PAUL VAN ZYL is a co-founder and the Executive Vice-President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an organization which assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocities or human rights abuse. From 1995 to 1998, he served as executive secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. In tandem with his work at the ICTJ, Mr. van Zyl serves as director of New York University School of Law’s Transitional Justice Program, and teaches law both in New York and Singapore.

Mr. van Zyl discusses the imperative of “giving women a voice” in order to identify and solve problems in conflict and post-conflict areas. Citing his work with Morocco’s Truth Commission van Zyl explains the significant strides made in justice and reparations for all, after women were included in the dialogue.

KATHI AUSTIN is an internationally recognized expert on arms trafficking, peace and security, and human rights. For 18 years, she has carried out original and in-depth field investigations pertaining to the illegal trade in weapons, illicit trafficking operations, illegal resource exploitation, transnational crime and terrorism. She has documented conflicts spanning Africa, Latin America, East and Central Europe, and South Asia. Ms. Austin will be played by Angelina Jolie in an upcoming film about her life.

Ms. Austin talks about how the nature of war has changed in the last twenty years and describes her first-hand observations of the arms trafficking industry and the notorious international criminal, Viktor Bout.

ZAINAB SALBI is the founder and CEO of Women for Women International, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing women survivors of conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to self-sufficiency. Over the last 15 years, Women for Women International has supported over 150,000 women, directly enabling many to transform themselves from victims to active citizens in some of the most challenging environments including eastern Congo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

An Iraqi native who arrived in the U.S. at age 20, Ms. Salbi talks about the ever-looming threat of bombs and gunfire during her childhood as the Iran-Iraq war raged.

ASATU BAH-KENNETH is the Deputy Inspector-General of Police for Administration in Liberia, and has served with the Liberia National Police (LNP) for two decades. Ms. Bah-Kenneth founded Liberian Muslim Women for Peace, is president of the Liberian Female Law Enforcement Association, and serves as second vice president of the board of Women NGOs Secretariat of Liberia. She is also a member of the International Chiefs of Police Association.

Ms. Bah-Kenneth discusses the transformation of the role of women, particularly Muslim women, during the war in Liberia.

PATRICIA VISEUR SELLERS From 1994 until 2007, Patricia Sellers was the Legal Advisor for Gender and a prosecutor at the Yugoslav and the Rwanda Tribunals for the United Nations. In 2007 Ms. Sellers was a Special Legal Consultant to the Gender and Woman’s Rights Division of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights where she developed the legal strategies that led to the successful prosecutions of rape as a war crime, sexual violence as an act of genocide and rape as torture.

Ms. Sellers discusses landmark holdings from the Rwandan tribunals which address violence against women, sexual intimidation and rape, and held that rape could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity. These holdings are significant in that they set precedent for holdings in current and future international criminal tribunals.

ABOUT THE SERIES
WIDE ANGLE is planning a bold new mini-series Women, War & Peace to challenge the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain and to place women at the center of an urgent dialogue about conflict and security. Women, War & Peace will focus on women’s strategic role in the post-Cold War era, where globalization, arms trafficking, and illicit trade have intersected to create a whole new type of war.

Women, War & Peace will present its groundbreaking message across the globe using all forms of media, including U.S. and international primetime television, radio, print, and web. PBS and WIDE ANGLE are proud to be the first to bring this conversation to primetime national television. Planned for broadcast in 2010, Women, War & Peace will be the most comprehensive global media initiative ever mounted on the roles of women in war and peace.

Women, War & Peace is spearheaded by producers Gini Reticker and Abigail Disney. The 4-part series will launch with the U.S. television premiere of their previous collaboration, the acclaimed Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the role women played in bringing peace to Liberia after 14 years of civil war. The film won Best Documentary Prize at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, the Silverdocs Witness Award, the Jackson Hole Audience Award, and has been short-listed for the Academy Award for best documentary.

