nwi4anderson300_1
Image

What led you to the Nobel Women’s Initiative?

Issues of peace and violence have long been a part of my life, even from my days as an activist student at the University of Wisconsin. During the 1980s and ’90s, I worked in refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border teaching English and French, and I co-founded with Bob Maat the Coalition for Peace and Reconciliation in Cambodia. In our work we also helped found the Cambodia Campaign to Ban Landmines, which led to my involvement in the international landmine campaign with Jody Williams. She won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, in 1997, the year the Ottawa treaty banning their use was signed. Jody stepped down as coordinator in 1998, and I took over her position until I became executive director of the This article appears in October 8 2007.