Today marks the first annual International Widow’s Day, a day of action adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly last December to “give special attention to the situation of widows and their children.” In my work with Women for Women International, an organization that helps women who have survived war, many of whom are widowed by the conflict, I’ve come to understand just how important that is.

In 18 years, we have served roughly 300,000 women in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. We have seen the toll war takes on women, from violence, disruption of economic and social activities, and, most devastatingly, in loss of life. In 2010, about 12% of the women we worked with were widows. In countries like Nigeria and Iraq, the number is higher–21% and 17% respectively. War widows face unique challenges in the forms of extreme poverty, social isolation, discrimination and often property seizure and homelessness. Many find themselves thrust into the new role of breadwinner and provider for multiple children, usually with no formal skills or training and very little education. This, in concert with the social and economic destruction that is usually a direct result of war, can be an almost insurmountable obstacle to survival.

In many countries, widows have little to no rights over their husband’s inheritance or property, and therefore often lose their family home and savings when their husband dies. In Nigeria, discriminatory widowhood rituals include economic deprivation and even exile from the community. According to a 2010 State Department Report on Human Rights, in northeast Nigeria, widows are often subjected to the discriminatory rite of “confinement”. For a period of up to one year, “confined” widows must live under severe social restrictions, and are often forced to shave their heads and dress in black. In other areas, Nigerian widows are considered part of their husband’s property, and can be “inherited” by his family members.

Coming on the heels of death, property loss is a devastating blow for women looking to survive on their own. Widows are often forced from their home, lose rights to family businesses, and become highly vulnerable to exploitation upon their husband’s death. According to the US State Department, 69% of widows in the Democratic Republic of Congo had been dispossessed of their property following their husband’s death. In Nigeria and Afghanistan, the brother of a deceased man will often claim his brother’s widow as his second, third or fourth wife. Although this traditional practice predated and often transcends modern welfare systems intended to provide for women with limited financial prospects, the horrific result can often be a life full of abuse and exploitation by their new husbands and extended family. The lack of capacity of many states to provide for vulnerable populations can exacerbate this practice. Of the 774 million illiterate adults worldwide, more than two-thirds are women. Without formal job training or an education, widows struggle to earn an income to support their children and often live in poverty for the rest of their lives. Often they are ultimately forced into the informal labor market, where they are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and human trafficking.

The Indian Hindu custom of sati instructs women to self-immolate over their husbands’ funeral pyres. Though rare and explicitly outlawed in India, sati is occasionally practiced in northern and central regions of the country. In many African countries — including Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda — women, who are considered part of their deceased husband’s property, are subjected to “widow cleansing”. This tradition allows a man from the husband’s family, such as a brother or cousin, to force the widow to have sex with him in order to release her husband’s spirit from her body. This act not only authorizes rape and sexual abuse, but it also leaves women extremely vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. In Rwanda, many of the widows who survived the 1994 genocide were raped, disfigured, and infected with HIV/AIDS.

Tellingly, sufficient data on widowhood is very difficult to find amongst the plethora of international development statistics and indicators, a sad reflection of just how marginalized the population can be, even, paradoxically, in arenas specifically dedicated to assisting the world’s most vulnerable people. Two countries of notable exception in this regard are Iraq and Afghanistan, where the conflicts have produced an estimated 2 to 3.5 million war widows. This has prompted a few targeted intervention efforts specifically aimed at bringing widows, and their families, out of poverty and social exclusion. For instance, Women for Women International is working to assist 2,500 Iraqi war widows through a year-long program that combines rights awareness and life skills training with business skills training, designed to build both a widow’s knowledge of practical topics, like health care and household finances, and her ability to achieve a sustainable income.

International Widows Day provides an opportunity for reflection on the incredible obstacles faced by widows around the world; it also offers the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to doing something about it. For although the evidence points to an uphill battle to open opportunities for women facing such entrenched challenges to thrive, our experience has also shown us that these are the women who have the strength to rebuild their lives and societies at a time when foundational socioeconomic institutions have been decimated.

Take Begzada, a graduate of Women for Women International’s program in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the site of a conflict that stunned humanity with its targeted and brutal campaign of violence against women during the Bosnian War. Begzada was living with her husband in Srebrenica when he was murdered in a massacre that claimed the lives of over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. After losing her husband and their home, Begzada moved with her children and mother into a one-room home without running water or electricity, near Sarajevo.

The future looked bleak. Without any formal education or job training, Begzada spent her nights knitting by candlelight and her days trying to sell her crafts at the local market. One day a neighbor introduced her to Women for Women International, where Begzada was able to enroll in the home design training. She learned how to use her knitting skills to create home furnishings, popular items in a country trying to rebuild after war. With the extra income from the profits of her new business, Begzada was able to invest in her home and future. She built the first floor of her house and began to rent land to grow potatoes, onions, beans, carrots and beets to feed her family.

