Queen Rania once said in one of her panels at Yale University, why should your identity constitute a barrier to entry? We're in a world where you are born in a gender and you can transform and we still discriminate against women because of their identity. I want to ask you, who do you blame for this? Mainly, do you blame like a woman themselves? Because sometimes I believe that, yes, the word is giving just some women but they're not making the most of it. Do you blame governments? Do you blame the biggest countries in the world who are leading most countries look for them as like their role models? Who do you think is the main actor here? Well, sure, being a leadership development expert, I don't blame anyone. I want to take action to correct it. I think the blaming and the finger pointing and even if it seems like, and I've been in this space my whole life since birth, which is the reason why I started the organization that I did or I started for GGL, because we've killed 100 million girls because they had two ex chromosome, 100 million, because no fault of their own. So who do we have to blame for this? But I'm not interested in blaming anymore. I've done this my whole life and that's a waste of my energy. I want to take action and why I was so adamant to my friend here to call me an actionist and not an activist. I've given up the activism, I've given up the advocacy, I want to take action and I want to take action with you or whoever wants to create change in their country and their local society, because that's the only way we create change. There's enough people who are going around and blaming and saying, who's fault is this? What their fathers didn't allow them to do and really the issue for girls and issue women actually is the laundry list is growing so long. I mean, today we have now have an issue called gang rape, weapons of war, ISIS slavery and this is just really getting horrible. So I do know about the issue, about honor killing and the shaming and all of that. I've seen this at a global epidemic level that without really addressing what we call the root cause, it is we're only gonna add to the laundry list of the symptoms. I suggest that you look into Gaza and maybe you can pick a woman from Gaza. I think they have very interesting stories. Well, and here's my invitation, help me find her. I will. Okay. So hello everyone. My name is Mohan Dresky, I'm from Algeria. I'm involved in the fight against violence in school, but more against violence towards women. Actually I have a question, as I believe strongly on the equality between genders. My question is simply, how is it possible? And also, what are the two I mean to use among this? And knowing that many societies, they still believe that the place of women is still at the kitchen, and they're always, I mean, inferior. And my second question, I would try to be short. In the societies where religion is the master, I mean, how can we just change, I mean, the mind, the people's minds about the question of sexual assault, which is considered as a taboo, and where nobody talks about it, and where I mean women as victims, they are in two cases. The best one is to be next silence, and the worst one is to be next to mean people who consider them as dirty girls, or sometimes they are battered by them. Thank you. I can respond on some points about how to stop this violence. I think the most important thing is to communicate, because we have the lack of communication between family members in the society, between men and women, boys and girls. We are always putting this virtual barrier between each other. So it's time now to communicate and to say, why are we saying that this is taboo? Let's talk about it, let's talk about it, and try to solve the problem together. Maybe your point of view is different than mine, and mine is different than yours, but we can find a common solution that everyone will accept it. And the other thing, especially for young boys and girls, I think that the best idea is the non-formal education, because if I will call a girl and a boy and I will just make a conference or presentation for them, they will never understand that. However, if I will present them some activities in which they will play, so they will learn and they will think about it. And likely later, they will not be violent against their sisters or against their neighbors. So I think that non-formal education, communication are the key to solve the problem. Thank you, Ken. Well, I, again, going back, it begins with you, right? How you treat the women in your life, how you treat your daughters, I don't know if you have daughters, or even aunts or nieces or whoever. And although I like to think that leaders who have women in their lives makes an impact, and I do believe it, I mean, I heard the President of United States, Barack Obama, say that he wants his daughters to have the same opportunity as your sons. And when he said that, it was powerful. Now, of course, I work on the ground. I want each person to have that mind-shift change about the way the girls are perceived. But it also helps if your community leaders, if your religious leaders, if your government leaders are also aware of the power of girls. Yeah, I think we have time for one last question. Hello, my name is Muna. I'm an university instructor and an urban planner from Jordan. And my recent work, I'm working with the settlement of Syrian refugees in Jordan. And doing so, I'm working with not only women, but men and children who are fleeing the country from this bloody war. And I wanted to know more about the rule, if any of USIP in peace building, in a way to mitigate the impacts of this horrific conflict. I'm saying that's something we can continue in the next part of this forum, because we have our colleagues here, including our Executive Vice President, Ambassador Bill Taylor, and we'll be talking to you about the role of USIP and how we can hopefully be helpful to you in your work and in your networking. So, because you posed a big question there. I myself am working on a program to work with displaced persons in Ukraine, displaced from the conflict, the aggression from Russia in Ukraine. And there are almost two million displaced persons there. It's not quite the proportion you're dealing with there from the Syrian crisis, but it's getting really high. In fact, it's fourth in the world after Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, in terms of the number of persons who've been displaced by conflict. So it is something we're trying to get a hold of here. It's something we're trying to work with and find a way to help to turn it around and to help these people and to help on getting them included again in their societies when the time comes. And in the meantime, working on their inclusion and helping them as peace builders in the societies and in the cities where they're located now, and in your case in the camps as well. You have a monumental task there. And I hope you can talk with colleagues here who can be directly helpful to you and others here too. And with that, I wanna thank all of you, particularly our guests online because we're gonna close that part of this. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you for celebrating with us the International Day of the Girl. And thank you to our democracy fellows here. And we look forward to continuing the dialogue with you, with all of you. Thank you very much. Thank you.