A young woman about my age sits across from me at a table in a large house converted into an Ecuadoran church. With tears pouring down her cheeks, she chokes out the words of her story, wiping drops away with the back of her hand. I say I’m sorry for bringing up her pain.

After a decade in Afghanistan, NATO member states are preparing to remove their troops. The organization and the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) it leads have shifted from combat to preparing local forces for transition. Yet for the country to thrive post-war, ISAF will have to place special emphasis on gender issues.

Every few years, my consistently intrepid mother would experience terrifying nightmares. When I was 7, I asked her to tell me what monster was frightening her so much that she stirred and let out petrifying screams in her sleep.

I was only 6 years old when my family was forced to flee the civil war in Afghanistan for Pakistan in the late 1980s. My sister, Neelo, who is five years older than me, was enrolled in a Saudi-funded Muslim Brotherhood-inspired public school for Afghan refugees. She, like many Muslim women, wore a simple headscarf.

Sweden. California. Peru. All three make lovely vacation spots, sure, but they share something more sinister, too: a state-sponsored violence so furtive, even victims don’t always know it’s taking place. Add to that list Norway, Finland, Kenya, Venezuela, and 31 more U.S. states, and you begin to see the scope of forced sterilization.

As the media continues to learn about reports of sexualized violence in Syria, CNN's Brooke Baldwin talks to WMC's Women Under Siege Director Lauren Wolfe about what we've documented so far.

Not every survivor wants to talk about rape. We know that many women and men choose to keep their stories private, be it to move past their abuse internally or, perhaps more often, to avoid being shunned or re-attacked. We also know that open conversation about sexualized violence is something whole societies still grapple with: From Sudan to the United States, it is only in the last few decades that a respectful public dialogue has begun. It is that much more important, then, to recognize historical examples—the few instances in which women did come forward despite a climate that was likely even more judgmental than today’s.

In June, female students at the University of Khartoum held an impromptu demonstration against the dramatic rise in the cost of living in Sudan. Rising inflation, exacerbated by the secession of South Sudan in July 2011 and with it, a third of Khartoum’s revenue, has led to soaring costs in the country. Many people struggle to make ends meet, not least university students who find it difficult to cover even the most basic needs.