Mary Robinson is the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. She served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002 and as President of Ireland from 1990-1997. She is a member of the Elders. She is Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders and Vice President of the Club of Madrid. She chairs the Fund for Global Human Rights and is Honorary President of Oxfam International and is Patron of the International Community of Women Living with AIDS (ICW). She is chair of the GAVI Fund Executive Committee and Vice-chair of the GAVI Fund Board. She is a professor of practice at Columbia University and member of the Advisory Board of the Earth Institute and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She serves as Chancellor of Dublin University.

Zainab Salbi
Founder & CEO, Women for Women International

Zainab Salbi is the founder and CEO of Women for Women International, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to self-sufficiency and active citizenship that promotes peace and stability. Over the last 15 years, Women for Women International has supported over 150,000 women directly enabling many to transform themselves from victims to active citizens in some of the most challenging environments including eastern Congo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. An Iraqi native who arrived in the U.S. at age 20, Ms. Salbi’s personal experience sensitized her to the plight of women survivors of war and led her to found Women for Women International at age 23. In 2007, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and in 1995 President Clinton honored Ms. Salbi at a White House ceremony for her humanitarian work in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is the author of Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing up in the Shadow of Saddam and The Other Side of War.

Patricia Viseur Sellers, Esq.
Independent Legal Expert, International Criminal Law and Humanitarian Law; Visiting Fellow, Kellogg College, University of Oxford

From 1994 until 2007, Patricia Sellers was the Legal Advisor for Gender and a prosecutor at the Yugoslav and the Rwanda Tribunals for the United Nations. In 2007 Ms. Sellers was a Special Legal Consultant to the Gender and Woman’s Rights Division of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. As the Legal Advisor for Gender related crimes, Ms. Sellers developed the legal strategies that led to the successful prosecutions of rape as a war crime, sexual violence as an act of genocide and rape as torture.  At present she is a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College of Oxford University and a consultant in international criminal and humanitarian law, in particular, gender-based crimes, torture and genocide. Ms. Sellers was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the City University of New York in 2006. She is the recipient of the the Prominent Women in International Law Award given by the American Society of International Law, the Ron Brown Memorial Award for International Law given by the National Bar Association, and the Martin Luther King Award from the University of Rutgers Law School. Ms. Sellers has lectured widely on the law of armed conflict, as well as authoring over twenty articles on international criminal law.

Paul van Zyl
Executive Vice President, International Center for Transitional Justice

Paul van Zyl is a co-founder and the Executive Vice-President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an organization which assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. Mr. van Zyl has acted as an adviser and consultant to human-rights organizations, governments, international organizations, and foundations on transitional justice issues in numerous countries. From 1995 to 1998, he served as executive secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Throughout his career, Mr. van Zyl has received a number of academic and professional honors. He was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008 and a TED Fellow in 2007, and was named as one of New York’s “Top 15 Lawyers Under 40″ by New York Lawyer Magazine. In tandem with his work at the ICTJ, Mr. van Zyl serves as director of New York University School of Law’s Transitional Justice Program, and teaches law both in New York and Singapore.

Helen Benedict
Professor, Columbia University School of Journalism

Helen Benedict is a professor of journalism at Colombia University and a writer specializing in the Iraq war, women’s issues, race, and literature. Her most recent nonfiction book is The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (2009), which has also been adapted into a play. In May 2008, she had an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the subject, and her piece in Salon magazine on the sexual assault of women soldiers won the 2008 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Her other nonfiction books include Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes (1992), an analysis of the way sex, race and class bias affect the coverage of rape; Portraits in Print (1991), a collection of profiles; and Recovery: How to Survive Sexual Assault (1985, 1994). Her novels are the forthcoming The Edge of Eden (Soho Press, 2009), The Opposite of Love (2007), The Sailor’s Wife (2000), Bad Angel (1996, 1997) and A World Like This (1990). Ms. Benedict’s articles and essays have appeared The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Nation, Poets & Writers, In These Times, Ms., Huffington Post, and Women’s Review of Books. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Virginia Center of the Arts, and the Freedom Forum.

