Seema Mathur founded Global Voice Productions in 2009. She has earned numerous awards for her reporting, including a National Edward R. Murrow, a Lone Star Emmy and three Texas Associated Press Awards. Seema spent most of her career covering news for local and national networks. Her international experience includes coordinating coverage around the world for CNN’s International desk. During the US-led war in Iraq she coordinated crews in Turkey. On the first anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks she reported from the US Embassy in Tanzania to reflect on the East African Al-Qaeda attacks. She has also reported on access to healthcare in Uganda, the state of orphaned children in India, and women’s rights in Morocco.  In the US, Ms. Mathur spent a number of years covering health issues for which she has earned 12 awards. She was selected for the prestigious Kaiser Media in Health fellowship in 2006. Seema’s US experience also includes many years of covering local breaking stories to national news which includes crime, Hurricane Ike and the recent Fort Hood shootings.  She lived in England, Zambia, Australia and Thailand before moving with her family to Houston, Texas, in the 1980s.

Her current project is a documentary on the women of Liberia, who are being praised for being warriors of peace, but beneath the armor of these strong women are scars that still need healing. Many suffer the physical and mental effects of rape. It’s not only crimes of the past that haunt these women: Mental health care workers say after more than a decade of being targeted by rape during conflict, sexual attacks are still alarmingly common. Women and children continue to be victimized. Currently, Doctors Without Borders estimates more than a third of rape victims are under the age of 12.

As the next presidential election approaches and the world looks at post-civil war Liberia, it’s time to re-examine the use of rape as a weapon of war. It’s also time to look at the women who defied those scars and helped elect the first African woman president. How did these women find their own ammunition to defeat that weapon, a weapon that is not isolated to Liberia’s war? A weapon whose harmful effects linger long after war. What can the warriors of peace teach us about neutralizing the aggression of rape? Now is the time to find out.

Ms. Mathur recently received a fellowship grant from Johns Hopkins University to draw attention to those issues as well as the inspiring strength of Liberians trying to improve conditions. The grant will be used as seed money to produce the documentary with working titles of “Liberia Rising” or “Warriors of Peace”. It will go into production at the end of August when she and her crew travel to Liberia. In addition to shooting for the documentary, she will produce news reports for national and international news networks. The main goals of the project are to create social awareness for the events taking place in Liberia and to act as a vehicle for humanitarian aid to its women and others impacted by rape. A portion of all distribution proceeds and funds raised for the project will be donated to the women of Liberia.