“Women who survive war are strong, resilient and courageous – they just need some support dealing with the aftermath of conflict.”—Zainab Salbi
Zainab Salbi was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. Of her childhood, she says, "I learned to coexist with war. You wake up with the sound of a missile hitting a neighbor, and you say, 'OK, it's not me today.' And you go back to sleep." After she moved to the United States in the late 1980s, at the age of 19, Zainab did not forget her experiences living in Baghdad. In the early 1990s, the newly married Zainab and her husband put off a honeymoon and instead traveled to Croatia to distribute money and supplies to war-torn women there. "I looked everywhere,” Zainab said, “but there was no organization that existed to help these women. People said to just wait, that maybe something would come along. But women were suffering now, being raped now. There was no time to wait." So Zainab started her own organized, Women for Women International, in 1993.
At first, Zainab intended Women for Women International to be a part-time addition to her job as an Arab League translator. However, it soon became clear that assisting women who have been touched by war around the world is a more-than full-time job. Since the organization’s founding, 93,000 women war survivors in countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sudan have been touched by the organization and assisted in the slow battle of healing themselves and their countries.
Zainab’s work is not limited to Women for Women International. In 1996, she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies from George Mason University, which she followed with a Masters Degree in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2001. She’s also published two books, a memoir, Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam in 2005, and a book about the women she’s met through Women for Women International, The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope in 2006. She’s also contributed to several anthologies on women and war, and been a frequent interviewee on many networks and in many publications, including BBC, NPR, ABC News Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CNN, Fox News, PBS, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsweek. She also serves on the boards of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Peter Gruber Foundation Women’s Rights Prize, World Pulse Magazine and the International Museum of Women. Finally, Zainab travels extensively, speaking at universities and human rights events on the use of rape and violence against women during wars.
Zainab has been widely recognized for her work. President Clinton held a ceremony honoring her in 1995, when she was only 25. Since then, she’s received the Forbes Trailblazer Award and been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2006, Women for Women International received the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest humanitarian award.
For more information on Women for Women International .
Sources:
Women for Women International
San Francisco Chronicle
PBS NOW
The Harry Walker Agency, Inc.
International Museum of Women
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Grace Mitchell |
| About the author: |
| Grace Mitchell lives in Austin, Texas with her partner, dogs, and cats. She is heavily involved in dog rescue. She is a university number cruncher, nearly-finished graduate student, and intermittent junk seller. |
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