Kathi Austin
Arms-Trafficking Expert

Kathi Austin is an internationally recognized expert on arms trafficking, peace and security, and human rights. For 18 years, she has carried out original and in-depth field investigations pertaining to the illegal trade in weapons, illicit trafficking operations, illegal resource exploitation, transnational crime and terrorism. She has documented conflicts spanning Africa, Latin America, East and Central Europe, and South Asia. Ms. Austin has served the United Nations and worked as a consultant and advisor to various multi-lateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and governments, including the World Bank, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Department of State. She has also served as visiting scholar at Stanford and University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Austin served as Chief of the Joint Mission Analysis Centre in the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in Timor-Leste (2007/2008) and Burundi (2006/2007). Prior to these U.N. posts, Ms. Austin was a Senior Anti-Corruption Policy Advisor for the Anti-Corruption Program at the Open Society Justice Initiative from 2004-2005. Her independently produced documentaries include: Killing Tradition: The Arming of Africa (2002); Forsaken Cries: The Story of Rwanda (1997); and Africa: Environmental Degradation, Human Deprivation (1994).

Leymah Gbowee
Executive Director, Women Peace and Security Network Africa

Leymah Roberta Gbowee is the executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, based in Accra, Ghana. She is a founding member and former coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Program/West African Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP). During her tenure as coordinator for WIPNET/WANEP, Ms. Gbowee organized collaborative peace-building initiatives for a network of women peace-builders from 9 of Liberia’s 15 counties. She also served as the commissioner-designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Additionally, Ms. Gbowee has presented on several regional and international panels, including UNIFEM’s “Women and the Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Repatriation (DDRR) Process,”  the United Nations Security Council’s Arria Formula Meeting on women, peace, and security organized around the 5th anniversary of U.N. resolution 1325. Most recently, at the invitation of the French Presidency of the E.U. in Brussels, she presented at the conference themed “From Commitment to Action – The E.U. Delivering to Women in Conflict and Post-Conflict: Implementing SCR 1325 and 1820 in E.U. missions.” In October 2007, the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government honored Ms. Gbowee with the Blue Ribbon Peace Award. This annual award is given to individuals and organizations that have made a significant contribution to peace-building through innovative strategies that promote women’s leadership in peace processes on the local, national, or international level. (Gbowee photo credit: Michael Angelo for Wonderland)

Stephen Lewis
Co-Director, AIDS-Free World

Mr. Stephen Lewis is Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, a new international advocacy organization that works to promote more urgent and more effective global responses to HIV/AIDS (www.aids-freeworld.org). Among several senior U.N. roles that spanned over two decades, Mr. Lewis was the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from June 2001 until the end of 2006. From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Lewis was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. From 1984 through 1988, Stephen Lewis was Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations. In addition to his work with AIDS-Free World, Mr. Lewis is a Professor in Global Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, at McMaster University. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is the chair of the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation in Canada. Mr. Lewis holds 28 honorary degrees from Canadian universities and is a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honor for lifetime achievement. In 2007, the Kingdom of Lesotho invested Mr. Lewis as Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe. The order, named for the founder of Lesotho, is the country’s highest honor.

Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini
Research Affiliate, MIT Center for International Studies; Co-founder, International Civil Activism Network

Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini has been a leading international advocate, researcher, trainer and writer on conflict and peace-building for over a decade, focusing on women’s protection and participation. Since 2005, she has trained key personnel at U.N. agencies, the U.K. government and NGOs worldwide. As a Senior Policy Advisor to the UK-based NGO International Alert from 1999-2000, she was a leading advocate and drafter of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325. Between 2002-2005, as Director of the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission, Ms. Anderlini led ground-breaking field research on women’s contributions to peace processes, governance, transitional justice and post-conflict disarmament and reintegration issues in 12 countries. Ms. Anderlini is also co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), a U.S.-based NGO dedicated to supporting civil activism and women’s peace-building in conflict affected countries. She was a convener of the Iran Experts’ Group that in November 2008 generated a Joint Experts Statement on U.S.-Iran policies. She has taught at Georgetown University, advises the Brandeis University Coexistence Initiative and is a Research Affiliate at the MIT Center for International Studies. Her latest book, Women Building Peace: What they do, Why it Matters was published in 2007.