 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome this morning. On behalf of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, it's an honor for me to be here today to join all of you in commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. That amendment gave women across the United States the right to vote. But it would be, I think, a bit wrong to say that it gave women in the United States the right to vote. Actually, the territory of Wyoming gave women the right to vote in 1869, one year after the adoption of the 14th Amendment. They took seriously that every person is entitled to equal protection of the law. We have to hand it to the state of Wyoming, or actually the territory of Wyoming at the time. It was the first jurisdiction in the entire world that gave women the right to vote, and we're grateful for them getting the rest of the country on track to have that happen 100 years ago. This was a remarkable achievement. We have a great group of American women activists to thank for that. As we all know from our country's history, it's often a struggle against entrenched interests to make those interests open up and make governance much more inclusive. Even after the passage of the Constitutional Amendment that guaranteed universal suffrage, women of color were kept from voting and fully participating in our society. That was supposed to, I might add, have been fixed by the 15th Amendment, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in voting. It took another couple of amendments, including the poll tax amendment to see if we couldn't solve that problem. What I want you to think about here is that we in the United States try and fix problems. The problem of being a truly representative of democracy is a problem that we all have to face in our everyday life. We celebrate the milestones along the way. It's pretty clear that we haven't reached our destination yet, but nonetheless, we're trying. The women joining us today, all of whom are recipients of the International Women of Courage Award, have shown us how to forge the path forward through courage, grit, and I have to tell you, just really, really, really hard work. One of the reasons that I love the idea of being here with all of you this morning, is just to recognize just how hard it is that they work. The advancement of democratic values in the full participation of every member of our society is a central part of who we are as Americans and an urgent goal of our foreign policy. We simply cannot do it alone. We cannot do it as Balkanized groups. We have to do it together. This is why we work ceaselessly to promote free and fair elections open to all. The next big challenge, even assuming that they're open to all, is to get everybody to participate. But this is human nature. We try and do what we can to support those who defend human rights, those who fight corruption, and those who work to ensure that all women have a voice in the issues that shape their lives. After all, women are not a minority. They're the majority. Unfortunately, there are powers that like to keep them out of the decision-making process. Part of our job is to make sure that we as the United States stand strong in our effort to strive for the full participation of all women regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability. We want the women's voice because it's different than the men's voice, and we want every woman to participate because every woman is different. If there's no uniformity here, that's what as the French say, let's celebrate the differences. Now more than ever, as the world faces this pandemic, it's important that we recognize the contributions that women make to our society. They face a disproportionate impact of the health, economic, and social crises resulting from the pandemic. Women, many of whom are in the helping professions are among the first responders who were there at the beginning of the epidemic. So we want to make sure that we very actively take an effort to include people who actually have a lot to offer and a lot to lose if they're not engaged in the discussion. My Bureau, Human Rights and Labor, Democracy, Human Rights and Labor works closely with the Department of States Office of Global Women's issues to implement US policy priorities, to advance democratic principles, and to empower women and girls to be active members of the democratic process. It's with great pleasure that I introduce my colleague, Kelly Curry, who's the ambassador at large for global women's issues, and that office, global women's issues leads the department's efforts to support women as they strive to prevent conflict, promote security, protest, and work against authoritarianism, and to fight for the equal status of women and their economic empowerment. Ambassador Curry was appointed in December 2019. She also serves as the US representative at the United Women's Commission on the status of women. Prior to her appointment as ambassador for global women's issues, she led the Department of States Office for Global Criminal Justice, and served under Ambassador Nikki Haley as United States representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, and alternative representative to the UN General Assembly. I also have the pleasure of introducing this morning my colleague in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Deputy Assistant Secretary Karen McDonald. She oversees the Bureau's work on Europe, South and Central Asia, multi-lateral and global affairs. She very recently joined us. I can say we're very glad to have her after having served as US Consul General in Strasbourg and Deputy US Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe. Thank you Ambassador Curry for inviting us here today to reflect on the milestone that is the 19th Amendment