Today, over 1 billion people still lack access to clean water and electricity. Environmental and climate change exacerbates this problem and exposes fragile and conflict-affected communities to further risk and insecurity. While the link between resource scarcity and conflict is well understood, the potential for natural resource governance to facilitate peacebuilding is less well researched.
On Thursday, October 5, 2023, ICAN welcomed Bas Berends, Co-founder and Chief Partnership Officer at OffGridBox, to join our WASL community call.
In the war-torn city of Mosul, Iraq, the scars of conflict run deep. The rise and fall of ISIS left behind a community fractured by violence. ISIS male fighters were killed, captured, or fled, but the women they married, and their children remained. Referred to as “ISIS-associated families”, they are stuck in limbo, without legal status and facing ostracism and isolation.
The challenge of reintegrating these families into society is a daunting task, but the Odessa Organization for Women’s Development (Odessa) – a partner of ICAN and member of WASL- is making significant strides in bridging this divide.
The ongoing war in Syria has resulted in the world’s largest refugee crisis with more than 13 million people forcibly displaced since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. Kilis, a Turkish border city, is the main point of entry from Syria and is home to around 200,000 Syrians.
Kareemat, a women-led peacebuilding organization in Kilis, Turkey, is making a profound impact on Syrian refugee women and their families. Supported by ICAN, Kareemat addresses the challenges of displacement, isolation, and economic hardships through psychological support, language classes, and economic empowerment resources, fostering integration and reducing tensions between Turkish and Syrian communities.
Despite staggering challenges and limited space to operate, the Women, Peace, Studies Organization (WPSO) continues to provide support for women in every province of Afghanistan.
ICAN is pleased to share the summary of key findings of a four-year independent evaluation (December 2018 – December 2022) conducted by Merits Partnership on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).
This summary highlights ICAN added value to local women-led peacebuilding organizations, international organizations including funders, as well as to the wider Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Preventing Violent extremism (PVE) agendas.
Communities are a powerful force for pre-empting and preventing extremisms, provided they are equipped to intervene to ensure that community members do not become trapped in the process of radicalization.
In the WASL community check-in call on March 16, 2023, WASL member Mira Kusumarini of Empatiku, a peacebuilding organization based in Indonesia, presented a new guidebook to build the capacity of communities to do just that, entitled Identifying Early Warning Signs: A Guidebook for Building Community Resilience to Violent Extremism.
