Women as Changemakers
- Damilola Banjo
- • January 22, 2023
Beatrice Fihn, a 40-year-old Swede, grew up wanting to make a big difference in humanity, but she did not know how she could do that. First, she thought she would “stitch people up” after they suffered an accident or…
- Categories: Nuclear Disarmament, Women as Changemakers
- Dawn Clancy
- • October 18, 2022
Documenting the “dozens of thousands” of Russia’s war crimes that have been committed so far in Ukraine isn’t a problem for Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human-rights lawyer and civil society leader based in Kyiv. But having a fully developed international…
- Categories: Human Rights, International Justice, Ukraine-Russia War, Women as Changemakers
- Barbara Crossette
- • September 12, 2022
Nations of the world have taken giant steps in recent decades to build international structures and strengthen institutions to deal with mass human-rights abusers. At almost every stage, Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer, was there, advancing the rights…
- Categories: Africa, Gender Violence, Human Rights, Women as Changemakers
- Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • August 15, 2022
When she was only 10 years old, Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame realized that she could no longer read her classroom’s blackboard at her school in eastern Ghana. She eventually learned that she had retinal dystrophy, an irreversible degenerative condition that…
- Categories: Disabilities, Women as Changemakers
- Barbara Crossette
- • May 30, 2022
Kathy Gannon never wanted to be a journalist. That changed when she was urged by a journalist brother to give the profession a try. She became a successful reporter and editor of local newspapers in Ontario and British Columbia….
- Categories: Asia, Gender Violence, Journalists, Women as Changemakers
- Damilola Banjo
- • April 3, 2022
Comfort Ero knew that her appointment as the president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group, a New York City-based think tank working to prevent wars, would be arduous. But taking up the role in December, two months…
- Categories: Africa, General Assembly, Peace and Security, Security Council, Women as Changemakers
- Barbara Crossette
- • March 8, 2022
Rebeca Grynspan, the first woman and first Latin American to lead the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, has a lot of work to do. The organization, founded in 1964 as a standing committee, now has 195 member…
- Categories: Women as Changemakers
- Damilola Banjo
- • January 19, 2022
It was the death in childbirth of a dear friend that spurred Adepeju Jaiyeoba, then a young lawyer in Lagos, Nigeria, to take action. It was 2011, and 978 out of every 100,000 Nigerian women — 40,000 a year…
- Categories: Africa, Women as Changemakers
- Maurizio Guerrero
- • November 16, 2021
Celia Umenza, an Indigenous leader who has survived three attacks on her life while advocating for the self-determination of Indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant communities in the northern Cauca region of Colombia, recently told the United Nations Security Council that…
- Categories: Latin America, Women as Changemakers
- Barbara Crossette
- • October 6, 2021
Jessica Neuwirth, a pivotal force in promoting and supporting the rights of women and girls worldwide, was appointed to the rank of chevalier in the French Legion of Honor by the French government in a ceremony in New York…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, Women as Changemakers
- Barbara Crossette
- • August 24, 2021
For Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund since 2017, the last couple of years have been a wild ride. In 2020, women the world over were getting ready to celebrate important anniversaries: 25 years…
- Categories: Health and Population, Secretary-General, UN Agencies, Women as Changemakers
- Elizabeth Colton
- • July 22, 2021
Naoko Yamazaki made space history not only as the second woman astronaut from Japan, but also by participating in the record-setting 2010 NASA space shuttle mission STS-131 to the International Space Station, or ISS. Launched from the Kennedy Space…
- Categories: Women as Changemakers
- Clair MacDougall
- • May 24, 2021
Séverine Autesserre, a former humanitarian-aid worker, award-winning researcher and professor of political science at Columbia University, has become one of the foremost thinkers on international peace-building in the last decade. Following “Peaceland,” a book critically exploring the parallel worlds of United…
- Categories: Peace and Security, Security Council, Women as Changemakers
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