One evening, in a conversation with a group of impressive Afghan women activists in Kabul, the first participant started the conversation by making a simple but profound statement. She said, “Stop looking at us as victims, and look at us as the leaders that we are.” She was right. All too often when we look at women struggling for their rights in Afghanistan, we see them solely as victims. To be sure, many have been victimized, but they are also on the front lines of progress, working to create a better future for their country.

Nigeria has committed itself to accelerate the national and regional implementation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions, especially on women, peace and security, Women Affairs Minister Zainab Maina has said.

Maina disclosed this when she addressed member states during the Third Committee of the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday.

"Nigeria is making progress in implementing resolution 1325 as follow-up of the regional workshop on the resolution that took place in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2013.

Some say history repeats itself. In 2004, UNDP issued what I believe is one of the best of its global Human Development Reports, Managing Cultural Diversity. The report argued that managing cultural diversity is one of the central challenges of our time and that policy choices about recognizing diverse ethnicities, religions, languages and values “are an inescapable feature of the landscape of politics in the 21st century.”

This chapter is from a book “Ending Violence against Women: A Challenge for Development”, the book was written by Francine Pickup with Suzanne Williams and Caroline Sweetman and published by Oxfam GB.