"When considering how to engage and empower women for countering violent extremism, policy makers must understand the varied roles women play in this space."

"I'm not the only one who has experienced this, it's a pattern."

"I’m a fighter. I’m the kind of person that for better or worse runs towards a problem and tries to solve it even if it’s in a burning house."

"To achieve success in creating more peaceful, just and inclusive societies, we must create a world, an environment where every girl can choose her future"

"Traditional practices that go hand in hand with gender-based violence is an issue that women human rights defenders have met with unified opposition."

"Women human rights defenders in Somalia are reprised against, threatened, unlawfully arrested, privy to sexual and gender-based violence, kidnapped and even killed as a result of their work."

"Our people face increased violence, unemployment and misery because the government and a group of investors want to exploit our land and rivers for profit."

"“The Belo Monte Dam is literally drowning the lungs of the earth, the Amazon rainforest, and clogging its arteries, the great Amazon river that brings water and food to millions of people,”"

"“I will keep on fighting against what Belo Monte represents: a destructive, unsustainable, and unfeasible development model.”"

"" I dedicated my life to campaigning against this project, and though it has gone ahead, I will keep on fighting against what Belo Monte represents: a destructive, unsustainable and unfeasible development model.”"

"Never to be silenced"

"I also get a lot of motivation from my children because if I didn't have children, I would not need to change the world."

"Men with guns can't shoot at nipples."

"I have been a victim of bad legislation and I want to change it. I want to make legislation that's for the people."

"I use nudity because it's a weapon of the weak and the poor. The cost to pay is called shame, but I think I'm not ashamed of my body. It's a beautiful big mama body, and I am glad to deploy it for war."

"Motherhood is important for me because everything I do is about creating a better legacy for my children."

"When I put my nipples on the frontline, I learnt they fight harder than any bazookas. Men don't know how to deal with that."

"For many women, there is a great cost to pay, to challenge the status quo, because they benefit from it. Their children benefit from it. Doing the sort of activism that I do, threatens to take away from one’s status, or privilege, or wealth, or whatever it is they benefit from."

"These women are working, no matter where they are placed within politics. They entered political participation with the heart of the masses, the heart of the people, with the will to work against oppression."

"I am aching for the world I live in to become a better place for my children."

"A lot of what I do is really related to my position in the world as a woman for whom a lot of things don't come easy. Public health services don't work, the education doesn't work for my children, we struggle a lot and that's why I do what I do."

"I learnt that politics is a dish I love to eat… No one is going to make the world what I want to make it to be, unless I do it myself."

"When I die, I hope my children will be proud of me as a woman who at least tried to change things, instead of just waiting for the dictator to die."

"I don't get inspired by high and mighty women, it's everyday women. It's grandmothers, stepmothers, second wives, all swearing at their men."

"The third layer of participation for me are women who become enablers. They are not working with, but right from the word, ‘go’, they enter politics to enable those who are oppressed, suppressed, and abused."

"The ultimate prize in the fight for freedom for my country is death. Many have been murdered. Many have disappeared and we don't know where they are. So the ultimate prize is death."

"Not only is an educated Ugandan woman expected to respectfully serve and sustain the status quo, but her methods of resistance are also expected to be polished, refined, respectable, and temperate—not abrasive, rude, and hard-hitting. I deliberately defy all these expectations."

"Codes of politeness demand that colonized, dominated, and subjugated peoples do not talk back to their captors, colonizers or oppressors. Politeness blunts the tongue of criticism, ridicule, satire or irony. On the other hand, radical rudeness breaks down the doors to the arsenal of verbal, literary, and linguistic devices available to launch a counterattack against corrupt militant brutes in government who use bullets, prison sentences, and mass graves to silence their opponents."

"I think if I weren’t a mother, I probably wouldn’t do at least ¾ of the activism I’ve done."

"In my experience, there is much greater currency and power in my deployment of irreverent idioms of satire, mockery, and ridicule of oppressive power."

"The transgressive reversal of my role as an elite academic who chooses to write for (sexual and gender) minorities, poor people, and the political opposition party members further enhances the shock element within my audacity."

"In fact, as expressed in one of my poems written in prison, I wear my prison sentence for poetry as a badge of honor."

"In a way, motherhood keeps me very grounded."

"It is not a bond of geography. Or religion. Or culture. It is a bond of shared experience — experiences that only women go through, and struggles that only women face."

"As women we may not be a minority, but there is a bond that we all share."

"I don’t think people realise that there’s a flogging taking place a kilometer away when they’re sunbathing at their resort."

"We’re in a situation where a predator feels less safe and a professional woman feels more safe, and that’s where we need to be."

"The fact is, there are violent movies all over the world, and there are mental-health issues in other countries. But this doesn’t happen in other developed countries. The difference is guns, and how widely and easily available they are."

"My multiple identities empower me to fashion my writing into an effective weapon fighting against injustices meted out by holders of abusive power onto underprivileged groups in society."

"Double standards demand that feminine respectability bars women from articulating, writing, or deploying words, concepts, and ideas deemed to be taboo subjects."

"Now, I am sure the poor woman in her grave… is shocked every time I perform my own version of womanhood and femininity"

"Nobody wakes up one day and decides to leave their country if there is good governance, if there is a rule of law, if human rights are in fact being protected and respected."

"What will happen to those who are vulnerable?"

"I think because of the brave women who have come forward to tell their stories, the future workplace will be safer for my daughter than it was for people of my generation."

"I feed my children with takeout, once in a while, and sometimes we even buy street food. But ‘a good woman’ doesn’t do that, for example. These stereotypes trap us, and they make us feel like failures if we cannot meet these very high standards."

"Good girls and respectable women are trained to avoid taboo topics and “bad words” particularly in their public articulations."

"I think it is very liberating to embrace the many forms of motherhood in all its diversity. We must not be trapped by homogenous ideas of motherhood"

"Using taboo topics to poetically break silences surrounding government failures and violations of human rights is unavoidably loud. Whoever hears or reads the poems in which I deploy taboo topics stops, stands still, and thinks for a while about the issues being raised. It is effective!"

"But do women have agency to enter politics on their own? Or must we be beholden forever to male patriarchs, and misogynistic dictators, to whom we are answerable for our political participation?"

"I encourage emerging writers to practice writing daily if this is possible. Writing is a craft that gets better with practice. It is impossible to write a perfect script, and thus while editing and revision make finished products better, it is necessary to let go of revised drafts by submitting them to potential publishers."