This small revolution in one woman’s life and family reflects the essence of the larger reconstruction process that is needed to foster stability and economic growth where war has devastated everything. According to the World Bank, women like Begzada reinvest up to 90% of their income in the family and community — as opposed to 30-40% by men. So although they face the greatest obstacles coming out of conflict, they are also our greatest hope.

In the words of Begzada, “My greatest dream is to give my family a home which would be ours, which we would never have to leave.  With great effort and sacrifice, I am now realizing my dream.” This International Widows Day, take a moment to reflect on the obstacles faced by widows around the world, and then take a moment to do something about it. Sponsor a woman like Begzada at www.womenforwomen.org today, and help us be a part of the solution.

First Published on TrustLaw Women

Last week, a group of twenty-five women who were demonstrating for peace and democracy in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square were violently attacked. Gathering as they had every week, the women were greeted this time greeted by a mob of armed men who were reportedly bused in specifically to target the demonstrators. The women were physically and sexually attacked, and a 19-year-old woman’s clothes were reportedly torn from her body. News of this horrific exchange in Iraq comes on the heels of an Egyptian general’s public admission that his forces deliberately employed so-called “virginity tests” to intimidate women in the more famous, Cairo-based Tahrir Square during March’s revolution. Around the world, these kinds of deliberate, organized attacks on peaceful female protesters register a worrying trend of diminishing–and increasingly unsafe–public space for women’s political participation.

In the first half of 2011 alone, we have seen evidence of this in practically every region of the world. Take Ivory Coast, where a women’s protest of former President Gbagbo’s refusal to cede power was targeted for attack by government soldiers.  Although the women were unarmed and peaceful, the forces opened fire, killing seven women. Days later, on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, men and women gathered to remember the fallen women and add their voices to the peaceful protest; forces loyal to Gbagbo again attacked, killing three men and one woman.

In Libya, the world watched in horror as Iman al-Obeidi burst into a hotel room filled with international press to report her rape by government forcestargeting civilians in an attempt to terrorize the Libyan people and maintain Momar al-Qadafi’s grip on power. Obeidi fled the country only to be deported–against international outcry–and has since gone into hiding, fearing for her life. Widespread reports of use of rape and other human rights abuses have been chronicled throughout the Libyan forces.

Nepal’s conflict is more distant in time and memory than those of Ivory Coast and the Arab Spring, but women on the ground there who are still organizing to implement the country’s peace process and new constitution continue to be marginalized from national debates, and face physical harm for their efforts. In early May, police attacked and beat 21 women who had gathered to peacefully protest in support of the peace process and a new Constitution outside of the Constituent Assembly.

There are a few cases where women have been able to overcome targeted campaigns of violence against them by their own efforts. Cuba’s famous Damas en Blanco–wives and mothers of jailed dissidents who walk the streets of Havana clad in white each Sunday to symbolize peace–were also subject to an Iraq-style campaign of violence by men bused in to taunt and psychically attack them. After suffering repeated attacks, the Damas lobbied the Church to intervene on their behalf, and received assurances that they would continue to be able to march for peace, in peace.

The courageous acts of women everywhere who put themselves at risk in the name of peace and justice are foundational to the democratic process, yet often place them at risk by the states they seek to improve. The act of targeting women for violence is neither geographically, ethnically, religiously or racially unique. Rather, it is a consistent, political tool indicative of a calculated effort to quash the democratic process and maintain hold of power through force.

It is also indisputably illegal. International human rights standards expressly protect not only women’s bodies from men’s arms, but also their rights to participate within their countries’ (generally male-dominated) political debates. Yet as 2011 unfolds, we are seeing more and more evidence that our promises that women should be able to help shape the future direction of their societies ring increasingly hollow.

Women should not be martyred for peace, as they were in Ivory Coast; neither should they be responsible for their own security, as in Cuba. How many more Tahrir Squares must we witness before we take action to stop the violence? How many more women will continue to have to fight… for peace?

Funny thing, INSPIRATION. Fleeting, elusive, most powerful force, eternal motivator, often sought out externally, yet, I believe, always found within oneself – these are some thoughts that the word evokes in me and some insights I have recently had.

Sometime in 2010, I noticed that I kept on asking myself: “What’s next for me?” I was yearning for something new, the next level. I intuitively knew that it was time, though I had no idea what this next level might be or bring, or where to look for it.

So I started looking at myself. I revisited lessons learned from previous years, asked family, friends and colleagues for specific feedback and at some stage literally stumbled over the question “What inspires me right now”?

Now, I have been in the coaching business since 2002 and this is not a new question to me. In fact, I built my business on and around what and who inspires me. Somehow this time around this question felt different to me and so I have been musing about INSPIRATION for some time.

