Karin Holmgrunn Sham Poo

Overview

Karin Holmgrunn Sham Poo born Oslo, Norway December 18, 1943. Norwegian banker; Deputy Exec. Director UNICEF, 1987-2004; special representative of UN Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, 2005.

Quotations

"We see children dying amidst conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, DRC, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Sudan, and many more. We see them being killed in Gaza, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Nairobi, New York, Riyadh, Istanbul, and Bali. And we know that the conflicts that bring about this suffering cannot be separated from the overall state of the world’s children." (Barcelona Forum 2004; 2011 photo dagbladet.no)

Lisa J. Shannon

Overview

Lisa J. Shannon born Portland, OR February 5, 1975. Human rights activist and author. Founded Run for Congo Women, 2005; co-founded Sister Somalia rape crisis center, 2011.

Quotations

“There is no greater threat to human security than our well-trained capacity to simply flip off our empathy switch. But if we can flip our empathy switch back on, and keep it on, we find a new power to speak up, step up, and do what we can to stop the violence. Not because we should, but because it’s happening to our friends.” (lisajshannon.com; photo Wikipedia)

Manal al-Sharif

Overview

Manal al-Sharif born Mecca, Saudi Arabia April 25, 1979. Human rights activist. Arrested for driving on 30th birthday. Organized campaign to release Southeast Asian women jailed for minor offenses, 2011. Awarded Havel Prize for Creative Dissent, 2012.

Quotations

“Change in any society starts with women. . . Women are so powerful, but they don’t recognize their power.” (Carlton Now, Jan. 31, 2013; photo mediander.com)

Mandira Sharma

Overview

Mandira Sharma born Baglung, Nepal June 2, 1972. Nepali lawyer and human rights activist. Founded Advocacy Forum to protest government abuses of its opponents in civil war, 2001. Nobel Peace Prize nominee, 2005; received Human Rights Watch Defender Award, 2006.

Quotations

"Human beings do not have the right to kill another human being, nobody has that right, you have the right to do only good things." (worldpeoplesblog; photo bbc.co.uk)

Irom Chanu Sharmila

Overview

Irom Chanu Sharmila born Imphal, India March 14, 1972. Nonviolent Gandhian disciple; human rights advocate; journalist; poet. Known as the "Iron Lady of Manipur." Began hunger strike to protest civilian deaths at the hands of the Indian military, 2000-2016; due to hunger strike, has been repeatedly arrested for attempted suicide and force-fed via feeding tube.

Quotations

“[T]here was no other means to stop further violations by the armed forces against innocent people.” (K. Joshi interview, Mar. 25, 2006)

“I do not want to commit suicide. Mine is only a non-violent protest. . . I love life. I do not want to take my life but I want justice and peace.” (Independent, Mar. 4, 2013; photo worldpeoplesblog)

Evelyn Jane Sharp

Overview

Evelyn Jane Sharp born Denmark Hill, London, England August 4, 1869 (d. 1955). British author and suffragist. Tax resister; pacifist against WWI. Twice imprisoned and force-fed, 1911, 1913. Barred from Hague Women's Peace Congress, 1915. Took part in postwar Quaker relief to Russia, 1920, and Germany, 1921. World Committee Against War and Fascism, 1933.

Quotations

“I sometimes think that the art of politics consists in the provision of ladders to enable politicians to climb down from untenable positions.” (Wikipedia; 1933 port. by Rothenstein)

Martha Sharp

Overview

Martha Sharp (née Dickie) born Providence, RI April 25, 1905 (d. 1999). Unitarian refugee rescuer; co-founded Unitarian Service Committee; work in Prague 1939 relief program and escort of children to Holland; Lisbon 1940 assisted escape of Jews; honored by Yad Vashem Righteous Among Nations, 2005; founded “Children to Palestine” 1943; aided release of imprisoned Spanish refugees, 1944.

Quotations

“Anyone would have done it.” (New York Post, Sep. 17, 2016; photo ushmm.com)

Larissa Shasko

Overview

Larissa Shasko born Regina, Saskatoon, Canada January 20, 1982. Canadian politician; anti-nuclear activist. Leader Green Party of Saskatchewan, 2009-11. Organized Fossil Fools Day protest against climate change, 2009. Opposed Iraq War.

