Last Friday’s speakers gave us an eye-opening view of women who are on the front lines of conflict and crisis as they drive change and foster peace in their communities in disparate parts of the world. Tonni Ann Brodber, Head of Secretariat of the United Nations Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), was joined by Shaza Elmahdi, the Sudan Country Director of the Center for International Private Enterprise, and Anzhelika Bielova, the President and Founder of the Association of Roma Women/Voice of Romni (Ukraine) as they discussed their work to ensure that women’s voices are central to conflict resolution and humanitarian efforts and how women are the key to peacebuilding efforts around the globe.

Brodber lead off the discussion by giving us a brief look into her background and what brought her to her present position. Hailing from Trinidad-Tobago (but now living in Geneva because of her job). Her mother (a Jamaican) was a professor at the University of Trinidad-Tobago, and her stepfather was an Afrikaner who had been expelled from South Africa and had come to the University to study the reasons Canada had made an investment in the University. A year later, she was in Canada, and this was the first thing that led her to the United Nations as she began understanding how different people are and how we can learn from just being around one another, listening to one another and trying to engage truthfully from different perspectives. Her mother worked for the UN and had attended the 4^th global Conference on Women in Beijing. Although Brodber did not want to work for the UN because her mother worked there, somehow, she ended up doing just that.

Brodber and our own member, Cynda Arsenault, crossed paths while she was working on peace issues in the Caribbean, and in particular in the areas of violence against women and economic empowerment. But as the crime rate increased over the 22 countries she and her team covered, they became convinced that they need to talk about peace, not violence, but peace. They worked on a national action plan, and she then got a call asking her to consider being the Secretariat of the UN’s Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund. It turned out that this was exactly what she needed at the time to remind her why she believed in multilateralism and that peace is attainable. The Fund is the best the UN has to offer because it is a partnership with women across civil society when those women tell the Fund what they need. These women are met where they are with the financing they need to deliver peace in their communities. Brodber noted that in the seven months she has been with the Fund, at least 4-5 people have told her that the work the Fund does has changed their lives.

Brodber then turned our attention to Shaza Elmahdi, who is Sudanese, to tell us how working with the Fund directly impacts women’s lives in her country. As background, Elmahdi noted that she had lived most of her life under a dictatorship until a revolution in 2019 forced him to leave the country. A provisional government was established but there was a coup a year later and then a war a year-and-a-half later. This is a cycle for so many African countries as there is no mature democracy most of the time, according to Elmahdi. When asked what peace means to her, she indicated it is not something that the Sudanese take for granted as they suffered through a civil war with South Sudan for a long time, and also a war in Darfur. She noted that the criminals who were in the war in Darfur are now the ones engaged in the current war. Elmahdi indicated that this is happening because no accountability has taken place.

Elmahdi went on to say that, in 2023, with her three children living in Khartoum, if you were to ask them what war was to them, it would be not going out to play soccer or jump on the trampoline, or her holding them under the bed because there was shooting bullets all over. After three years, war for Sudanese children (7 million) now means not having gone to school for two years and for 15 million Sudanese, it has meant being displaced. Elmahdi said it was easy to initiate war, but it is hard to imagine what peace looks like especially if you live most of your life in a conflict situation. And now, Sudanese families that have spent many years working abroad to make enough money to build a house in their own country have had to leave everything behind in the wake of more war. This is what makes the Fund’s work, while difficult, so important, now more than ever.

During her portion of the discussion, Anzhelika Bielova, who is a Roma woman in Ukraine, was asked what peace means to her. She indicated that peace is no longer worrying about rescuing her family and relocating or hearing news about how many people, women and children included, who have been killed by Russian missiles. Peace is being in silence and worrying about ordinary things, like what to cook for dinner or what country to visit for vacation. Peace is not hearing “mom, I’m scared” because air raid warnings mean Russia has launched missiles. This is true for her friends and relatives, as well. As she journeyed to the US, she communicated with her family who was in a bomb shelter in Kiev due to more Russian attacks.

Bielova founded Voice of Romni in 2020. She is a Roma woman who was raised in a Roma community. She has come to know how patriarchal customs and traditions have affected Roma women and girls, and further, she went through domestic violence in her childhood. In 2019, a man tried to kill her with a knife. When she woke from the surgery that followed, with her daughter being 4 months old, she wondered what world was being left to her. Then war came. Bielova indicated that she began using all her skills to help her community and other Ukrainians. Since then, 106,000 people have been helped. With WPHF funds, her organization has been working on humanitarian aid, women’s spaces, economic empowerment of women as well as on children’s space, especially on their mental health. They are also working to build women’s leadership because women are now on the forefront of humanitarian response and the recovery work. Bielova noted that it is important for women to be in the decision-making process because they have actually been working in the communities and know better solutions as a result. Preparing for peace is not just about negotiations, but being ready for peace when it arrives.

Shaza Elmahdi spoke again to explain she works closely with women in Sudan, and that while the wars in Sudan were created by men, women and children are the victims, including the systematic raping of women which is used as a weapon. Now, USAID aid, which was providing 50% of the humanitarian aid into Sudan, has been cut off overnight. According to Elmahdi, the elimination of aid not only affects the Sudanese people, but there may be implications for trade as Sudan and East Africa are very close to the Red Sea’s, the major port of which handles 20% of global trade, and the security of this trade could be at stake if anything happens with that port.

