“We Canceled Silence”: How Local Peace Committees Rebuild Trust in Syria
Across Syria, communities are finding ways to reconnect after years of war through dialogue, storytelling, art, and collective action. Mobaderoon’s Local Peace Committees demonstrate why lasting peace begins within communities themselves.
The Odd Couple: Women Peacebuilders and Security Actors Bridging Positions, Building Trust
The WPS agenda has proven a vital entry point for women peacebuilders to engage with the security sector and build trust within affected communities. These efforts—often invisible—are contributing to the reform of the sector, reshaping local security environments and mitigating violence.
The War Against Ourselves: Afghan Women Peacebuilders’ Response to the Mental Health Crisis in Afghanistan
This case study describes the drivers of the mental health crisis in Afghanistan, its gendered and cultural dimensions, and the strategies used by Afghan women-led peacebuilding organizations to provide solutions. The authors conducted interviews with representatives of Afghan women-led peacebuilding organizations and thematic experts, which were complemented by a desk review of project documentation and […]
“Who are these women anyway?” Questioning the legitimacy of women peacebuilders.
Questioning the legitimacy of a group or individuals is a sure means of excluding them from the mediation process. On the inclusion of women, this ‘legitimacy’ question is often raised. They are framed as either ‘too grassroots’ or ‘too elite’—thus lacking the credibility and credentials to participate in peace talks. At the same time, other civil society groups, such as religious leaders or elders, are more likely to be included without facing these qualification hurdles.
However, the legitimacy of groups that bear arms and use violence is rarely questioned; because they can spoil the process through force, they are often invited to participate without question. This double standard risks incentivizing violence by rewarding perpetrators of conflict with a seat at the table, while overlooking women peacebuilders and other civil society actors committed to nonviolent conflict resolution.
How to overcome this barrier:
1. Research the history of women’s leadership for peace during the conflict, their past mobilization and gains, and their work in peacemaking, mediation, ceasefire negotiations, and forms of social and cultural change.
2. Rebuff arguments that claim women are ‘too elite’ or ‘too grassroots’ or unqualified by reflecting on and questioning the qualifications of men at the table.
3. Suggest a formula for an ‘inclusive enough’ process, with criteria for civil society inclusion based on core values, competencies, and constituencies. (See Box 2 on Sample Criteria for Identifying Civil Society.)
4. Support women’s efforts to conduct public consultations to develop a common manifesto for the process and agreed upon election or selection processes for their representation.
Though women played prominent roles in negotiating local ceasefires in Syria, they were largely excluded from UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva in early 2014. At the time, supportive third party governments leveraged their political influence to secure a meeting between women peacebuilders and the UN envoy to Syria. While the women representatives did not gain admittance to the round of talks, they benefitted from this early engagement with formal process. The outside pressure to include women catalyzed more systematic interaction: today, outreach to Syrian women by Track I representatives has been more extensive than in other formal mediation processes.
ICAN’s Mission Five Steps for Sustainable Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict ICAN Partner AWAPSA: A Catalyst for Kenya’s First SGBV Court The War Against Ourselves: Afghan Women Peacebuilders’ Response to the Mental Health Crisis in Afghanistan Protecting Women Peacebuilders: The Front Lines of Sustainable Peace
Thank you for your donation to ICAN. Your contribution strengthens women peacebuilders who are preventing violence, protecting communities, and rebuilding trust in some of the world’s most fragile contexts. By supporting ICAN and the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), you help women-led organizations in more than 40 countries mediate conflicts, assist families in crisis, and drive […]
On behalf of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and members of the global Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), we are honored to nominate Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
We are deeply honored and excited to welcome Terry Greenblatt and Sawsan Chebli to the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) Board of Directors.
ICAN together with GPPAC, GNWP, Kvinna till Kvinna, Permanent Missions of Bangladesh, Ireland and Sweden to the United Nations, UN Women, WILPF and WPS-HA Compact cordially invite you to a high-level hybrid roundtable on Innovative Solutions for Feminist Financing for Peacebuilding, to take place on 26 April 2022 at 1:15-2:45pm EDT as part of discussions surrounding the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Peacebuilding.
We are a coalition of NGOs, academics, activists, women’s rights defenders, journalists, artists, filmmakers and peacebuilders. We are working to get our Afghan colleagues and families, who are under direct threat from the Taliban, to safety. They have worked to bring peace to Afghanistan over the last 20 years, have fought for the rights of all Afghans, and especially women, girls and minority groups in direct opposition to the Taliban. They now come to us for help because nobody came for them.
The February 1st military coup in Myanmar brutally crushed dissent, and the crackdowns and killings continue. In May another resurgence of violence in Palestine and Israel brought renewed attention to this 54-year conflict. How do social activists survive and thrive when the tanks roll in, the bombs drop, the raids and the arbitrary arrests begin? These, among other questions, were discussed on June 29th at the fifth session of the Coming of Age of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda series, entitled ‘Survival and Activism under Occupation’, focusing on Myanmar and Palestine.
Our fund disbursed $1 million in grants to 24 partners across 17 countries from Syria to Somalia, Colombia to Cameroon, Iraq to Indonesia & more Investing In Trust
Check out this 📽️ to see how ICAN's Innovative Peace Fund supported women peacebuilders' COVID19 response.