INSPIRATION…..What is it? Where does it come from? Where do I find it? How do I get it? And where does it go, when I feel uninspired? How do I get it back? How do I keep it? And, and, and….

The dictionary says:

“inspiration |ˌinspəˈrā sh ən|

noun

1 the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative

• the quality of having been so stimulated, esp. when evident in something

• a person or thing that stimulates in this way

• a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea

• the divine influence believed to have led to the writing of the Bible”.

That’s all jolly good – and still just words. I wanted more.

Then a colleague sent the link to “Lost Generation,”and my first thought was: ” Oh no, not another apocalyptic message regarding our future”. Often I delete these kind of links.  This time, curiosity got the better of me.

At first, my heart depleted – literally. Momentarily, I felt miserable, sad, hopeless, asking myself: “What’s the point?”. Then everything changed. By the end of the poem, my heart was so big it felt there was not enough room in my chest for it. I felt full, alive, hopeful. My body felt tall and strong, my mind clear, and my soul nourished and empowered. I felt INSPIRED – in fact, I felt like I had just had an injection of pure INSPIRATION.

Totally unexpectedly, I had tapped into my sense of INSPIRATION, the essence of my beliefs, the “why” behind the things I’m doing, the “why” behind my being who I am.

My eyes also caught a response with a strongly worded title, which I also watched. I happily noticed that my INSPIRATION is stronger than any cynic and I realised that I had stopped battling cynics quite some time ago. There’s no need for me to be right – there are many different realities and truth is in the eye of the beholder. I just made the choice that the way to live my life is not the “cynic’s way”.

INSPIRATION allows me to grow, keep moving, develop ideas, feel happy and grateful, rather than rushed, driven and always on the search or on the run. INSPIRATION is within me and when it’s present, I feel it physically. I feel present, alert, awake, alive, grounded. There are triggers, light-switches if you wish, that turn on my INSPIRATION, yet it is uniquely mine; as is what I make out of it.

When the going gets tough, INSPIRATION keeps me going. It is stronger than any status quo, even stronger than the cliché-voices. One cliché that I know very well is “Being a stay-at-home-Mum is a big job, too”. INSPIRATION gives me the perspective to turn that around and make it fit who I am: ”Being a mother is who I am and it’s my leading-role, the blockbuster movie of my life. And I live and fill different kind of jobs and roles, and they are all fabulous and part of who I am.”

Oprah Winfrey once said  “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” Just reading that short phrase, my whole body resonates vibrantly. I feel INSPIRED. During this time of musing, I learned that the more I look outward, the more I look to please, the less I feel INSPIRED and the less I INSPIRE others, including my children.

It turned out that my next level is a continuation of what I am already doing, in a bolder, unapologetic kind of way and knowing perfectly well that my kind of work is not for everybody.

I now know much more about how I personally feel when I’m INSPIRED. I know I need to go within to switch my INSPIRATION on when the light’s gone out or the fuse has blown. I know that INSPIRATION never really leaves me; I might have just been distracted by other stuff. There remains much to discover and explore – the journey is INSPIRING to me.

For those of us fortunate enough to give birth– or be born– with access to  hospitals, medical care and plenty of food to eat, Mother’s Day is a happy occasion spent celebrating that special woman in our lives who was the steward of early life. It is a day marked by indulgence: chocolate- or flower- sending, or a tender phone call or loving card. But for many mothers in the world, the act of giving life is undertaken at great risk to one’s own. This Mother’s Day, let us honor the millions of women around the globe for whom motherhood is still a great gamble, and redouble our efforts to ensure that no woman will have to give her own life in order to create a new one.

This weekend, I will return to my hometown to celebrate my own mother. One of our shared, mother-daughter activities is sponsoring women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), through Women for Women International. Our support helps Shukuru and Florence, two women living in the conflict-torn East, access training and tools that help them tackle the twin challenges of war and poverty.  Florence, my mother’s sponsored “sister,” has seven children. Shukuru, my “sister,” is not yet twenty years old and has two girls. The letters they write us, through the help of a translator, tell of how important it is for women to learn about reproductive health, how to plan when to have children, and how their sponsorship funds are helping pay for children’s food and school fees. For mothers like Shukuru and Florence, the chance to survive childbirth and raise healthy, happy children is a gift not taken for granted.

The fact that Florence and Shukuru have even survived the process of giving birth multiple times is in itself a feat.  According to groundbreaking research by the medical journal The Lancet, more than 50% of all maternal deaths in 2008 took place in only six countries, including DRC. The others were India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.  Women for Women International works in many of these countries, and has witnessed firsthand the extraordinary obstacles—and strength—of mothers who are struggling every day to provide a safe and healthy future for themselves and their families, even in the face of tremendous obstacles.

