Djellza Pulatani/
It is a profound honor to stand here with you today — on International Women’s Day — alongside the survivors whose courage has brought us to this moment, alongside the extraordinary artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa, and alongside all those who believe that memory, dignity, and justice must never be abandoned. When war is written into history, the world often counts the dead. But far less often does it reckon with the lives that must continue after violence.
For survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, the violence does not end when the war ends. It lingers — in silence, in stigma, and in the unbearable burden of carrying a truth the world has too often refused to face.
For many years in Kosovo, that silence was heavy.
But the women of Kosovo refused to carry it alone.
They gathered around one another. They believed one another. And slowly, courage began to move through that silence. One of the women who helped make that courage visible is Alketa Xhafa-Mripa. Through Thinking of You, Alketa created something extraordinary — not simply an installation, but an act of collective witnessing. Thousands of dresses moving together in the wind, each one representing a life, a story, a survivor whose dignity can never be erased.
It has been one of the greatest honors of my life to work alongside Alketa to help bring this installation here to New York City. Years ago, as a student writing my bachelor’s thesis on women’s activism in Kosovo, I studied how women gather in the face of violence and transform silence into movement. What I understood then, and what I believe even more deeply today, is that one of the most powerful political forces in the world is women standing beside one another with honesty, courage, and solidarity.
That belief is the foundation of the F’Oda Collective.
As President of F’Oda, I am deeply proud that our community has mobilized around this work. F’Oda was created as a space where women can gather openly — to confront the violence, the shame, and the injustices that shape our lives, and to transform those truths into collective action. And that is why this moment matters so deeply to us. Because bringing Thinking of You here to New York is not only about remembering what happened in Kosovo.
It is about confronting a truth that stretches far beyond our borders. Kosovo is not exceptional in this pain. Across the world — from Bosnia to Rwanda, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Ukraine and beyond — conflict-related sexual violence has been used again and again as a weapon of war. And this violence is not accidental. It is rooted in systems of patriarchy and forms of hegemonic masculinity that teach domination as power, humiliation as strategy, and women’s bodies as territory upon which violence can be inscribed.
In conflict after conflict, women’s bodies become the battleground. This is not the stain of one nation. It is a stain on the conscience of our world. And that is why this installation matters. Because Thinking of You refuses the comfort of forgetting. It insists that we witness — not only the violence of the past, but the structures that still allow this violence to continue.
For Kosovo, bringing this work to the heart of the international community is an opportunity to show that even a small country can stand with moral clarity in the global struggle for dignity and justice for survivors.
But leadership, in this sense, is not about claiming purity. It is about refusing silence. We are deeply grateful to Alketa for her vision, and to the survivors whose courage made this moment possible. And for us at F’Oda, this moment is also a promise. That we will continue to gather. That we will continue to speak.
That we will continue to mobilize. Because as long as patriarchy continues to turn women’s bodies into battlegrounds of war, our work is not finished. And as long as survivors are still fighting to have their dignity recognized, we will stand beside them.
Not only today. But always. So thank you for being here with us — for witnessing, for remembering, and for breaking the silence that violence depends upon.
And as we mark International Women’s Day, may this moment remind us that our voices matter not only on days of commemoration, but every single day that injustice exists. May we continue to speak. May we continue to listen. And may we continue to stand beside one another until silence is no longer the price survivors are asked to pay.
