By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

A panel discussion in honor of International Women's Day introduced the work of compelling global women leaders to the UCLA community, offering the latter opportunities for fruitful collaborative initiatives.

UCLA Global, March 30, 2026 — “I think it’s important to recognize that universities are not meant to stand apart from the world’s hardest challenges, we’re actually meant to engage with them, thoughtfully, rigorously and, ideally, in partnership with those who are leading the work on the ground,” said Heather Mariihe Caruso, associate dean of inclusive excellence and faculty member at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, at a forum hosted by the Anderson School on March 4.

Spearheaded by Caruso and the nonprofit organization, American Women for International Understanding, or AWIU, the forum hosted six women grassroots leaders from around the world who have received the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage, or IWOC, Award* over the last decade. The event was cosponsored by UCLA’s International Institute, Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and Office of Alumni Affairs, together with AWIU.

“As we think about the significance of their visit to campus today,” continued Caruso, “I think it poses an important question… How does a university community, how do the staff, the students, the faculty, our alums — how do we build connections that are meaningful, that are mutually beneficial with these courageous leaders who are doing their work across dramatically different contexts?”

The six alumnae awardees — investigative journalist Arbana Xharra (Kosovo, 2015 awardee); human rights activist Quynh Nguyen (Vietnam, 2017); filmmaker Roya Sadat(Afghanistan, 2018), human rights lawyer, journalist and women’s empowerment activist Facia Boyenoh Harris (Liberia, 2022), investigative journalist and human rights lawyer Agather Atuhaire (Uganda, 2024); and women’s health activist Fatouh Baldeh (The Gambia, 2024) — attended a private roundtable with senior leaders and students from across the UCLA campus, followed by a public panel discussion and a luncheon. (Short bios of the six guests can be found here.)

It was the third such forum that Caruso has organized in as many years with the goal of introducing the work of distinguished international women leaders to a wider audience and facilitating connections with UCLA community members who might support their work, engage in collaborative research or joint activism, or suggest possible partners and collaborators.

Speakers at the public panel (from left): Raya Sadat, Arbana Zharra and Fatou Baldeh
with moderator Katelyn Chloe. (Photo: UCLA Anderson.)

Women leaders confront major societal issues, provide advocacy

Three of the visiting leaders spoke about their work at the public panel discussion (see video) hosted by Katelyn Choe, a recently retired U.S. foreign service officer.

Female genital mutilation, or “cutting” (also known at FMG/C). Fatou Baldeh spoke in detail about her work to protect women and girls for the harmful practice of FMG in the Gambia and globally, and her collaboration with UCLA and Dr. Aparna Srihdar, professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology, to put an end to the practice worldwide.

“The work I do is to advocate and educate against a harmful traditional practice that is deeply rooted,” she said of work. “It’s 2026 and globally, 230 million women and girls are survivors of one form or another of FGM… I believe it is a global health issue that everybody should be concerned about, but real change will happen when communities themselves stand up and say, ‘We do not want to continue.’

“FGM has both immediate and long-term complications, including death,” she continued. “Recently in The Gambia, we lost two babies. One was just one month old, the other was three weeks old. They were cut and both babies bled to death. Yes, we applied the law in both cases, but in both cases, none of the male members of the family were even questioned. It was the mothers, the grandmothers and the aunts that were arrested and taken to jail… I really struggle with that case.

“I will stand [by my conviction] that we should have a law that bans FGM. But why is it that women continue to the victims? As the victims of FGM, but also when the law is applied, we are again the victims. How can we fight the systems that actually, even [when] women know the harm… [put] so much pressure on them that they must continue cutting their daughters to fit into that society? We must challenge those structures. We must challenge those systems.

Baldeh was clear that she did not expect rapid change. “Sustainable change, transformative, change takes time, and we need to hold grace,” she said. “[F]ighting gender-based violence [also] needs to bring men in. I think for a long time, men have been considered perpetrators. [W]e have not recognized the system that created … toxic masculinities, that made men believe that it’s ok to be violent.”

