Bridging Positions, Building Trust:  Women Peacebuilders & Security Actors

By Isabela Karibjanian

Engaging security sector actors and contributing to security sector reform are essential to fully realize the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. But interactions between women peacebuilders and security actors can be sensitive. In too many contexts, those with a mandate to protect—including the military, police, and intelligence services—are themselves among the perpetrators of violence against civilians.  

To build trust and begin to bridge the divide between national security approaches and contemporary human security-oriented priorities, members of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) and other peacebuilders came to New York to engage with UN and governmental representatives of the security sector with expertise in addressing conflict, fragility, and violent extremism.  

ICAN, in partnership with the Permanent Missions of Norway, Sweden, and Canada, the United Kingdom Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (UKFCDO), the Ministry of Gender, Child and Welfare of South Sudan, the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), and the National Transformational Leadership Institute (NTLI), convened a 1.5-day workshop to discuss how to strengthen community security as a localized, transformative approach for sustainable peace. This unique gathering, hosted at the Permanent Missions of Norway and Sweden, enabled the sharing of analyses and practical solutions to advance the WPS agenda and create strategic, trusting partnerships.   

Bridging the Gap

Women peacebuilders hold a difficult middle ground in their communities. Not only do they call out abuses of power or rights, but they also aim to build bridges among all groups at multiple levels. They embody the triple nexus of humanitarian, peace, and development when navigating conflict prevention and mitigation. Amid escalating geopolitical turmoil and climate crisis, peacebuilders do not have the privilege of inaction; rather, they devise holistic, innovative tactics to help achieve more peaceful realities in their communities.  

Peacebuilders encounter an international system that is siloed and often does not understand or value their distinct contributions. Security sector actors can often seem reluctant to collaborate with civil society, perceiving them as adversaries. During the workshop, speakers emphasized the need to bridge this gap between the security sector and civil society by establishing channels of communication and building mutual respect. Without willingness to collaborate across sectors and find a common sense of humanity, they mentioned, it is impossible to succeed in the shared goal of creating more peaceful futures.  

Building Effective Partnerships

The workshop featured three sessions on specific themes, including areas of potential collaboration between peacebuilders and security sector actors: preventing violent extremism and promoting social cohesion; preventing and mitigating election-related violence; and enabling gender-responsive security sector reform in the context of peace processes. 

Discussing preventing violent extremism, Sureya Roble, Executive Director, Advocacy for Women in Peace and Security-Africa (AWAPSA) in Kenya shared AWAPSA’s experience creating police cafés. The cafés were created as spaces where members of the community could share concerns with police officers and create common understandings of community security. Using their position as peacebuilders, AWAPSA staff were able to bridge the trust gap and create a network dedicated to creating safer communities.   

On elections, Robinah Rubimbwa, Executive Director of Coalition for Action on 1325 (CoAct 1325) in Uganda shared CoAct’s experience establishing the world’s first youth election observatory in collaboration with local police. “If we want to increase protection of women peacebuilders, we need to work with the security sector,” Rubimbwa said. The observatory helped prevent the outbreak of election-related violence during the 2022 elections. There is potential for CoAct to share learnings with counterparts in South Sudan where elections are scheduled for later this year. Amina Rasul, President, Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID) emphasized the importance of working with universities and faith leaders to promote voter education and free elections.  “When you’re talking about security considerations and you’re talking about the whole of society approach, you cannot just work with civil society,” she said. 

Peacebuilders also spoke to the need for human security and feminist security approaches to inform national security policies and operations. One speaker shared that workshops that brought peacebuilders and security actors together have expanded the understanding of the concept of security and influenced policy. Another panelist commented on the difficulties of achieving security sector reform when laws often serve to minimize the rights of the individual and protect the government itself. 

Throughout the workshop, members of WASL shared their challenges engaging the international community directly, noting the dilution of their demands or added administrative burdens of engaging through intermediaries. The group discussed the difficulties of engaging on issues that require collaborative and sustained approaches, when international organizations or state actors often operate in a segmented/siloed and time-bound way. 

With a solutions-oriented approach, the workshop participants considered how state-centric institutions could work in more people-centric ways. Participants discussed the ways in which international organizations, security actors, and other allies at the international and national level could use their positionality to bring the perspectives and demands of civil society into different spaces. Panelists also spoke of the value of co-developing training materials and policies as potential avenues of collaboration between peacebuilders and security actors.   

Protecting Peacebuilders, Transforming Security 

Across the 1.5 days, WASL members spoke about the distinct risks they face in conflict and post-conflict settings due to their engagement in peacebuilding. They shared the myriad threats they experience during their daily work, including intimidation, detention, reprisal, physical threats, and digital threats, and called for comprehensive policies to protect peacebuilders.  

Women peacebuilders play a key role in redefining security and providing community protection. Effective collaboration with the security sector can ensure the safety and security of women peacebuilders to undertake this work. At the workshop, ICAN and WASL partners shared with participants two tools focused on protection: Corporación de Investigación y Acción Social y Económica (CIASE)’s Secure, Here and Now tool and ICAN’s Protection Framework.

CIASE developed Secure Here and Now to enhance the security of women peacebuilders and human rights defenders from a holistic and feminist security perspective. The tool comprises a battery of indicators to identify and measure risk factors in five key categories: 1) Emotional and cognitive security; 2) Physical security; 3) Spiritual security; 4) Economic security; and 5) Political security. It also helps peacebuilders identify strategies to mitigate the risks through protective actions and care routines. Participants at the workshop interacted with a shortened pilot version of the tool to understand how risks to peacebuilders can be assessed and mitigated.  

ICAN’s Protection Framework, launched as part of the She Builds Peace Campaign in 2020, provides operational guidance for states and multilateral institutions to protect women peacebuilders through four key areas: 1) Creating a legal and political safety net; 2) Identifying and responding to threats on the ground; 3) Establishing security at the peace table and international spaces; and 4) Providing emergency assistance and relocation. Tess Phippen, Head of WPS at the UKFCDO, shared, “The UK is very pleased to support ICAN’s protection framework […] an essential pillar to implementing the WPS agenda.”

Reflecting on the two days, participants shared the importance of open avenues of communication between peacebuilders and the broader security ecosystem; fostering international credibility for women peacebuilders through opportunities for recognition and meaningful participation; and accessing rapid, flexible funding. Creating bridges and enhancing trust between women peacebuilders and the security sector needs ongoing dialogue, investment, collaboration, and respect.  

ICAN would like to thank the UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) for financially supporting this workshop.