and to learn from the perspective of these remarkable women of courage, how to support progress in the global women's rights area and in political participation. I turn it over to you and look forward to hearing what you have to say into meeting these wonderful women. Thank you. Thank you so much Bob for that gracious introduction and for hosting this event on DRL's Facebook page. We're so fortunate to have such great colleagues and partners at the department as we work on our goals of promoting the empowerment of women and girls around the world. We're so honored that everyone has tuned in for this important conversation on women's political participation and our role in democracy building. I am especially honored to be joined by my friend Deputy Assistant Secretary Kira McDonald and an amazing panel of women, all of whom are recipients of the Secretary of State's International Women of Courage Awards or what we call around the office, the IWOC and these are truly remarkable women. We're thrilled that every year the Secretary of State's IWOC Awards recognize women around the world who have demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights and women's empowerment, often at great personal risk and sacrifice as all these women have. 100 years after the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, millions of women around the world have continued the work of America's suffragettes to promote democracy and advocate for their rights to political participation. Each of today's panelists embodies these characteristics and has dedicated their lives to promoting women's free and fair political participation and women's involvement in democracy building around the world, including in their particular countries. Himena Galarza is a distinguished Bolivian journalist with more than 25 years of experience. Across her extensive career, Himena has protected Bolivia's democracy by exposing corruption and violations of democratic freedoms and norms. In 2019, two of Himena's interviews transformed Bolivia's political landscape by demonstrating fraud in that year's presidential election. Himena's work was later confirmed by an independent investigation of the Organization of American States. Shala Umbatova has worked as a defense lawyer in Azerbaijan since 2013 and has bravely defended human rights defenders, journalists, bloggers, youth activists, members of the political opposition, and others. Her example has inspired other lawyers to better advocate for their clients in politically sensitive cases, and her courage in representing LGBT clients in a conservative culture has pushed civil rights further down the path to tolerance. She's one of only two female lawyers to take on these cases of a difficult environment in which human rights lawyers have regularly been harassed and threatened in social media, suspended from practicing law, and disbarred, including Shala, who is currently contesting her own disbarment in Azerbaijan. Himena and Shala were both honored with the IWAC Award in March of 2020, and I was so thrilled to be present for their ceremony and meet these remarkable women and hear their stories. Lama Luma Said was born in 1972 in Mauritania. When she was 17 years old, she was already a leading activist at her school for the emancipation of Haritans. Lama Luma became one of just four Haritian women elected as a member of parliament to the Mauritania National Assembly. She was first elected in 2006. Lama Luma has since dedicated her life to defending human rights and equality, as well as the fight against all forms of discrimination in Mauritania. Lama Luma was honored by the Secretary of State in March 2018 with the International Women of Courage Award. This is truly a remarkable, incredible group of women with diverse experiences in democratic development and democratic space, and an array of perspectives on these issues. With that wonderful introduction of these remarkable participants, I'm going to turn things over to Das McDonald to ask our esteemed panelists their questions, her first question. Kara. Kara, Kara, Kara, you're muted. Thank you so much, Ambassador Curry, and for the opportunity to participate, the honor of participating in this commemoration event today. The first question I'd like to throw out is for Lama Luma. We talk a lot about meaningful participation of women in political and public life and how critical it is to building and sustaining representative societies. Yet, around the world, women continue to be underrepresented. They face barriers to safely and freely participating in their country's political institutions. Lama Luma, how have you worked to empower more women to participate in Mauritania's political process? I'm going to ask everyone. OK, I will respond. Thank you. I applied politics early on because I come from I come from a community in Mauritania called Haratim, who differs from our distribution and safety and safe. And the Haratim, the descendant of the office team, created a movement called and which I joined this movement in the goals of this movement with sort of find a way to find a way to to free the Haratim. And this was in the early 1990s. We started talking about the role of the Haratim and the role of women within that society, within that organization and what role of women to play and what role should they be. So it was it was very challenging to to to to okay the importance of women to play especially by finding both women who were willing to take part of the men who understood the importance of women. So women tried to understand slowly that they were able to not just play their roles but they could be also be the one who could promote their rights and be active members of society. Merci beaucoup Lama Luma pour votre réponse et pour votre courage. The second question