A free press, independent institutions and civil society. Arbana Xharra described her journey from surviving the Kosovo War as a child to becoming a member of the first generation of journalists in newly independent Kosovo to being forced to flee the country after a brutal attack in 2017 to obtaining asylum in the United States. (The investigative journalist was attacked following the publication of an article about young Muslim men from Kosovo who were joining ISIS in Syria.)

“I came here and… got protection, not from charity [or] out of a good luck, but from independent institutions: an independent court, independent media and civil society — because those were the first to react when I was attacked,” she said.

“I know the importance of having independent institutions, not just because of us, [the] most vulnerable immigrants… [W]hen politicians have power over free media institutions they attack you, not just us [journalists and immigrants].

“That is why it's all of [our] responsibility to fight for a free media, for free institutions, because we need to. It's not going to be forever democracy if you don't protect democracy, and we can see how it's changing globally.”

The immigrant single mother of two recently launched a podcast, Not Silent, which features in-depth interviews of courageous women worldwide. “What I am doing is to raise awareness for all of us, especially [among] Western audiences, [about] what’s happening to… women across the world.”

Gender apartheid. Roya Sadat, the first woman director (and screenwriter-producer) in Afghanistan, spoke about gender apartheid and her work as a filmmaker in her country. Her films, which have garnered awards worldwide, include “Three Dots,” “A Letter to the President,” “Playing the Tatar,” “Sima’s Song” and “The Sharp Edge of Peace.”**

Sadat also produced and directed documentaries and historical TV series for Afghan television, which she said were very popular among the younger generation and sparked meaningful conversations with them on taboo subjects in Afghan society.

“Right now, Afghan women are abandoned from the very start,” said Sadat, noting that women lacked the rights to go to school, work or the park; to show their faces; or speak up in society. She pointed out that the Taliban had recently legalized domestic violence by ruling that husbands have the right to beat their wives and girls at home.

Whenever she hears “very beautiful and meaningful words like ‘women of courage,’” said the director, she wonders if they rightly apply to her or to her mother, who raised eight daughters under Taliban rule and educated them at a home — something as dangerous then as it is today. Roughly half the population, representing between 20 and 25 million women, now face the same situation her mother faced, she observed.

She argued that it was well past time for the United Nations to recognize gender apartheid as a crime under international law. “We need to raise our voices,” she said, insisting that recognizing gender apartheid as a crime was not for the future of Afghan women alone, but for the future of women all over the world.

Sadat began publicly working in film after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, during the long U.S. war and military engagement in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Initially, she recounted, she was very serious about remaining professional and avoiding anything that could affect her reputation, largely in order to demonstrate to her family — as well as society at large — that being a filmmaker was an acceptable profession for a woman.

After the peace agreement brokered by President Trump directly with the Taliban (the negotiations excluded the civilian Afghan government) and the return of the militant group to power in 2021, women in Afghanistan were subsequently denied virtually all civil and human rights. The filmmaker obtained asylum in the U.S., where she continues to work in film and theater. Her career and accomplishments are an iconic representation of all the things that Afghan women have lost.

* The IWOC Award was launched by the State Department in 2007 to honor women who have demonstrated exceptional courage, strength and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights and the empowerment of women and girls, among other causes, often at the cost of great personal risk and sacrifice.

** Raya Sadat’s documentary, “The Sharp Edge of Peace,” was filmed in 2021 during the waning days of the Afghan government and the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops and citizens. Released in 2024, the film follows four women negotiators for the Afghan government who fought to preserve women’s rights in a proposed shared political structure with the Taliban.

All photos by UCLA Anderson.

See event program for how you can support the women leaders who visited UCLA, together with contact information for them.

See UCLA Alumni Association article on the forum here.

Published: Monday, March 30, 2026