Quotations

On why she joined the Green Party: “[The principles of] ecological wisdom, participatory democracy, gender diversity. . . peace and non-violence.” (News-Optimist, Oct. 11, 2010)

“Peace and Non-Violence: Regardless of differences, we recognize the inherent value of all life. The Green Party of Saskatchewan commits itself to the establishment of a demilitarized society, based on mutual cooperation and nonviolent conflict resolution amongst all people and nations.” (deliberation.ca, 2015; Photo mjtimes.sk.ca)

Anna Howard Shaw

Overview

Anna Howard Shaw born Newcastle-on-Tyne, England February 14, 1847 (d. 1919). Leading suffragist; internationalist; physician. First American female ordained Methodist minister. Inducted into National Women's Hall of Fame, 2000.

Quotations

"Preparedness for war is an incentive to war, and the only hope of permanent peace is the systematic and scientific disarmament of all the nations of the world." (June 21, 1915; photo Wikipedia)

Cindy Sheehan

Overview

Cindy Sheehan (née Miller) born Inglewood, CA July 10, 1957. Leading Iraq War resister. Established Camp Casey outside George W. Bush's ranch in Texas, in honor of her son, killed in Iraq War.

Quotations

“War is a barbaric tool of the war profiteers and Empires who employ them. War pits young people from the working class against other similarly poor, or disadvantaged humans, for nothing but the greed of the few. Only we the people can make war obsolete by not participating in the profound crimes of the profiteers and other war mongers.” (worldbeyondwar.org/quotes)

“It's up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist.” (Vets for Peace, Aug. 5, 2005; photo lapsblog.com)

Donna Sheehan

Overview

Donna Sheehan born Oakland, CA April 1, 1930 (d. 2015). Artist and peace activist. Began her environmental activism with a protest against California Dept. of Transportation herbicide usage, 1983. Founded anti-toxics sustainability organization MOW & SOW, 1986. Led Unreasonable Women Baring Witness in nude Iraq War protests, 2002-03.

Quotations

“It is no accident either that women would choose to get naked for the sake of peace and justice. For Baring Witness is about using the greatest weapon women have, the power of the feminine, the power of our beauty and nakedness to awaken our male leaders and stop them in their tracks. In this way, Baring Witness is about heightening the awareness of human vulnerability.

"By risking with our nakedness—our charm and beauty and vulnerability—in service of peace we are exposing the flesh all humans share. We are casting off the old dominant paradigm of aggression and restoring the power of the feminine to its rightful place as the protector of life. It is time for women to deter the men in their lives from violent acts, as nurturers, as guardians of our families and as voices of reason.

"War seems to be a masculine invention. For thousands of years, men have been conditioned to respond to threat and confrontation with violence first. Whereas the feminine way is to resolve difficulty and conflict through dialogue and negotiation, through compromise and kindness, not acts of violence.” (Baring Witness, Dec. 2002; photo linkedin.com)

Mary Sheepshanks

Overview

Mary Sheepshanks born Bilton, Yorkshire, England October 25, 1872 (d. 1960). Pacifist; Socialist; suffragist; feminist; strongly opposed World War I which she called "organized international suicide." WILPF founding member; WILPF International Secretary, 1927-31; Fight the Famine Council Secretary, 1918; lobbied for disarmament.

Quotations

"Each nation is convinced that it is fighting in self-defence, and each in self-defence hastens to self-destruction. The military authorities declare that the defender must be the aggressor, so armies rush to invade neighbouring countries in pure defence of their own hearth and home, and, as each Government assures the world, with no ambition to aggrandise itself. Thousands of men are slaughtered or crippled. . . art, industry, social reform, are thrown back and destroyed; and what gain will anyone have in the end? In all this orgy of blood, what is left of the internationalism which met in congresses, socialist, feminist, pacifist, and boasted of the coming era of peace and amity. The men are fighting; what are the women doing? They are, as is the lot of women, binding up the wounds that men have made." (Jus Suffragi, Oct. 14, 1915; photo c. 1907 NYPL Schwimmer Col.)