that I have is for Shala. Women political candidates may face particular barriers, including harassment, harassment, threats, sometimes death threats and gender-based violence. Shala, what has been your experience defending political candidates and party members? Shala, you may be on mute. It's okay now, yeah? We can hear you now. Thank you. Hi again to everyone. And first of all, I want to say thank you for inviting me to and I'm happy to be among these incredible persons. And before answering your question, I just want to say because I'm very proud to say that that we in Azerbaijan we celebrated 100 years of women's suffrage last year in 2019. I mean, Azerbaijani women gained the right to vote to elect and be elected one year before in US women and decades before many European nations. So we are proud of that. But unfortunately now and nowadays the situation is not so so nice and good as we would wish. Coming to your question, you know, the situation in my country is incredibly now I'm speaking about this race and times is incredibly hard and difficult in terms of human rights, political and civil rights. And I have been as ambassador curator. I have been defending political prisoners and those who whose human rights were violated since 2013. And I can say now that the situation is getting worse and worse every year. And looking back, I can look in back 2013, 14 and 15, I can say that the situation was much better than at that time than now. Now, as you know, I have been disbarred and I'm deprived of opportunity to exercise my my work as a lawyer, as the defense lawyer, but and just few lawyers still can defend human rights in my country. Maybe they are four or five. Just imagine four or five and the population and population of my country is 10 million. For 10 million people whose rights are violated every day because we have so huge problems with democracy and human rights, as you know, maybe from State Department reports which differ from each other each year, getting worse and worse. And I want to say that women are even in more better in more difficult situations. For example, those who are acting in opposition parties or civil society who are engaged in civil society activities or political activities. We don't have much. I mean, many women who are represented in social or political life. Maybe we will talk about this later. Why? What is the reasons of low representation of women? But and this situation when everyone who is engaged in politics or social activities is a victim of human rights violations. This is one of the factors which prevent women of being engaged in that so active social life, you know, because it's not it is very hard. And you know that in Azerbaijan, the society is very patriarchal and conservative. I mean, it is it is double hard. Let's say so double hard for women to go out from her house, to go out of her family from her family into the social life and to participate actively in social, political life of the country. And when she faced these obstacles, harassment, pressure from government, from law enforcement bodies, it is like additional. It additionally prevent her from doing so because not every woman is so brave and so strong in my country. In my country to be to be engaged in social or political activity, you indeed have to be very brave and very strong. I can give you examples maybe later if we have time how oppositional politic politic women's I mean, women are political politics from oppositional parties are harassed. They face harassment. They are imprisoned and et cetera, et cetera. So to be a woman in Azerbaijan is not easy, is not simple. Even in I mean, even if you are not in political life, but if you are going into the political life, it's it becomes like double hard. And you can just imagine in which situation we are working now. Thank you very much, Shala. And really for your courage, the review of the the thorny issues that women face trying to enter the political space and really thriving in the political space. I think is is testament to the hard work that you and your colleagues do. He may not I'd like to to turn to you now with a question about free media. So the United States considers freedom of the press to be a necessary part of a strong democracy and free society. He made it as a journalist. How have women in Bolivia expanded the press's role in supporting democratic institutions and ideals? You may know, we can't hear you. I want to make sure you're not on mute. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank you for this opportunity. I am so pleased to see Ambassador Kerry. I have fond memories of our encounter with Shala. Also, we share the moments that are going to be engraved by memory forever. And I want to thank you for the opportunity I am given now to share about our work and struggle. Ambassador Kerry, again, thank you very much. I really, really like it. Silence is the best ally to perpetuate abuse and inequality that oppresses women in the hemisphere and the planet, not only Bolivia. And there are several factors that cause this. And this let's talk about this inequality in this gamut of inequality that create problems for women. We have a problem in terms of the exercise to the prevention, the obstacles to exercise freedom of the press and women participating in this process is fundamental so that women's voices, their needs and interests can be contemplated in the design of the in policymaking. For example, as journalists, we many times talk about the lack of equality in education. We make an effort to inform on inequality and the lack of participation of women and lack of participation of women in the political process. And of course, this includes the problems that we face in terms of the right and the ability to share and know information. This it's