Take twenty-year-old Khadija, an Afghan mother who with the support of a sponsor began our year-long training program in November, 2009. Only 14% of births in Afghanistan are facilitated by a medical worker, leading to one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. The financial strain of raising a family at such a young age and without formal training is tremendous. After learning about her rights, how to manage finances and how to sew, Khadija purchased an embroidery machine and now sells items at bazaars to generate income so she can send her children to school. Khadija also learned how to plan pregnancy and how to prevent children from contracting serious diseases. Even though her country is still far from stable, Khadija is on more steady footing and hopeful that she can pay forward the dividends of her success in the future. In her words, “I would like to have my own income-generation project in the future, to support other women and girls.”

This kind of ripple effect that direct investment in women has on health, education and economic growth is not unique to Khadija, Shukuru and Florence. According to the World Bank, women invest up to 90% of their resources in the family and community, as compared to 30-40% by men. When women are earning an income, they can afford medical care for themselves and their children, pay school fees for girls as well as boys, and ensure that sufficient food and nutrition is available to sustain healthy families.  Women who own businesses employ other women. Women who learn healthy behaviors, such as the importance of having a skilled birth attendant present for delivery and how to practice good sanitation in the home, are on the frontlines of the global effort to reverse these grim health statistics.

We need all hands on deck if we are to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves. We know investment in women yields incredible results, from health, to education, to economic growth, yet globally women receive less than two cents of every dollar of development assistance. We can no longer afford this paltry record. In 2000, the world committed to a number of development goals that aimed to significantly reduce poverty and hunger and boost health and education by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals. While we celebrate Mother’s Day, we are yet farther from reaching MDG 5, on maternal health, than we are from achieving any other goal.

We cannot let another Mother’s Day pass with one woman dying every minute from pregnancy-related complications. It is time to realize our promises: Every woman deserves an equal chance at safe childbirth. Every child should enjoy the same opportunities to learn and grow. We as a global community can bring the world closer to the day when Mother’s Day brings the same cause for celebration the world over. This is something we can achieve, with the Khadijas, Shukurus and Florences of the world leading the way.

Known as Nu Shu (literally “women’s language’), this was a spoken and written code developed and used in secret by the women of China’s Hunan province, somewhere between 400-1,000 years ago.  At the time of the language’s origin, China was a place characterized by Chinese-American and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn as “likely the worst place in the world to be a woman”: foot-binding, forced marriage, limited rights, and a strict ban on education, reading or writing being among the everyday horrors  for women. In the midst of such oppression, a group of incredibly determined and clever women developed a secret language by means of which they were able to communicate with one another, confiding in friends, keeping in touch with families when separated by marriage and calling for help in times of need. So strict was the protection of Nu Shu, it was not discovered until the 1960s, and then was presumed by the government to be evidence of espionage. When it was discovered to be a centuries-kept secret language for women, the Revolutionary guards went on a rampage destroying any cultural artifacts they found bearing the secret writing. Much like the tragic history of languages of many of America’s native tribes that were forbidden through government-enforced “Americanization,” Nu Shu ultimately died, along with evidence of the women who employed it. The last living woman who spoke and read Nu Shu died in 2004.

According to the American Journal of Political Science, women  make better political leaders than men. The research shows them to be more effective at both policy-making (more bills sponsored, co-sponsored, passed) and at bringing home the bacon to their districts (to the tune of a $49m more than male counterparts). Aside: There’s an interesting link here to the global statistic that women reinvest more personal income in the family and community (up to 90%) than men (at 30-40%, according to the World Bank). My favorite finding: these ladies brought home the cash for projects across the myriad district needs, not just “women’s issues.” As for causation, the study attributes not an innate superiority at politckin’ (agreed), but an environment in which women have to be better to win. Others might also point to theories about collaborative leadership styles that are supposedly more often exhibited by women, but that’s another debate altogether.

The spotlight on the world stage has turned to Tunisia, where the ouster of dictator Ben Ali has Tunisians celebrating in the streets. As the events have unfolded this past week, a great deal of attention has been paid to his wife, Laila Trabelsi. There were the reports of her running off with 1.5 tons of gold before fleeing, the intrigue of her rise from humble hairdresser to fortunate first lady, the comparisons to Imelda Marcos and a host of other dictators’ wives throughout history. Indeed, she was called “the Queen of Carthage” during her reign. Now that he’s out, and she with him, her memory lives on in the graffiti’d slurs on the walls of Tunis calling her a whore. Not exactly a relevant political point, but hey, why monkey with what works? Since when has questioning the sexual conduct of the wife/mother/sister etc. of a public figure ever failed to incite attack? The more things change…