Rebecca Shelley

Overview

Rebecca Shelley born Sugar Valley, PA January 20, 1887 (d. 1994). Absolute pacifist, militant suffragist, and peace activist. Green Party leader. Teacher of German. Leading woman lobbyist in opposition to World War I; sailed on Ford’s peace ship, 1915. Attended International Women’s Conference that led to formation of WILPF, the Hague, 1915. Organized mother’s marches and draft resistance, 1917. Co-founded anti-war People's Council of America, 1917. Picketed Pentagon against Vietnam War, 1965; wore black until all troops were out of Vietnam. Founded 230-acre PeaceWays farm to "promote World Peace and the practice of Universal Human Brotherhood. . . to build a world community free from ignorance, poverty and war," Battle Creek, MI, 1959. Vice-presidential candidate on pacifist write-in ticket, 1964.

Quotations

Can we discern through crumbled empires' dust,
Whose holy wars were right, whose causes just?

(her poem; photo wikimedia)

Kate Sheppard

Overview

Kate Sheppard (née Malcolm) born Liverpool, England March 10, 1847 (d. 1934). Leader of world's first successful suffrage campaign, bringing voting rights to women of New Zealand, 1893.

Quotations

“There were people who would say that there must be fighting, and probably they were right in a sense because so long as greed and hatred were in men's hearts there would continue to be war, but it was up to women to make sure that in time the combative element would be used to fight for great moral reforms rather than for any other reason.” (NCW conference, 1900, in Megan Hutching, “’Mothers of the World’: Women, Peace and Arbitration”, New Zealand Journal of History, 1993, p. 174; photo Wikipedia)

Clare Frewen Sheridan

Overview

Clare Frewen Sheridan born London September 9, 1885 (d. 1970). Pacifist sculptress and writer. Made bust of Gandhi (1951); sculpture Woman Leading a Blind Soldier.

Quotations

"I love humanity, with its force and its weakness, its ambitions and fears, its honesty and its lack of scruples, its perfection and deformities." (Mayfair to Moscow, p. 12, 1921; 1922 photo by Genthe, Wikipedia)

Alexandra Shevchenko

Overview

Alexandra Shevchenko born Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine April 24, 1986. Co-founded FEMEN ("Feminism’s shock troops"), 2008. Arrested five times for bare-breasted protests in Ukraine, Belarus, France, Italy, Germany. Confronted Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel, Hamburg, 2013; arrested for topless protest, Crimea, 2014.

Quotations

"It was non-violent women protesting against the most dangerous dictator in the world." (The Guardian, April 12, 2013)

Heisoo Shin

Overview

Heisoo Shin born Gyeonggi Province, Republic of Korea April 23, 1950. South Korean professor of sociology; leader in exposing of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II; spearheaded international campaign against violence to women in war; Nobel Peace Prize nominee 2005. Vice-chair of UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for 2003-04; member of UN committee on violence against women, 2005; member of UN committee on Afghanistan, 2006; convened Gyeongnam World Conference on Women’s Human Rights, 2008-09.

Quotations

"We have established that rape and sexual slavery during wartime are violations of women’s rights and should be punished. Because of our movement, hopefully such a thing will never happen again." (quote and photo World People's Blog)

Vandana Shiva

Overview

Vandana Shiva born Dheradun, India November 5, 1952. Nuclear physicist; nonviolent environmental advocate; Gandhian; ecofeminist; opposed Iraq War; awarded Alternate Nobel Prize, 1993; awarded Sydney Peace Prize, 2010.

Quotations

"Women's full humanity becomes the healing force that can break the vicious circles of violence. . . Women are refusing to be part of the culture of hate and violence. Women in and through their lives, are showing that love and compassion, sharing and giving are not just possible human qualities—they are necessary for us to be human." (Earth Democracy, p.  140)

Clare Short

Overview

Clare Short born Birmingham, England February 15, 1946. British Minister of International Development; resigned in protest against Iraq War, 2003.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Overview

Eunice Kennedy Shriver born Brookline, MA July 10, 1921 (d. 2009) Founded Special Olympics International 1968.

Quotations

"If only we open our eyes and hearts, we will find in the athletes of Special Olympics the best of the human spirit, and through them, each of us will find the best in themselves." (quote & photo Special Olympics)