About Us

Our Vision, Our Purpose, and the Vounteers & Members that make it happen.

Our Vision

is a world in which gender equality, and the contributions and rights of diverse women and girls, are at the forefront of transforming conflict to build peace.

OUR PURPOSE

RESHAPING PEACE AND SECURITY

REDEFINING SECURITY FOR ALL

BUILDING COLLECTIVE POWER

VOLUNTEERS

Melissa Monteiro

Community Migrant Resource Centre

Melissa Monteiro, is the CEO of the Community Migrant Resource Centre (NSW) with over twenty five years’ experience in the community sector. Melissa is passionate about resettlement and social justice issues and her areas of expertise include building the capacity of small and emerging communities, leadership skills development, women, & youth mentoring.

Michelle Higelin

ActionAid Australia

Michelle Higelin is the Executive Director of ActionAid Australia. She has more than two and half decades of experience working to advance women’s rights in Australia and internationally, including as the former Deputy General Secretary of one of the largest women’s rights movement globally, the World YWCA. Michelle has served on global advisory groups to the United Nations Population Fund and the World Food Programme, and chaired the NGO Working Group on Peace at the United Nations in Geneva. She currently serves on the Board of the Australian Council for International Development and is a Co-Chair of the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women, Peace and Security.

Sarah Davies

Griffith and Monash Universities

Sara Davies is a Professor at School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Australia; Adjunct Professor at the Gender Peace and Security Centre, School of Social Sciences, Monash University; Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology; and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Sara is an International Relations (IR) scholar with a specific focus on Global Health Governance and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Sara’s research is devoted to identifying the political conditions that deny humans access to civil, economic and social human rights. Her research has focused on situations where humans face immense vulnerability, including disease outbreaks events, gender-based and sexual violence in conflict, and forced displacement.

Linh Nong Dieu

International Women's Development Agency (IWDA)

Linh Nong Dieu is an international development professional with experience in the non-governmental, not-for-profit sector in Southeast Asia, the United States, and Australia. Linh offers in-depth knowledge in historical, social, and political contexts of Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. She is passionate in post-colonial feminism and women, peace and security in the Global South and an advocate for the decolonisation approach to development and peacebuilding initiatives. She was previously Rotary Peace Fellow at The University of Queensland, and is currently Program Manager of the Myanmar portfolio at IWDA.

Ludmilla Kwitko

Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom

Dr Ludmilla Kwitko works on women, peace and security; and gender, international aid and development issues, with civil society, donors, governments, multilateral organisations, as a practitioner, educator, policy analyst and researcher. Previously she was Gender and Community Development Adviser to AusAID. Currently she is Associate Professor (Honorary) at the Gender Institute, Australian National University; Asia-Pacific Regional Representative to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom International Board, and Co-Chair of the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women, Peace and Security. Ludmilla works to promote and build gender equality, justice, peace, inclusive security and sustainable development – locally and globally.