Two courageous stories appeared on my radar this week - both thanks to the Financial Times.

1. Syria's Trojan women. This is a project conceived by Charlotte Eager and her husband to stage Euripedes' tragedy The Trojan Women with an amateur cast of Syrian refugee women in Jordan.

As Eager notes: "The Trojan Women is about refugees, set at the fall of Troy. All the men are dead and the former Queen Hecuba of Troy, her daughter Cassandra and the rest of the women are waiting in a refugee camp to hear their fate. Euripides wrote the play in 415BC as an anti-war protest against the Athenians’ brutal capture of the neutral island of Melos; they slaughtered all the men and sold the women and children into slavery."

Eager and her husband adapted the play so that the Syrian women could incorporate their own war stories. The pair originally raised money to "spearhead a longer term program of drama therapy workshops and bring bring global attention to the Syrian refugee crisis," in a project that also includes making documentary and feature films. Apparently many women refugees wanted to be in the play. One said: We're getting the chance to to talk about what we are going through. We feel we are doing something important." The first show was a success and now the cast may be on the international theater circuit.

2. A profile piece (Financial Times, November 13, 2013) on Kate Fearon, who helped the peace process in Northern Ireland, and put these skills to work in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Sudan. I read her book City of Soldiers (2012) about a year in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, which shed a fascinating light on aspects of peace building (as well as thoughtful, brave Afghans trying to rebuild their communities). I really admired her courage working in such bare, remote, often violent conditions. Her job was to bring the rule of law to life - mostly drawing on the informal justice system. She explains: "Because the formal system was viewed as corrupt, expensive and sluggish, people usually turned to the informal system run by elders. This system was generally founded on repairing damaged relationships in the community." A quote from one of the local governors caught my eye:

"Because of thirty years of war we have lost everything. Right now we are obeying no law - not European law, not Afghan law, not Pashtun law, not the Elders, not Islamic law. It's all very confused and mixed up."