Our Strategies, Our Peace: ICAN’s Writers’ Workshop  

Women have led the development of peacebuilding practice and strategy for decades, but for too long, their contributions, stories, and wisdom have been silenced or sidelined in global discourse. Centering women at the heart of peacebuilding scholarship, ICAN is leading the development of an edited volume of autoethnographies written by 23 members of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL). Each chapter will document their innovative strategies and critical impact in the field of peacebuilding, not just as a legacy for history, but as a tool for learning, to preserve and share their work with future generations. 

This project aims to shift mindsets at the grassroots, in policymaking spaces, and in academia. This work will serve as both an act of restoration and reclamation—spotlighting the personal narratives and professional contributions of women peacebuilders.      

As part of this initiative and marking 25 years of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, ICAN convened 20 members of WASL in Lisbon for the “Our Strategies, Our Peace” Writers’ Workshop. This unique gathering provided a secure and creative space for women peacebuilders to share their strategies, experience, expertise, and stories from conflict and crisis contexts. 

“As civil society, we are aiming to demonstrate the indigenous nature of mediation work, especially by women, across cultures and geographies throughout time. This is a contribution both to the current mediation practices and to the scholarship of peacebuilding, with attention to how women make significant differences and have expanded the field of practice.” 

– Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, ICAN Founder and CEO 

Collective Analysis through Strategy-Telling

Each chapter of the volume aims to meld personal stories, social analysis, and peacebuilding strategies to demonstrate how women peacebuilders’ work is powerful specifically because of who they are and where they come from.  

“The framing shifts us away from deficit-based narrative of focusing only on the obstacle and instead highlights the resilience, the success stories, creativity, and agency.”

– Kawther Alkholy, Director, Women for Justice Foundation, Canada 

Over three days in Lisbon, the group engaged in personal reflection and comparative analysis. During six “strategy-telling” sessions, participants unpacked the roles that their background, family, and kinship; faith, religion, and spirituality; culture; gender, sex, and identity; law, policy, and theory; and movement-building and leadership play in influencing their work as peacebuilders.  

The workshop’s participants spanned continents, generations, and approaches to peacebuilding; yet, together, the women peacebuilders found common threads. The group discussed how personal loss led them to engage in peacebuilding work; their motivation propelled by faith or specific role models; and the ways in which they harness aspects of their identities to build trust with their communities.  

“We want the world to see that the way we shape policies and the way we think about the world and the tools we use are different and must be taken into account.”

– Rosa Emilia Salamanca, Executive Director, Corporación de Investigación y Acción Social y Económica (CIASE)

Even though many participants had known each other for years, many discovered new components of each other’s strategies and stories, learning lessons to take back to their own peacebuilding practice. 

Bridging the Gap: Local Strategies and International Policies 

While in Lisbon, ICAN, in partnership with the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID), Portugal’s Diplomatic Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Ana Isabel Xavier, convened a High-Level Roundtable on “Advancing Inclusive Peace: Women’s Leadership in Dialogue”.  

“These voices are the ones holding together the very fabric of our societies and are shaping the future of peace.”  

– Ambassador António de Almeida Ribeiro, Acting Secretary General, KAICIID 

ICAN Founder and CEO Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and WASL partners Lucy Talgieh, Wazhma Frogh, and Nina Potarska spoke at the roundtable. Their remarks drew attention to the gap between vision and implementation of the WPS agenda, and showcased the strategies they use to build peace in their countries amid rapidly closing civic space.  

“Let us not allow this anniversary to pass with empty words. Let it be a turning point where recognition becomes actions, where justice will be pursued with courage, and where Palestinian women will finally receive the protection, participation, and peace they have been promised for a quarter of a century.”

– Lucy Talgieh, Head of Women Department, Wi’am – The Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, and Deputy Mayor, Bethlehem

“Millions of women in Afghanistan, we can’t hear from them, but they’re not passive victims. These are women who are proactively taking initiatives and making spaces for other women and their daughters.”

– Wazhma Frogh, Founder, Women and Peace Studies Organization, Canada

“It’s difficult to build peace only with a weapon. I cannot imagine how we can live in a country if we cannot walk in the forest anymore, we cannot use our land, we cannot use our sea and rivers.”

– Nina Potarska, Ukraine National Coordinator, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)

Putting Pen to Paper 

As the initiative builds momentum, authors left Lisbon energized to continue the writing process. Many participants commented on the vital role of this work to increase visibility of women peacebuilders and therefore legitimize, fund, and sustain their locally rooted strategies.  

“Through sharing this journey of ours, we are reclaiming our authority in history. We are not only reclaiming our authority in history, but trying to inspire the future generation that peace is possible. It is possible when the women are there.”  

– Mossarat Qadeem, Co-Founder, PAIMAN Alumni Trust 

“I want to pass my story on to the next generation so that other people can pick it up from where I’ve left off.”

– Clotilda Andiensa Waah, Founder and CEO, Center for Advocacy in Gender Equality and Action for Development (CAGEAD) 

ICAN’s support to the authors continues as they put pen to paper. Through this first edited volume, we hope to share these strategies and stories with practitioners, scholars, policymakers, students, and the general public. These stories will underscore that inclusive peacebuilding is more effective, impactful, and sustainable than militarized approaches; in an era of compounding crises, visibility and widespread support for women peacebuilders matters more than ever. We look forward to sharing more about our initiative in the coming year.

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This event was part of ICAN’s larger Documentation Initiative. Learn more here.