important to defend freedom of the press because this is a cornerstone that supports other political rights. And we this is why to make sure that we have protection of the human rights of women. It's fundamental that we have total freedom of the press and freedom of information. Thank you so much, you may not. I'd like to I'd like to now go to the panel's broad experience. How can we empower more women to take part in the political process, be it from the media side, be it from direct involvement in the political process and play a key role in protecting and building democracies around the around the world? Shala, can we start with you, maybe? Yes. It's not so easy to do so. To inspire women and to involve to have them in to be involved in these political processes. It's not so easy, you know, it's not easy and simple to be women in general, you know, if you look back at the history, you will see that we see that this world is not the best place for women to live and for centuries during many, many centuries, the women were have been kept in the shadow of men at background. And now we are doing with those gender based models, gender roles of women and men in society. So we cannot go far away from those stereotypes and traditions, especially in the societies like my, like Azerbaijan society, which is patriarchal and majority of population is Muslim. So you just can imagine how deep rooted traditions we have and all the social behavior of women and men are based on that deep, let's say so deep, rooted tradition. We cannot go break, break those stereotypes and that perception that women has her own role, her role, she is born to be mother, she's born to be wife, she is born, born to raise her children and to keep her household. That is what is what is the responsibility of women. So our task is to break that perception and to change the minds because everything will change, start inside of our brains in our minds. So that is the most difficult part, what we should do. And, you know, in this year in Azerbaijan, we had parliamentary elections in February. And I was so happy to see that more women, more and more women are ready, are willing to participate, to run for elections, to nominate the candidates. And this year, we were observing myself. I was part of the International Observation Mission of OEC, which was deployed to Azerbaijan to observe the election process. And I was myself observing how many brave women we have which were running for election and struggling for their right to be elected. Not only to be elected, but to be elected in Parliament. And now, in our Parliament, we have... I don't want to talk about the election itself because it was very far from international standards. As maybe you know, probably know, it was very far from international standards. And it is very sad. But as a fact, I can say that the chairperson of Parliament is a woman now, and we have 21 women in Parliament, I mean MPs. That is 22% of the general number of MPs. Just to compare, five years ago, in 2005, we had parliamentary elections, we had 90% of nominates, candidates, and 90% were men, and only 10% were women. And now, five years later, we had 22% of women and 78% of men. I mean, this is not very big increase, but still it is an increase. And this gives hope that all women will get involved more and more into political processes. How to inspire them? I prefer to inspire them by my own personal story, maybe. You know, one of the problems in my country is domestic violence. For example, domestic violence is a very big problem. And inequality between women and men, it is everywhere in education, in social activities, and everywhere, and women feel very weak and helpless because of many, many reasons. And what we should do first, we should help women to feel strong, to feel not helpless, and that is the responsibility of strong women. When you say that Shah-Laa-Himana and Zarifa, etc., are strong and brave women, and they were awarded by women of courage awards. And this means that we have to feel that responsibility on our shoulders to change the situation with other women who are not such strong and brave as we are. And I always talk into our women, but I prefer just to tell them my own story, that I myself was, had to be, used to be a victim of domestic violence just 10 years ago. And my life changed in 2009, and before 2009, I was one of those helpless women who were subjected to domestic violence, who was close to home, and had no right, no permission to leave home without husband, etc., etc. But I just found that strength inside of me to change my life, to change things, and I gave that power to me myself. And now I have that responsibility that I have to share that power to other women who are not that strong, who are weak, and explaining to them that our lives is something which, something what we are responsible for. It is, we don't have to take it for granted. We have to make something to change our own lives and the lives of our neighbors, friends, and etc., etc., those who cannot do it themselves, right? Thank you, Shala. That's an incredible story, Shala, and I think it goes to the question that I was going to pose next, which is, what advice would you give? And I think your personal conviction and your personal story has contributed to that advice you would give to others who are also struggling in a situation and trying to get involved. I wonder if I can invite either of the other participants on this question of what advice would you give to other women who are interested in participating to step up. Himeina, can we go to you? Thank you so much. In Bolivia, we are going through situations that are very complex. In the other parts of the world, we are fighting against coronavirus. But in Bolivia, we are facing a electoral process