Zainab Salbi Quotes & Sayings

It is the diversity of views that stems from different experiences and different backgrounds that lead to healthy decision-making and not the unified experiences and unified views. — Zainab Salbi

Women are part of peace keeping troops in countries like Liberia. — Zainab Salbi

Being a leader for me is about having the courage to speak the truth, and live the truth, despite attempts to silence our thoughts, feelings, and past experiences. — Zainab Salbi

Only 1 in 13 participants in peace negotiations since 1992 has been a woman. — Zainab Salbi

Historically speaking, religious and conservative groups always wanted the control over the private sphere that impacts women most, as reflected by family law and women's access to resources and mobility. And often secular groups traded this for economic incentives and trade. — Zainab Salbi

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars ... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history. — Zainab Salbi

Only 8 percent of peace talks have included women at any level. — Zainab Salbi

Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life? — Zainab Salbi

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced. — Zainab Salbi

Unfortunately, violence against women is not the only injustice women face globally; it is one of the many inequalities that impede the full development of socially excluded women globally. — Zainab Salbi

In my 20s I was such a serious, boring-looking person. I would never do my nails. I never even danced. But I was taught by the women. They had gone through hell, but they would dance and sing. I came to realise I can't argue for a happy world if I am not happy myself. — Zainab Salbi

Since a very young age, my mother made sure to tell me about the plight of women. As she raised my awareness about women's issues, she also made sure to ingrain in me the importance of being strong and independent and not to let anybody define me by their images of what women should be. — Zainab Salbi

Leadership is about encouraging women to break their silence and tell their stories to the world. — Zainab Salbi

Where has change ever been clean and nice? It has always been messy and painful. — Zainab Salbi

Like life, peace begins with women. We are the first to forge lines of alliance and collaboration across conflict divides. — Zainab Salbi

I believe that a lot of progress has been achieved to address gender inequality: We have moved from a time where women in the US could not apply for credit card without their husband's signature to a time where women are the owners of their businesses. — Zainab Salbi

Women still need higher political representation and to be included at decision making tables in all issues in order for solutions that relates from peace to food, to health, to basic stability in the world. We cannot continue to marginalize half of the population in the world in finding sustainable solutions that are good for all. — Zainab Salbi

The single thing all women need in the world is inspiration, and inspiration comes from storytelling. — Zainab Salbi

Women have never been a chief negotiator in any UN-sponsored talks. — Zainab Salbi

As women, we must speak out, speak up, say no to our inheritance of loss and yes to a future of women-led dialogue about women's rights and value. — Zainab Salbi

Without women's full inclusion at the decision making table, we cannot have any healthy decision making that is good for men and women alike. — Zainab Salbi

Everything is give and take. The solutions are in the middle not in the extremity of the situation. — Zainab Salbi

Women in the Arab world have a rich history in their active participation in political change from the Algeria revolution against the French occupation to the most recent revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya among other countries. The question is not their participation. Their question is the incorporation of women's voices fully in the new definitions of the countries where change has happened. — Zainab Salbi

From an economic perspective, women are treated unfairly: they perform 66 percent of the world's work and produce 50 percent of the food but they only earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property. — Zainab Salbi

Believe in your passions and act on them. — Zainab Salbi

I believe that leadership acts should be manifested by engaging in external work that can be observed and shared with everyone else. — Zainab Salbi

Growing up under Saddam's rule, I witnessed many injustices occurring everyday in my country and yet I could not do anything to prevent them. — Zainab Salbi

I grew up with injustice and could do nothing about it. But once in America, I had freedom of choice. — Zainab Salbi

Living in war is a co- existence with death. — Zainab Salbi

It seems to me that violence against women has been tolerated for so long that the world has become numb to it. — Zainab Salbi

While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul. — Zainab Salbi

Stronger women build stronger nations. — Zainab Salbi

Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff without knowing where you will land. — Zainab Salbi

Changes don't happen in the world by playing it safe, taking risks is the way to change the world. — Zainab Salbi

Women are not just victims; they are survivors and leaders on the community-level backlines of peace and stability. — Zainab Salbi

