Recognizing Women Peacebuilders’ Work Across the Humanitarian, Peace, and Development Nexus: ICAN and International Partners in Oslo

By Isabela Karibjanian

On November 22, 2023, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)—in partnership with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), and Karama—hosted a high-level dialogue to reimagine partnerships and coordination between women peacebuilders, international mediation, humanitarian, and development actors in crises and conflict settings. This public event took place in the context of the first annual coordination meeting of Norad and its international partners implementing projects related to the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda.

The panel gathered local and international stakeholders across the peace, development, and humanitarian sectors, all with a vested interest in the WPS agenda. Speakers included: Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, Founder and CEO of ICAN; Hibaaq Osman, CEO of Karama; Jamila Afghani from WILPF Afghanistan; Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council; Gunn Jorid Roset, Deputy Director General of the Department for Multilateral Affairs at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Lisa Sivertsen, Director Department for Human Development at Norad; and Bård Vegar Solhjell, Director General of Norad. The discussion, which was moderated by former State Secretary Laila Bokhari, is accessible here.

Discussing the triple nexus of humanitarian needs, peace, and development, panelists provided an assessment of the present environment, as well as pathways forward for recognizing and prioritizing women peacebuilders’ work amid a “geopolitical tsunami.”

Conceptualizing the Nexus

Following opening remarks by Norad’s Bård Vegar Solhjell, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini provided context for the high-level dialogue (access the transcript here). Naraghi Anderlini reminded the audience of the sobering realities of a world in which wars are starting, but not stopping. With 55 interstate wars, 86 conflicts involving nonstate actors, 614 million women and girls living in conflict-affected countries, and over 100 million war refugees, Naraghi Anderlini urged the audience to collectively pause and acknowledge the realities of a geopolitical tsunami of compounding crises. Interconnectivity is here to stay, she noted, and with it comes an imperative to embrace holistic, locally driven solutions that radically differ from the status quo.

What Works? Lessons from a Triple-Nexus Approach

In her remarks, Naraghi Anderlini shared how ICAN’s partners, members of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), exemplify the power of a triple-nexus approach. ICAN’s Syrian partner Mobaderoon began their work in 2011, bringing together polarized communities to exchange points of view across political, ethnic, and religious differences. At the same time, Mobaderoon responded to children’s education needs, helped victims of torture, and provided humanitarian relief to IDPs. As crises like the COVID-19 pandemic or 2023 earthquakes arose, they were first responders to communities that neither the Assad regime nor the UN could reach.

Another member of ICAN’s WASL network, the PAIMAN Alumni Trust, demonstrates the compounding positive effects of a triple-nexus approach, as Naraghi Anderlini explained. Through women and mothers’ “Tolana” groups, PAIMAN worked to deradicalize Pakistani women who had been recruited into violent extremism. As a first responder to devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022, PAIMAN mobilized this same network of formerly radicalized women to contribute to flood warnings and relief in remote areas. Both Mobaderoon and PAIMAN were able to build and maintain trust in their communities, creating buy-in for future peacebuilding activities and filling a vacuum too often filled by extremists or militant groups in times of crisis.

There is a clear precedent of amplified reach and impact set by peace actors taking a triple-nexus approach anchored in cultural, traditional, and faith-based practices, as well as human rights and international law, Naraghi Anderlini noted. Despite this, funders perpetuate a siloed approach.

Present Challenges to an Integrated Approach

“We’re still working in boxes,” Jan Egeland noted. “Peace actors are compartmentalized.” With siloed funding streams, actors are unable to pivot to respond to the most critical needs of their communities in times of crisis, potentially undoing the trust and access built up through their peacebuilding work. Egeland added that funding compliance processes are often designed for development work in peaceful contexts but are burdensome or incompatible with the realities of peacebuilding work in conflict contexts.

The panel described how funding procedures fail to take into account the full range of actors involved in peacebuilding and the multidimensionality of peacebuilding itself. Women know societies best, shared Hibaaq Osman. When wars begin and everyone else, including international actors, leaves, women often stay and try to bring normalcy to their communities, she noted. Even when international support is lacking, women continue to imagine and plan for better futures, added Jamila Afghani, drawing on her experiences in Afghanistan. The panelists underscored that peacebuilding is not just formal peacemaking procedures, but also livelihood activities, humanitarian assistance, and traditional community dialogue practices. By remaining siloed and not prioritizing actors like religious leaders or women peacebuilders, funders and policymakers undermine the impact of their engagement.

Reimagining Cooperation

Panelists urged funders to rethink which actors and which actions are recognized as part of the peace ecosystem. Centering the triple nexus of humanitarian needs, peace, and development requires redesigning partnership models, rethinking funding structures, and recognizing the totality of the peace landscape.

Speakers highlighted examples of local practices that have proven records of building a more durable peace, such as community self-help, local mediation, and livelihoods approaches. By acknowledging the agency of peace actors, especially women peacebuilders, and the value of their community-based work, peace processes can become more sustainable. Gunn Jorid Roset added that international funders and partners should be bridge-builders across regions. She noted that funders like the Norwegian MFA need to revise their strategies to work through local partners and adapt policies to reflect the agency of local peacebuilders. This leaves a system in place for the continuation of their work long after the international organization departs.

The future of women’s peacebuilding work across the humanitarian, peace, and development nexus demands a fundamental reimagining of what peace constitutes. Peace is broader than negotiations between two parties, and what peace looks like will continue to shift as the realities of the world evolve. The panelists agreed that siloed thinking and funding, and embracing a holistic, hyper-local definition of peace will pave the way to a brighter future.

Key Recommendations to Donors

• Donors should move towards a more expansive definition of “peace.” 
  • Peace is broader than just a ceasefire and the stakeholders involved in negotiations should involve the whole of society; it is an ecosystem.  
  • Peace processes and institutions should embrace triple nexus thinking, knowing that when humanitarian, development, and peace processes are interlinked, a more durable peace is possible. Peace processes are seldom linear, as countries go in and out of conflict and processes therefore often overlap.  
  • To bring women meaningfully into peace processes, the spaces themselves need to be broader and take a holistic view of peacebuilding.  
• Donors should take a local, flexible approach to funding. 
  • Donors should avoid duplicating and undermining local efforts. Instead of implementing their own projects, donor organizations should support existing, local organizations.  
  • Funding should be flexible in scope and its compliance procedures should not be overly burdensome on recipients.