Contact WILPF

Secretariat Staff:

Secretary General
Susi Snyder
susi.snyder(at)wilpf.ch

Susi Snyder, originally from New York City, is the Secretary General of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and is based at their International Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland where she monitors various issues under the aegis of the United Nations, including sustainable development, human rights, and disarmament.  Previously, Susi served for three years as the Director of WILPF's United Nations office in New York.  Before coming to WILPF, Ms. Snyder was a staff member at the Shundahai Network, an indigenous led organization based in Nevada, U.S.A.   Ms. Snyder has presented papers and testimony at more than 40 U.S. governmental hearings regarding nuclear weapons, power and waste, including presentations to the National Academy of Sciences, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department of Energy. In 2001, Susi was named a "Hero of Las Vegas" by the Las Vegas City Life newspaper.

International Office Manager
Marie Boroli
marie.boroli(at)wilpf.ch

Marie Boroli is the International Office Manager of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.  She is a business manager and a life coach and after several years of experience in the corporate world, she decided to make her very practical mind available to WILPF in order to make the world a better place by focusing on women's protection and happiness.  She has felt empowered by the tremendous work waiting for her in the International office and she's been enjoying re-structuring, putting systems in place, mentoring and coaching an expanding number of interns and volunteers, as well as making sure that everyone has the tools to work well, always putting the human dimension first.  In other words, her true motivation lies in making sure that the oldest women & peace organization's International office is working efficiently and professionally in a very pleasant atmosphere, while empowering her colleagues.  She likes to say that if Susi is the Substance of the organization, she is the Structure and this is the reason why they work so well together.  Her motto is "Be Bold, Be French" and she applies it on a very regular basis, especially when she feeds the interns with strong and smelly cheese from her native mountains.

Disarmament Interns

Katherine Harrison - Annual intern
katherine(at)wilpf.ch

Katherine graduated with honors in Political Science from The University of Chicago with a special emphasis on areas of Offensive and Defensive Realism and nuclear deterrence theory. She was WILPF's special representative to the Civil Society Forum on Cluster Munitions in Oslo and at the Lima Conference on
Cluster Munitions. She continues to monitor the process to negotiate an international treaty banning cluster munitions. While she currently aspires to live up to Marie's maxim, 'Be bold, Be French,' she is content with her motto, 'disarmament girls are cooler...'

Sidsel Hvaal - Intern
sidsel(at)wilpf.ch

Sidsel Hvaal (Norway) is interning with the WILPF disarmament program this fall. She studied French and journalism at Norwegian universities before deciding that journalists a) must consider more important subjects than celebrities and garden snails and b) must know what they are talking about. This summer, she finished her master’s degree in Conflict and Security at Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. Disarmament has been a particular interest to Sidsel both as a journalist and as a student. WILPF is proving a very good place to broaden her understanding of these issues (as well as a chance to play around with the computers), and she is pleased to add this step to her ladder of experiences reaching towards her career goal: Making complex and faraway subjects seem as close and important as they really are.

Human Rights Interns

Julia Federico - Annual Intern
julia(at)wilpf.ch

Julia Federico, from the US Section, has been working in our Geneva office since January of this year, and will lamentably finish her internship next month. During her time working as a part of the International Secretariat team, Julia has been responsible for coordinating WILPF’s involvement with the Human Rights Council. She’s been challenged by and enjoyed her chance to work for WILPF on an international level, collecting information from membership and submitting it to UN Conferences in the form of statements to the Council, and preparing a paper to submit to the OHCHR on the right to water.  She also did a lot of reporting on human rights happenings at the UN, and coordinated a briefing for local NGOs in preparation for CEDAW’s move to Geneva in January 2008.  She is extremely grateful for the guidance, inspiration, and opportunities offered to her by Edith Ballantyne, Krishna Ahoojapatel, Marie Boroli, and Susi Snyder, as well as the camaraderie and support of the other interns.  Outside of the office, Julia enjoys reading, drinking the Argentine beverage maté by the lake, craft-making, supporting Geneva’s inter-squat movement, and discovering its underground.  She plans to stay in Geneva for another year to see what else she can learn about human rights in this international setting, and hopes to find work that enables her to work with the UN’s human rights treaty bodies in 2008.