I by no means intend to simplify the challenges women face in any culture. Women are marginalized in all cultures in my opinion, some in more extreme ways than others. — Zainab Salbi

The injustice is that women continue to be the main target of violence both during wartime and peacetime and yet there is still a lack of a public outrage. — Zainab Salbi

When war ends, women are the first to pick up the pieces. Where there is no market place, they go door to door. When homes are destroyed, mothers and daughters haul stones to rebuild or plow fields together. — Zainab Salbi

Leadership is not about having the charisma or speaking inspirational words, but about leading with example. — Zainab Salbi

My message to the world is that until we recognize that peace is not just the absence of war but the revival of life on the "backlines," where women are keeping kids in school, caring for the sick and injured, and daily negotiating space for the continuation of critical life processes of this nature, we're going to continue to miss the point. — Zainab Salbi

It appears easier to talk about protecting women than it is to fully include women at all decision-making levels in peace talks and post-conflict planning. — Zainab Salbi

Long-term trauma for women who have survived armed conflict is a haunting reminder that health issues and depression can follow decades after the end of war, but women who hope for healing can and do move forward. — Zainab Salbi

Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence. — Zainab Salbi

One year of the world's military spending equals 700 years of the U.N. budget and equals 2,928 years of the U.N. budget allocated for women. — Zainab Salbi

There's a lot of projection that if you're in service then you shouldn't look good. I'm no different from anybody else. I like clothes, I like shoes, I like to go have nice dinners, I like to dance. Just because I've dedicated myself to serving women, why do you think I need to sacrifice myself? — Zainab Salbi

Working with women survivors of war has taught me that we need to listen to women's perspectives on war in order to understand how to effectively rebuild a country, a community and a family. — Zainab Salbi

By accepting what the external structures have told us we need to do, we have given the power of our realities and ourselves to others. It is time to tell a new story for women, and that can only start with women. — Zainab Salbi

I don't have a child, so Women for Women is like my child. But I always said I would step down after 20 years. I didn't want to be a 60-year-old woman holding on to something I created when I was 23. — Zainab Salbi

War is nothing but a microcosm of peace ... it shows you life in a more intense way and that's how I continue to live it ... for good or bad reasons. — Zainab Salbi

The front[line] of wars is increasingly non-human eyes peering down on our perceived enemies from space, guiding missiles toward unseen targets. — Zainab Salbi

Since war often enters homes through the "kitchen door," we need to understand women's attempts to keep life going in the face of shortage of food, closing of schools and reduced freedoms. — Zainab Salbi

I don't want to be someone in my sixties holding on to a group that I created when I was in my twenties. — Zainab Salbi

I believe that there is an urgent need to restructure the discussion of war to include the impact it has on women. — Zainab Salbi

In every single culture I encountered, there were always women who defied cultural norms to do what they believed was right for them. This phenomenon has never been related to how rich, poor, successful or not successful the woman may be. — Zainab Salbi

I find it amazing that the only group of people who are not fighting and not killing and not pillaging and not burning and not raping, and the group of people who are mostly - though not exclusively - who are keeping life going in the midst of war, are not included in the negotiating table. — Zainab Salbi

From joblessness to lack of education and professional skills to sexual and gender-based violence, women face a multi-faceted oppression. — Zainab Salbi

There is never a typical week. I don't think I can live with a typical week. — Zainab Salbi

Since I was 15 years old I have dedicated my life to serving women. — Zainab Salbi

Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good. — Zainab Salbi

If half the society isn't engaged on any number of sectors, success and potential will be limited. In that sense, I do definitely believe there is a growing movement and moment for women's issues. — Zainab Salbi

I couldn't find anyone doing something about the astounding injustices women were experiencing, so I decided to do something myself. I cannot tell you how many people ridiculed my efforts. — Zainab Salbi

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves. — Zainab Salbi

I learned that victims come in all image - some raped, some witnessing an act of violence, some losing loved ones. I learned that the solutions come by both listening to the people impacted by the crisis and by learning from historical experiences in other places. — Zainab Salbi

I have come to understand that in order to effectively advance women's rights, we need to galvanize a global women's movement. — Zainab Salbi