ImpactAlpha, May 1 – Durreen Shahnaz, founder of the Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), told the United Nations General Assembly, “If we can promote inclusion and close inequality gaps in our financial and economic systems, we can tackle a crucial source of conflict.”
Shahnaz organized the $8 million Women’s Livelihood Bond on the Singapore Stock Exchange and recently announced plans for a women’s health bond for the U.S. She won an award last year from the Global Impact Investing Steering Group. In New York last week, she told the UN, “I stand before you not only as an expert on innovative finance but also as a woman whose life has been shaped by wars.” More excerpts from the speech.
- Building peace… “We have grown from thinking of peace as something we keep, to acknowledging peace as something we build… To create sustainable peace requires that we acknowledge that peace is not solely a product of policy but of today’s systems that each of us lives within.”
- Innovative Finance for Sustainable Peace… seeks “to drive forward sustainable peace-building efforts across the globe — in post-conflict countries, countries with high-risk of conflict and countries seeking to mitigate rising threats of violence by creating systemic social-economic resilience.”
ImpactAlpha has identified a growing number of opportunities to invest in peace, justice and strong civic institutions. Track them on ImpactAlpha.com under “Democracy and Peace.”