this year and we are conducting some oversight from the part of the media. There are laws in our democracy that are placed to ensure the participation of women. We have recovered democracy 36 years ago and the percentages of women participating in the political process this percentage is increasing. We are on our way to become one of the countries that will actually achieve some sort of parity or equality in terms of number of women participating. We are the second country in the world with the highest number of women participating in politics. But at the same time, you have other problems because the challenge is still there. And as a journalist, we constantly underlight that we should strive and make an effort to have a high quality participation. It's not only the numbers, we have to be able to make a difference in the lives of women in terms of the quality of participation. Even though in Bolivia, we have made progress in terms of equality. In 2010, we passed this law. This law establishes that 50% in the assembly in parliament have to be women. So you might think that this is guaranteed, but no, it is not true. When you go to the rural areas and you see women participating in rural areas, women have struggles because sometimes they are elected, women are elected. But then once they are in office, they are pressured by their male counterparts to resign so the alternate can become the new representative. A council woman who created a specific law or drafted a law to prevent political violence was murdered a few years ago. So there are so many aspects that we need to change. But we are here as journalists, we are constantly motivating women so that they can pursue their dream of becoming involved in politics. Otherwise, we are going to be leaving them on their own. We have to work a lot and it's a lot of work to open spaces and to accompany them in their political and the decision-making process. Another thing, it's important in terms of motivation. Well, we have a law, as I just mentioned, there is a legal framework. We are trying to sensitize the society. We want to create awareness because many women are reluctant to participate in politics because of the violence they will suffer. And when they suffer violence, you know, this is something that brings discouragement. So it's for all of us to create courage, to instill this strength, to motivate, to express our support. I think this is our work. This is what we have to do. And humbly, from my perspective, this is how I believe we can achieve this goal. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jimena. I want to remind our online viewing audience that you can post questions to these three distinguished women and we will be able to feed those into discussion. I want to also pass the microphone, so to speak, back to Ambassador Curry for the next question. Thank you so much, Kara. And again, just so inspiring to hear these women talking about their experiences. We have a really good question from one of our viewers watching on Facebook. This is from Hassan Poya in Afghanistan. And she would like to know from our panelists, how can women unite in a male-dominated community where they are not really permitted to speak out? What measures can men take to stand by women and to make sure that women's rights are observed? She notes that she would really like to have some real life examples. So I would like to turn first to Lama Luma, because I think that she would be able to provide us with some excellent experiences in this regard and would love to see, would love to hear from her on how she successfully has navigated in this space in Mauritania, which is obviously a very conservative male-dominated society. Over to you, Lama Luma. Thank you very much. I thank everyone as well. I thank the panelists for sharing their experience. I heard everything that they said and the fight that they're going through to get to their rights. I would say our country in Mauritania, which has four million inhabitants, it has a lot of problems, including slavery. It has a problem of the 1889 events between different ethnic groups. All of this created, so that also led to a discrimination within the Harateen, not even having the right to vote, because they had to get the right from their master. And because there was no political will from the government, women did not have any right to vote, but that did not keep from women to keep fighting. And through this civil society, we created a group of women, and at that moment we started communicating with the government to sort of promote more women participating in the political scene. That conversation with the government led to more implication, and we worked with the NDI, the National Democratic Institute, which helped us a lot to do a lot of work. And as the political will was improving in having more women, and the work that we've done with NDI led us to explain to them and get them to understand the importance, the role of women. And we advocated for the 20% quota of women to be in the parliament, and women in the parliament were able to achieve that, and as an example, I was part of that percentage quota. But we had all the difficulty to reach that quota, that 20% quota. And one of the reasons why we have an issue reaching that quota is because of traditional issues. There are still lots of women, lots of men who believe that women should place should not be at the political scene. They don't want women to be representative for for because for them women did not have their place. And also we have another difficulty in Mauritania that doesn't just come from men that comes from women because there are a lot of women that still don't see themselves as as able as able being to be part of it and for them to be the one asking for their rights and so we