Hello Rulers! My name is Stephanie Fillion and I’m a freelance reporter based at the United Nations. I’ll be filling in for Sophie today. For your radar: Women Rule is holding an event on Dec. 12 called Leading with Purpose: How Women Are Reinventing the World. Sign up here! Let’s jump in… REYKJAVIK, Iceland —Góðan daginn from Iceland, where the threat of an imminent volcanic eruption did not deter 500 women leaders from flying to the country for the Reykjavik Global Forum, an annual gathering of women politicians, activists and business leaders. Iceland is a fitting place to host the forum, which is sponsored by Iceland’s government and Parliament in partnership with Women Political Leaders, a global network of female politicians. After all, it is the world’s most gender-equal country — and has been for 14 years in a row. At this year’s forum, which was headlined by American actress Ashley Judd, three former women presidents from Finland, Lithuania and Switzerland were featured speakers. And they were in a somber mood. They all expressed grave concerns over where the world is heading, between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the resurgence of violence in the Middle East and fears over regional and even global escalation. “The situation is bad,” Tarja Halonen, who served as president of Finland between 2000-2012, tells Women Rule. Finland shares an 833-mile border with Russia and Halonen has dealt with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin while in office. “Every situation can be solved if there is a will,” Halonen says, “but right now the will seems to be small.” As the three rulers see it, the world is boiling and is on the verge of a major eruption… just like the Fagradalsfjall volcano, whose imminent eruption prompted officials here to declare a state of emergency this week. But while natural disasters can’t be controlled, these leaders are hoping that there’s still room for deescalation with our current, human-made disasters. Still, Dalia Grybauskaitė, who served as president of Lithuania between 2009-2019, tells Women Rule she sees little space for a diplomatic solution. And she’s particularly concerned by the global alignments she is witnessing, like the burgeoning political friendship between Russia and North Korea. That’s a scenario Grybauskaitė says she could not have envisioned a few years ago. “What I see in the world, [is] nobody wants to coexist,” she says. “A lot of actors want to delete one another, and here we are falling into very serious disturbances, which could push us towards a very worldwide conflict.” As the former president of Lithuania, a former Soviet country, Grybauskaitė has long been a strong critic of Putin. Right now, she tells Women Rule, she is angry. She is angry at the West for failing to respond aggressively enough to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And she’s angry at what she sees as Western culpability in the current situation in the Middle East and Ukraine. Western leaders, she says, must take responsibility. “The West has not reacted properly, and is still not reacting properly [on Ukraine], she says, “and not supporting enough Ukraine to beat the aggressor.” Russia, Grybauskaitė says, is a “terrorist and criminal state.” And looking at the Israel/Hamas war, she’s also afraid. “[Iran’s alignment with Hamas] also goes into the same picture of geopolitical shifts, which we are seeing in the world,” she says, “and these shifts mean that there is building up a coalition for changing world order. And this is a very geopolitical threat for all the world.” That geopolitical threat is something that also concerns Simonetta Sommaruga, who served as president of Switzerland in 2015 and 2020 (Switzerland has a yearly rotation system for its presidency). There’s a new world order taking shape she says — a multilateral one. “I think this is a very complicated situation because you're no more unique on the east and the west, but you have all the different powers, and powers are about raw materials,” she tells Women Rule. “On the one hand, you're depending on different states,” Sommaruga says. “On the other hand, you have no more clear orientation and you have declining democracies so you have more and more countries to deal with and you’re depending on some that do not share your values.” Sommaruga believes the dire state of the world also has to do with a democratic decline and a rise in strongmen politics. “Autocratic leaders or leaders that maybe do not have that strong position in their country in the sense that they had free elections and are democratically and legitimately supported by their country,” she says, “when they have problems in their country, they go and do something outside of their country.” While Sommaruga believes autocratic leaders are taking advantage of the current global chaos, Grybauskaitė of Lithuania deplores the weakness of some Western leaders when they deal with these autocrats. “The West [has] soft leadership, who is capable only to complain ….. but nothing else,” she says, “And that's a problem that the aggressors today are ready to fight for [their] interest; Western leaders are ready to talk about their interests but not to fight for it.” Of course, they all agree having more women around the negotiation table wouldn’t hurt, but Sommaruga worries the current crises will hurt women in leadership globally. “From the perspective of women leaders, this is an extremely challenging situation, because when there are wars, when there is a conflict, this is really also the moment where men take over again and women are drawn out of political leader positions,” she says, “in the population, if you cannot see any more women leaders in the position to find solutions in these conflicts, prejudices against women are rising.” Halonen believes the United States has a big role to play in negotiating a solution for both conflicts right now. She says she is witnessing evolving dynamics and recognizes the importance of rising powers globally such as China, Brazil and South Africa. Still, she says she’s at a loss for finding a peaceful path forward. “If I could tell you,” Halonen says, “I would get a Nobel Prize.”
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