We would like to take this opportunity to warmly thank the German section’s regular financial contribution to the Human Rights annual internship through the Alice & Helga Herz legacy, without which the internship programme would not be possible.

Economic Justice and Fundraising Interns

Sara Arvidsson - Intern
sara(at)wilpf.ch

Sara Arvidsson is originally from Stockholm, Sweden and has studied Political Science and Economy at Linköping University. She has worked actively to promote equality since her late teens and took part in the foundation of an equality group at her upper secondary school. She has also worked with the empowerment of young girls through teaching them feminist self-defense. After writing her bachelor thesis about gendered violence in the Yugoslav wars, she felt working for an organization that promotes peace and gender perspectives was the perfect option. As the Economic Justice and Fundraising Intern at the WILPF office she is working to strengthen WILPF’s finances and to reveal the link between militarism and economic injustice. Her goal is to convince the world that it is better to spend money on people then on bombs.

Shanna Lofgren - Intern
shanna(at)wilpf.ch

My name is Shanna Löfgren and I am one of two Economic Justice and Fundraising interns at the WILPF Geneva office. I started my internship at the Swedish WILPF office in Stockholm earlier this fall and I arrived here in Geneva in November. I will be continuing the work with the Export Processing Zone Database, focusing on the possible discrimination of workers in different EPZ, especially in countries with WILPF sections. According to a campaign initiated by WILPF Costa Rica there are many cases of physical abuse, sexual harassment, firings due to pregnancy and other forms of discrimination in the EPZ. I will collect information from WILPF and from other NGOs that work with this matter and try to update the database on the working- and living conditions in the EPZ.  I will also work with the preparations for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in February-March 2008, where women in countries in armed conflict will be one of the review themes. WILPF International is planning to make Colombia one of the WILPF themes of the CSW, so together with the Colombia working group I will prepare this event.

UN Office Staff

Reaching Critical Will Team

Ray Acheson
ray(at)reachingcriticalwill.org

Prior to becoming the Project Associate of Reaching Critical Will, Ray was an intern and research associate with the project for two years, where her work was focused on nuclear abolition and preventing the weaponization of outer space. She has also worked extensively with the Institute of Defense and Disarmament Studies, an NGO created during the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980s, tracking the manufacture and trade of conventional weapons. She graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours BA in Peace and Conflict Studies, for which she studied political theory, international relations, history, and literature to develop an understanding of the human condition, particularly in relation to militarism and warfare. She has been a social justice activist for many years, and has contributed with writing, research, and editing to many organizations, including Amnesty International, Greenpeace Canada, Native Planet, and the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights.

Gabrielle Walther - RCW Intern
gabrielle(at)reachingcriticalwill.org

I'm Gabrielle Walther, originally from California, I graduated from USC with communications degree.  I have been working with WILPF since October this year assisting with the First Commitee Monitor as well as website updating and organization.  In terms of nuclear disarmament, this is my first direct experience working towards it. My previous experience has been in business, as a bank manger for the past six years.

Anna Walther - RCW Intern
anna(at)reachingcriticalwill.org

Anna Walther earned a B.A. in international relations and German from the University of Southern California (2004).  While at USC, Anna was program coordinator at the Center for Active Learning in International Studies. She helped to expand the Teaching International Relations Program, which sends university students to volunteer in local schools and sponsors an annual High School Leadership Conference. Conference topics have ranged from child soldiers to the World Trade Organization. In 2005–2006, Anna received a scholarship to continue her studies at the Free University Berlin. She is currently pursuing a MA in Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and is completing a 6 month internship at the WILPF UN office with the Reaching Critical Will project. As an outcome of her time at RCW, she plans to do her MA Project on nuclear testing by the USA and USSR on the lands of indigenous Arctic peoples, and the current governmental responses to address the effects.