have those difficulties. And through the through the community we have we were able to get 18% of representative at the parliament so we're not that at the 20% but we were at 18%. And right right now we also succeeded in having 30% of women that were elected at the municipal level. And so it's a lot of sacrifice and I think the multi women sacrifices a lot to get to where she is. And so for me, my advice will be the the there has to be a will coming first of all from the woman himself, and also a will from the government and from the political will. And also for the government to create that space where women can flourish and thrive. I'll give an example in 2013, in 2013, when we will do 2017 when we were doing an election. There was, oh, there was there was there was there was a political party that went to see the president that says we didn't we don't want to have a woman a woman representing us in the rural area. Because, and so at that moment that the former president forced the political party to, to make sure that they have the woman representative. And so, when they saw, so, so when they when they noticed that on the list on the electoral list, the woman were ahead. They came and saw the president and trying to negotiate and advocated that this was traditional roles, because of, because of society because of, because of tribes and so we want to make sure that the man is ahead. So as a result of that because what they were trying to do is take off our place in the in the head of the list which meant that there will be less and less woman representative we decided to create a national woman of list. And so through that national woman of list, then we were able to ensure that woman could that woman could be represented through that national amount of list. So now, so now because of what the initial plan you had you had you had an area where in throughout the region, throughout the different cities and state only two cities or state were represented by women. So through this national list that we did, we were able to change that. And right right but right now unfortunately things are going backwards a little bit. As an instance, for example, we went from having four woman mayor to now now we only have one woman mayor. So in the National Assembly before just as an example of how things are going a little bit backward, we used to have 20% of women that were part of the executive board of the National Assembly. So but now if you look at the National Assembly, the first president, the second president, third president all the four top leaders of the National Assembly are men and the woman takes the fifth place. I apologize for having a duck and cover. I apologize. Thank you. Thank you, Lama Luma that's okay we we are all experiencing this this context for a new time and trying to get things to work virtually but thank you so much for your very wholesome response. If I can turn now to another question that has come in on our Facebook feed. And it's somewhat similar to Nagui and has asked the panelists, how could they engage their country to discuss women's issues in their home country. What advice would you give to and other look and others looking to engage on these issues. Shala maybe I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. The question is pretty much similar and I wanted to answer and to add to Maluma say it's what Maluma said that in may men dominating societies. In which I leave myself. Just let's look at that societies who raised those men women. What we should change we should change the thoughts of those women who raise. Men. Their sons I mean their sons. Put it in inside of their brains that you are dominating you are men you are head of the family you are main person in the in the society etc etc. I can I just say it from practice I see in in many many families that those practices those so those traditions are kept and you cultivated by women. So we have to work with with those women I have a son for example I have a son and from his childhood, I was trying to raise him in a spirit of love to to human kind to saying that women are just equal with men you are not better you are not higher you because if I don't say that to him he will see the opposite around him I mean on the streets on society that this is traditional perception and that I want to say that we have to start from ourselves when we raise sons for the society. And, but when they have grown already, and they have their certain thoughts about regarding these gender roles in the society, what we have to do, we have to work with men. And this is responsibility of civil society to think about different programs and different strategies how to work with men, how to talk to them to make a discussion with them. It is not easy, it is not simple to change what is already established in your brain yeah, and, but it, this is what we have to do, we have to work with people with every single individual, explaining the value of each women each man and explaining their rights because as Jimenez said, the big problem is lack of awareness because people are not aware they are so conservative and they are so close minded, not only because they want to be so because they don't know they haven't ever seen a different picture of life different picture of work. So we have to explain them we have to show them that life can be beautiful life can be better, and each of us if each of them in the rural areas in every village every single you know that uneducated women uneducated family to explain them that each of you are very valuable part of society, you are those who have to build our society to build our happiness our country our democracy, just to explain and I think that everything starts with understanding of that I can do that to believe in yours, we can it we have