16 women who had been imprisoned and raped by Serb-led forces in the Bosnian town of Foca broke history’s great silence and stepped forward to take the witness stand in an international court of law. The resulting verdict led to new international laws about sexual violence in war.

Liberian women came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country. Among the women featured is Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, the leader of the Liberian women’s peace movement.

When the U.S. troop surge was announced in late 2009, women in Afghanistan knew that the ground was being laid for peace talks with the Taliban. Three women risked their lives to make sure that women had a seat at the negotiating table.

In Cauca, a mountainous region in Colombia’s Pacific southwest, two indomitable Afro-Colombian women are fighting to stay on their gold-rich lands. They are standing up for a generation of civilians who have been deliberately terrorized and forcibly displaced during the course of Colombia’s decades-long civil war.