Full democracy requires the full participation of women. Your voices are vital. The word 'vital' means necessary for life. A democracy, to be fully alive, must include all its citizens.
I think that women often can connect at a heart to heart level.
Women are less corruptible. There's plenty of research to show that they are less inclined to take bribes and they are more trustworthy. And so it's all the more important to have them in large percentages.
As you're building a country, you have to be thinking about what works at the ground level. And women have their fingers on the pulse of the community. They know what is critical to have in the treaty to stop the war.
The capacity to forgive is not just about Rwandan women. It is about a willingness of women all over the world to work across conflict lines, to say, "Yes, I'm a Serb. Or yes, I'm a Muslim. Or yes, I'm a Croat. But I'm also a mother."
One of the greatest mistakes the international community can make is to say, "Well, we will get other matters figured out and stabilized, and then we'll think about the women's rights, because that's really a grade-B kind of concern."
I can quote you lots of chapters in verse from the bible that are terrible for women. But you can use the bible to either liberate or subjugate women. And it's the same with the Koran.
I would like to see many times more dollars going into the education for girls. The World Bank has some wonderful statistics in terms of the importance of educating girls as a way of lifting whole societies out of poverty.
Women know what kinds of laws can really be implemented. I loved in the film where the woman was talking to the other women about what it was going to be like when they were married. And she was saying, "Now, don't you think that just because the mother gave your husbands that cow that it's just his cow."
Women tend to be more interested in reconciliation. A Kenyan woman leader said to me, "You know, in a war, men and women want different things. The men care a lot about territory. And they care where the borders are. And they want this whole state. The women," she said, "they want a safe place." And she put her fingers like this, "They want a safe place for their children to go to school without being shot, for their daughters to not be raped."
I'll tell you, when you have wounds that are as deep as were caused by the genocide, the first thing you do is try to create some way to pull the wound together. And it may be artificial until the skin grows back.
I think the women in the political positions will push very, very hard to see that there are loans and banks for women in Rwanda.
If we look at governments around the world, we see that the higher the women's percentage is in parliament, the more funding there is for education and for health care as compared to buying arms, for example.
Rwanda is an example in terms of the transformation of the rights of women. But if you talk to almost any Africanist at the State Department or the World Bank, when you say the word Africa, they think women.
Women ten years ago were much more of the household property than is the case now. It's not to say that if you go backcountry you don't also find that. And there's a tremendous education campaign that is needed to apprise women of their rights.
The United States is the lone superpower of the world. We have a stake in Rwanda's success because we have a stake in the world's stability.And we have got to understand the need for a paradigm shift. This is not about "might makes right." This is about a democratic movement that pulls out the voices of all of the people so that they come up with a fair and healthy and stable and sustainable society. And if we can learn those lessons in a place like Rwanda, then we can apply them around the world.
