 Today we have this opportunity to redefine leadership and what that means in the peace building field. Really going to highlight the lives of several women who have been leading for peace for many decades. Today we know a lot more about leadership. Our world desperately needs good leaders. But we also understand more about women's leadership and the qualities that women bring to the table. My philosophy of leadership stems from my fundamental belief in the rule of law, the separation of powers, fundamental freedoms for each and every individual. There is something about getting out of your comfort zone and being challenged by different ideas or sometimes difficulty. On behalf of the U.S. Institute of Peace, I want to welcome you to Women Leading for Peace, the second Shaka Fatima annual lectureship. Although it was nearly five decades ago when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war. King's notion of such leadership is a good starting point today. It was through the generosity of Her Highness Shaka Fatima that the Institute has named the North Atrium of our headquarters building the International Women's Commons to advance the progress of women as peacemakers. Shaka Fatima is the first lady of the UAE and she more than anyone has been the strongest advocate for Emirati women. This lecture is taking place just a few weeks after an historic peace agreement was signed in the Philippines to end a conflict that has gone on for 45 years, a one that has taken tens of thousands of lives. It is the first agreement negotiated by a woman and a woman's signature is on the peace agreement. What inspired me was the knowledge of horror and suffering of millions and millions of fellow human beings when I was a child and an adolescent. I came from a highly political family over many generations and I looked around and I saw some magnificent human beings. You don't have to be standing shouting on the barricades all the time. It can be somebody behind you who's keeping you going with the soup and the apple, for example. I said to myself, well it's the law that counts and getting into the House of Commons is the key to putting in proper laws and working in foreign policy is the key to helping other women get proper laws into their nation as well. People that I've known who have been very good leaders, I think it comes from within. Whatever it is, I think they have to believe in it. Oftentimes there's a price to be paid for that leadership. In every conflict zone that I've been to, there's always been somebody, people on the ground who live in these places who do become peacemakers or who have to deal with the results of war. Women's leadership in peace negotiations, in being at those peace tables where they rarely are and in the last decade half of the peace agreements are abrogated because the real issues I believe don't make it to the table. What are some of the issues that are left off the table? Well, I have a friend who was ambassador to Angola and he said that when the peace process was put in place, he sort of inquired why there weren't any women and he was told, oh no, it would be mainstreamed or integrated at some point, not to worry. He said the first thing that happened was the men all agreed to give amnesty to each other for what they had done to the women. In the DRC where women have been violated in ways that we can't even comprehend how they go on to tomorrow. But they not only want to go on to tomorrow, as they said to me, we want to go from our pain to power, power over their lives. I promise you it's 100% possible to get women empowered politically. Come on, let's do it. Here at the US Institute of Peace, we focus on the role of women in peace building every day. But it's really special for us to be able to step back one day and look at the big picture at all the ways that women are advancing peace every day and also the potential for them to do so. Ordinary people have come to do extraordinary things.