PeaceWomen Team

Sam Cook
sam(at)peacewomen.org

Sam Cook is a Project Associate on the PeaceWomen Project, a project of the UN office of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – an international women’s peace organization founded in 1915 in the Hague. The project monitors and advocates for the implementation of a UN Security Council Resolution on women, peace and security. Prior to starting at PeaceWomen in July 2005, Sam completed her LLM at Columbia. Her thesis explored issues around how the South African and Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commissions dealt with sexual and gender-based violence. The area of transitional justice, gender and sexual and gender-based violence is a long-held and continuing area of work. A lawyer from South Africa, Sam obtained her LLB from the University of Cape Town in 2001 and then worked for two years for a large commercial law firm in Cape Town, first in litigation and then in the firm’s banking and finance unit. Following this she worked on the academic staff of the University of Cape Town’s law faculty in the private law department. During the course of her studies and in parallel with her other work Sam has worked on violence against women – as an academic and activist – including work with Rape Crisis, Cape Town and on projects with the Women’s Legal Centre – a women’s rights public interest litigation and advocacy centre in Cape Town.

Ruth Breslin - PW Intern
ruth(at)peacewomen.org

Ruth holds a BA in Sociology and Social Policy (Trinity College Dublin) and an MSc in Social Research Methods (London School of Economics).  She has worked for a number of years in academia and the non-profit sector in Britain and Ireland as a researcher, policy analyst, campaign planner and strategist.  Since moving to New York earlier in 2007, Ruth has been undertaking a variety of paid and voluntary work at both the national and international level. Ruth joined PeaceWomen, in October 2007, and is currently involved in developing PeaceWomen’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign, helping to prepare for WILPF’s participation in the next session of the Commission on the Status of Women, and monitoring United Nations Security Council resolutions for language pertaining to Resolution 1325 and issues of women, peace and security.

Rose Anderson - PW Intern
rose(at)peacewomen.org

Rose has been an intern with the PeaceWomen Project since February 2007. Originally from the state of Minnesota, she came to New York to complete the capstone semester of her studies with Global College. In pursuit of her degree, she studied in multiple European and Latin American countries. In Costa Rica, Rose worked for the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights as a volunteer archivist and translator. In England, she worked as an editorial assistant and reporter for the pacifist publication PeaceNews. After receiving her degree in Peace and Gender Studies in June 2007, Rose continues to intern at the PeaceWomen Project, where she is currently involved with the creation of their Report Watch project, which will analyze women, peace, and security language in the Secretary-General’s reports. She is also involved with the project’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign.

Nermina Zecirovic-Arnaud - PW Intern
nermina(at)peacewomen.org

Nermina has been an intern with PeaceWomen Project since May 2007.  Nermina is originally from the Former Yugoslavia, Serbia.  She came to the United States as a part of cultural exchange program.  Prior to her arrival to the United States Nermina attended University of Belgrade Law School for two years.  She holds a BA and MA in Political Science from West Virginia University, and during her graduate program she was a teaching assistant in Italian language. She enjoys learning languages, legal research, and is very interested in the concept of transitional justice.  Currently Nermina has a number of responsibilities with the PeaceWomen Project.  She oversees the translation initiative of the Project, the compilation of existing translations and calling for and welcoming new translations of Resolution 1325.  She also monitors the Security Council calendar of events.  She is involved in a creation of the Report Watch project, which will analyze women, peace and security language within the reports of the Secretary General in five pilot counties: Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and DRC.

Robin Markle - PW Intern
robin(at)peacewomen.org

Robin is a senior political science major at Drew University, where she is active in chapters of Amnesty International, Rainforest Action Network and Students for a Democratic Society. Since beginning her internship at WILPF in September, Robin has worked with other interns to monitor gender language in open debates, plan a strategic 16 Days Campaign, and coordinate WILPF participation in this February's Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.