Women Building Political Will for Peace with North Korea

In 2015 Women Cross DMZ organized thirty women peacemakers from fifteen countries to cross the demilitarized zone from North Korea to South Korea calling for an end to the Korean War, reunion of separated families, and women's leadership in building peace. They marched with ten thousand Korean women on both sides of the DMZ on the wide boulevard of Pyongyang, cobblestone streets of Kaesong, and along the barbed wire fence in Paju.

Since then, Women Cross DMZ has been leading a transnational campaign—Korea Peace Now! Women Mobilizing to End the Korean War—with a coalition of women’s organizations, including the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Korean Women’s Movement for Peace, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Women Cross DMZ founder Christine Ahn will discuss the campaign and movement that is building political will for peace on the Korean Peninsula in a colloquium at the Center for Korean Studies on Wednesday, November 20, 2019, at 4:00 p.m.

Christine Ahn is the executive director of Women Cross DMZ. She is the co-founder of the Korea Peace Network, Korea Policy Institute, Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island, Korean Americans for Fair Trade, and National Campaign to End the Korean War. She has organized peace and humanitarian aid delegations to North and South Korea, and has addressed the U.S. Congress, United Nations, Canadian Parliament, and the Republic of Korea National Commission on Human Rights and the ROK National Assembly.

Ahn has worked with several prominent women’s and social justice organizations, including as the senior research and policy director at the Global Fund for Women, the international peace and solidarity director at the Women of Color Resource Center, and the economic and social human rights program coordinator at the Institute for Food and Development Policy. She has also worked with the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, Grassroots Global Justice, and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

Ahn’s writings have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Hill, Fortune Magazine, TIME, South China Morning Post, Newsweek, and The National Interest. She has appeared on Al Jazeera, Anderson Cooper 360, BBC, CNN, Democracy Now!, NBC Today Show, NPR, MSNBC, Voice of America, and the Samantha Bee Show Full Frontal.

She has spoken at major national and international conferences such as at the Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, Ploughshares Fund, World Beyond War, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She has delivered keynote speeches at major universities, including Stanford University, Harvard University, Wellesley College, Scripps College, and the University of California (Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara), University of Michigan, and University of Toronto.

She has been awarded the Twink Frey Visiting Social Justice Activist by the University of Michigan, the Rising Peacemaker Award by the Agape Foundation, Social Justice Leader Award by the Wallace and Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and Progressive Women’s Voices Award by the Women’s Media Center. She has received numerous fellowships, including the Kellogg and Ford Foundations. She has a master’s degree in foreign policy from Georgetown University and a certificate in ecological horticulture from the University of California, Santa Cruz.