Last Friday’s speakers gave us an eye-opening view of women who are on the front lines of conflict and crisis as they drive change and foster peace in their communities in disparate parts of the world. Tonni Ann Brodber, Head of Secretariat of the United Nations Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), was joined by Shaza Elmahdi, the Sudan Country Director of the Center for International Private Enterprise, and Anzhelika Bielova, the President and Founder of the Association of Roma Women/Voice of Romni (Ukraine) as they discussed their work to ensure that women’s voices are central to conflict resolution and humanitarian efforts and how women are the key to peacebuilding efforts around the globe.

Brodber lead off the discussion by giving us a brief look into her background and what brought her to her present position. Hailing from Trinidad-Tobago (but now living in Geneva because of her job). Her mother (a Jamaican) was a professor at the University of Trinidad-Tobago, and her stepfather was an Afrikaner who had been expelled from South Africa and had come to the University to study the reasons Canada had made an investment in the University. A year later, she was in Canada, and this was the first thing that led her to the United Nations as she began understanding how different people are and how we can learn from just being around one another, listening to one another and trying to engage truthfully from different perspectives. Her mother worked for the UN and had attended the 4^th global Conference on Women in Beijing. Although Brodber did not want to work for the UN because her mother worked there, somehow, she ended up doing just that.

Brodber and our own member, Cynda Arsenault, crossed paths while she was working on peace issues in the Caribbean, and in particular in the areas of violence against women and economic empowerment. But as the crime rate increased over the 22 countries she and her team covered, they became convinced that they need to talk about peace, not violence, but peace. They worked on a national action plan, and she then got a call asking her to consider being the Secretariat of the UN’s Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund. It turned out that this was exactly what she needed at the time to remind her why she believed in multilateralism and that peace is attainable. The Fund is the best the UN has to offer because it is a partnership with women across civil society when those women tell the Fund what they need. These women are met where they are with the financing they need to deliver peace in their communities. Brodber noted that in the seven months she has been with the Fund, at least 4-5 people have told her that the work the Fund does has changed their lives.

Brodber then turned our attention to Shaza Elmahdi, who is Sudanese, to tell us how working with the Fund directly impacts women’s lives in her country. As background, Elmahdi noted that she had lived most of her life under a dictatorship until a revolution in 2019 forced him to leave the country. A provisional government was established but there was a coup a year later and then a war a year-and-a-half later. This is a cycle for so many African countries as there is no mature democracy most of the time, according to Elmahdi. When asked what peace means to her, she indicated it is not something that the Sudanese take for granted as they suffered through a civil war with South Sudan for a long time, and also a war in Darfur. She noted that the criminals who were in the war in Darfur are now the ones engaged in the current war. Elmahdi indicated that this is happening because no accountability has taken place.

Elmahdi went on to say that, in 2023, with her three children living in Khartoum, if you were to ask them what war was to them, it would be not going out to play soccer or jump on the trampoline, or her holding them under the bed because there was shooting bullets all over. After three years, war for Sudanese children (7 million) now means not having gone to school for two years and for 15 million Sudanese, it has meant being displaced. Elmahdi said it was easy to initiate war, but it is hard to imagine what peace looks like especially if you live most of your life in a conflict situation. And now, Sudanese families that have spent many years working abroad to make enough money to build a house in their own country have had to leave everything behind in the wake of more war. This is what makes the Fund’s work, while difficult, so important, now more than ever.

During her portion of the discussion, Anzhelika Bielova, who is a Roma woman in Ukraine, was asked what peace means to her. She indicated that peace is no longer worrying about rescuing her family and relocating or hearing news about how many people, women and children included, who have been killed by Russian missiles. Peace is being in silence and worrying about ordinary things, like what to cook for dinner or what country to visit for vacation. Peace is not hearing “mom, I’m scared” because air raid warnings mean Russia has launched missiles. This is true for her friends and relatives, as well. As she journeyed to the US, she communicated with her family who was in a bomb shelter in Kiev due to more Russian attacks.

Bielova founded Voice of Romni in 2020. She is a Roma woman who was raised in a Roma community. She has come to know how patriarchal customs and traditions have affected Roma women and girls, and further, she went through domestic violence in her childhood. In 2019, a man tried to kill her with a knife. When she woke from the surgery that followed, with her daughter being 4 months old, she wondered what world was being left to her. Then war came. Bielova indicated that she began using all her skills to help her community and other Ukrainians. Since then, 106,000 people have been helped. With WPHF funds, her organization has been working on humanitarian aid, women’s spaces, economic empowerment of women as well as on children’s space, especially on their mental health. They are also working to build women’s leadership because women are now on the forefront of humanitarian response and the recovery work. Bielova noted that it is important for women to be in the decision-making process because they have actually been working in the communities and know better solutions as a result. Preparing for peace is not just about negotiations, but being ready for peace when it arrives.

Shaza Elmahdi spoke again to explain she works closely with women in Sudan, and that while the wars in Sudan were created by men, women and children are the victims, including the systematic raping of women which is used as a weapon. Now, USAID aid, which was providing 50% of the humanitarian aid into Sudan, has been cut off overnight. According to Elmahdi, the elimination of aid not only affects the Sudanese people, but there may be implications for trade as Sudan and East Africa are very close to the Red Sea’s, the major port of which handles 20% of global trade, and the security of this trade could be at stake if anything happens with that port.

Brodber closed the discussion by noting that 80 years ago, countries came together for peace as the UN. The three speakers expressed their gratitude for our Club to listen to what their missions for peace are. Questions followed, including an inquiry into what it is like for a Roma woman living in Ukraine and another inquiry as to the effect the reduced/non-existent aid has affected the women’s work. The responses were bleak in that the lost aid has forced the closure of many programs as a result.