to explain to women that she has to believe in herself in her powerness that she can change things. And, but that is not possible without help of her family her husband her father her brother and everyone around her. So we have to work with everyone with every single individual. It is big work, it's not easy, but that is what we have to do. I mean, civil society human rights defenders and state authorities and journalists bloggers, everyone who are actively involved in active social life, have to feel responsibility to come together to think about what we can do to change things because in conservative believing in conservative societies it is very very hard to change things, but but we cannot change things if we don't do anything just talk just to sing we have to go up go go forward to those people and talk to them and start doing something. Right. And Shala certainly is someone who does something. I have to apologize because why we plan to, we try to plan for every contingency with this program today, we did not anticipate an actual. It wasn't a drill, we thought that might be a duck and cover drill and that we might get La Maluma back after it was over but unfortunately she has had to leave us because they had to put the embassy where she was joining us from under lockdown so I apologize that we've lost La Maluma but this we do have another great question from our audience. This is from Ali Reza Hussaini in Afghanistan we have a lot of participation from Afghanistan today, welcome. She's asking, what are the plans and strategies to help women engage in all parts of society and government, especially in making decisions about their country and people. And what foundations or organizations are active today to help women and empower them. Well there's certainly a lot of opportunity there. But I think it might be useful, Jimena, if you could talk a little bit about your experience as an international women of courage award recipient, and how that, you know, brought you in contact with different organizations, how it showed you the network that is out there for women and maybe talk a little bit about some of those experiences by way of answering this question. Could you do that Jimena. Of course Ambassador. Thank you for the question. The situation of women has changed a lot. We have protections, we have a framework, we have international conventions on human rights, etc. But discrimination is still in place as you know, we see in the case of Bolivia and I understand this is very common in the rest of the countries, violence or your fear of suffering violence limits your capacity of receiving and giving information. And with these intimidations that come what happens is that women many times keep silent, and they refuse to participate in social life in Bolivia we see that domestic violence is terrorizing many, many, many, many families. Terror or intimidation through social media is also significant and it is affecting the work of activists, especially women who are participating politics and journalists, especially for us who are constantly covering all types of news. However, Bolivia historically has women who work very hard in very significant struggles that Bolivia has had in those struggles women have been very crucial. Last year it was mothers, sisters, grandmothers who went to the streets demanding respect for their vote fighting for democracy. It's women in Bolivia who are not happy to be relegated to be forgotten. These mentalities slowly changing. In the past, we were more conservative. Women were not really willing to go out on the streets. So I would like to say that women feel that they will have a say that that's why we have journalists and we have people who are encouraging women to participate. And I think, and this is the most important thing, we have this courage that comes from inside of us. This is courage that comes from the inside. I am not, I don't want to compare women with men at this point, but I always say that there is a sleeping wolf inside of you when somebody touches or affects your children, your interests, your family. This is a strength that's waiting to be released. And by the way, thanks. And this is something that comes as a result of this incredible award I received from the Department of State. This award has been able for us to network all over the country and all over the world to say that we have to work, as Shalaja said, we need to change the chip in the heads of the children to cut short these stereotypes. So it's important to unite to work together using all the resources that we have available and we are still at the beginning and there's a lot to see in the future. Thank you, Khimena. That's so inspiring. I think we are about to be out of time here. We're supposed to end at 11, but I do want to ask, and I was so disappointed that we've lost La Maluma, but I do want to ask our remaining panelists, Khimena and Shala, if you could give one piece of advice, just like one, your one top piece of advice as successful activists, as women of courage, to help that of what our audience, both the women and the men in our audience can do to help empower women to fully participate in politics and political life in their own countries. What would that one piece of advice be? Over to you, Shala first, and then Khimena. Thank you. If we have just 30 seconds, I want to add to the previous regard, the previous question about international organization and their support, just to say that it is extremely important to use the resources of international organizations which are ready to support women's and human rights in the countries like Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, etc. By the way, there are so many viewers from Afghanistan because of Zarifa, you know. Zarifa is one of the recipients