Montebello, Canada

Following the conference, we held a Women's Day of Action to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in Ottawa to engage the public as we move forward in bringing an end to sexual violence in conflict.

The day included a panel to examine the use of sexual violence in armed conflict and strategies for ending it. Participants included Nobel Laureates Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, and Shirin Ebadi, as well as Carleton University associate professor Doris Buss, Kenyan survivor and activist Wangu Kanja, and Charlotte Isaksson, the senior gender advisor to the Swedish Armed Forces.

Watch the video of that panel discussion here.

Abigail Disney is a filmmaker, philanthropist and scholar. She produced the cricially acclaimed Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicling how Liberian women peacefully ended the civil war in their country.

In 2010 I was fortunate enough to go the DRC with the renowned peace activist Leymah Gbowee.  We spent a week working with women activists from three different cities exploring the efficacy of women as of peace-builders and discussing the Congolese activists’ ideas for building a strong coalition of women to work in a coordinated way toward bringing peace to their country.

We were intrigued to see how difficult it was to get these activists to talk about their own views.  At first we were perplexed—neither of us had ever found activists anywhere reticent to express their views on anything.  But as the hours wore on we realized how seldom these women had ever in fact been asked for their views--by anyone.  It was clear that our doing so generated a wariness in them that was hard for us to penetrate.

We want to say thank you to all of you who have been following our #endrapeinwar coverage, and who found time to TAKE A STAND against sexual violence in conflict. There has been an amazing outpouring of support in the past week -- our message of action to end rape in war has travelled around the world and across all levels of society.

As we heard last week from Charlotte Isaksson, the Gender Advisor to the Swedish Armed Forces, "If we can travel to the moon and back, of course we can end sexual violence."

But it will only be because of our collective effort. Thank you!