The French Embassy in Iceland, the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association and the Red Cross invites you to a meeting on women in humanitarian work, during Equality Days 2022 at 12:00 p.m. February 15th at the University of Reykjavík.

Tatjana Latinovic, the president of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association, and Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir, a nurse and a midwife who has worked as an ambassador for the Red Cross, relate their experience doing humanitarian work abroad.

These talks are presented on the occasion of the photographic exhibition “Humanitarian Women”, on display this week in Sólin, the main entrance hall of the University of Reykjavík. The exhibition showcases women’s involvement in humanitarian action. While often beneficiaries of the programs set up in many countries, women are also major players in humanitarian assistance. Spanning the fields of logistics, healthcare, mediation, training, project and program management, and mine-clearing, they work in emergency situation, for short- or long term assignment, sometimes risking their lives to help the most vulnerable people on the planet. Here, we pay tribute to these women with the photographs.

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Tatjana Latinovic, the president of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association, will talk about her experiences working as a humanitarian aid worker in the war-stricken communities of the Balkans in the early 1990s. She will discuss the importance of women’s representation in humanitarian work and the necessity of a gendered approach in addressing the needs of displaced people and people impacted by war.

Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir is a nurse and midwife and has worked as an ambassador for the Red Cross, which is part of the world’s largest humanitarian and aid organization, around the world. In her talk, she provides insight into humanitarian work with women in different cultures in different situations