of Iwork, so hello to Zarifa and all Afghani women who are very brave and strong we know from Zarifa. And so you have to think about how you can come together to build strong civil society which should work with international organizations because international organizations cannot come to your country to the ground and do the work which you have to do because they can support you. And but you have to build civil society institutions, organizations to, I don't know, supporting women of Ghana or wherever in the world, women and that civil society organizations will cooperate with international organizations making programs, making thinking about strategies, etc. And even in the situation where civil society is under very big pressure like in my country where NGOs are very limited in their activity, we can think about how to do it individually, how not to stop our activities, still continue working with international organizations helping the women's, etc. So never stop, never stop working, never stop your activity in any situation. And the last advice from me is just believe in yourself, trust in yourself that you are strong, you are powerful. Look at me. All the time I tell the women which who I met domestic violence, victims, etc. I say just look at me. 10 years ago, I couldn't even imagine that 10 years later I will be standing on the same sharing the same scene with us first lady and state secretary, Mr Pompeo and receiving a word from them. I couldn't even imagine that, but it happened. So the dreams come true because we just have to believe in our strengths, which is inside of us. We have to take it out from our inside and act, just act. Don't have pity or mercy to yourself, just sitting at home and saying, oh my God, I'm so happy to be born in Azerbaijan or Afghanistan, etc. And I'm so jealous to women of France or United States. No, don't do that. Just believe to yourself and act, be strong, be powerful and believe that you can change your life. After you have changed your life, you will be able to change life of other people around you. You will be helping them and that will make you happy. Himena, go ahead. What's your last piece of advice to our audience? We are facing significant times in which women is going to leave fear behind because women are speaking up and we are not allowing silence to perpetuate inequality. So I am making a call on women from all over the world to participate in the political process. Within the political process, you will have a chance to contribute. You will have a chance to make decisions, to promote public policy, to propose legislation and practices. But in the face of this challenge that we have now, I am making a call on all women for us to become prepared to study, to train ourselves so that nobody in the future will dare to say to us that for the very fact that we are women, we are achieving things. It's not because we are vociferous, it's not because we are shouting, it's because we are able. We have this challenge. We need to get better and more education. We have to use all the opportunities, all the doors that are opening in front of us. So that's my piece of advice. Let's study, let's train ourselves and let's get ready for all the things that are coming in the future. Thank you. Thank you so much, Humana. And thank you to you both and Lama Luma for sharing your stories. Thank you for sharing your advice, and especially for your inspiration. Ambassador Curry, over to you. Thank you so much, Kara. And I, you know, it's so, it is such a, I see, I'm so, and Shala, it is so wonderful to see you both. I am so crushed that we did lose our wonderful Lama Luma who has been an inspiration to so many people around the world with her incredible bravery and the work that she's done in Mauritania. It's up against some really unbelievable odds when her whole community is treated as slaves. It's, you know, to be able to fight that, to come back, to be in parliament. She's such an inspiration to me. I was so grateful she was able to join us and it's disappointing that we lost her, but I know she was, it was, we all benefited from her presence while she did join us. I just am so grateful for the friendship that I have with, with you women who I know from our time together in Washington. I am so grateful to be able to, I feel like I say this all the time, but I do have the best job in the world because I get to work with the most amazing, incredible women who inspire me every day to go back out there and do a good job myself. And so I think that as we work on how we're all going to encourage women's greater political participation in the role in the world. It does require a coordinated effort it requires us to study to work as as our great panelists have charged us to do. And it requires everyone in our communities to do this our men, our women, our community leaders, government officials, civil society, international organizations, local organizations, everyone has a role to play in this. Every individual has a role and a contribution to make. So that's how we create the enduring impact that we want to see. So again, thanks so much to our audience, especially we couldn't do this without you. And so we really appreciate you tuning in. I know for some of you it's late at night or super early in the morning and so we're grateful to you as well. And we hope you will continue the discussion online. Use the hashtag hashtag women's vote 100 and women and hashtag women of courage which is our favorite hashtag is the global women's issues office. And we on behalf of the wonderful partnership we have with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and my great colleagues there. And on behalf of my boss the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, I want to thank you all and say goodbye.