Women play an important role in peace and security, and this is why, to mark this important occasion, the GCSP’s Head of Global Fellowship Initiative and Creative Spark, Ms Anne-Caroline Pissis Martel, sat down with three of the Centre’s Fellows to discover their hopes for #IWD2022.

Ms Elisabeth Decrey Warner, Associate Fellow, Global Fellowship Initiative; founder of the NGO Geneva Call; former member and President of the Parliament of the Republic and Canton of Geneva; member of numerous boards and advisory boards

Hopes? The time for mere hopes is definitely over ....

It has been indisputably proved: peace negotiations are more successful when women are involved, but – most importantly – women’s full participation means that peace agreements are better implemented and more durable.

Today, therefore, I do not want to express hopes anymore; instead, I expect concrete actions. Women must be involved at all levels of discussions, until the last comma of a peace agreement is finalised. I have negotiated for 20 years with leaders of armed movements. I was warned that being a woman would make my job more difficult. Instead, I have found that it has helped me and made it easier to understand the issues and to respect the commitments made.

Decision-makers no longer have the right to ignore women and their essential role in peace and security.

Ms Adiba Qasim, Young Leader in Foreign and Security Policy, Global Fellowship Initiative; former freelance journalist from the Sinjar district in northern Iraq; currently a student in International Relations at the University of Geneva

The role of women in peace and security processes is very important, especially in the current situation. In addition, in order to break the bias against gender equality, it is even more important to have refugee women and women survivors of the war being part of the negotiation and decision-making table. If they are not involved, we cannot achieve sustainable peace. 

Amb. Yvette Stevens, Executive-in-Residence, Global Fellowship Initiative; former Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone in Geneva

Twenty-two years after the landmark UN Security Council resolution on Women, Peace and Security, which affirmed the need to shift women’s role from victims of violence to that of being fully involved participants in the resolution of conflicts, women still remain under-represented in peace processes. Indeed, in the past 30 years, seven out of ten peace processes had no women as either mediators or signatories. And yet experience has shown that in the rare cases in which women have been involved, peace agreements have been more comprehensive, address the root causes of the conflict and attract greater community ownership.

We need to break the bias against involving women in peace processes if we want to secure lasting peace in conflict areas around the world.

At the GCSP’s Global Fellowship Initiative (GFI) we strongly believe that diversity and inclusivity are indispensable for creativity to be sparked and innovation to occur. In fact, purposeful, focused, and systematic cross-pollination across ideas and backgrounds is essential in today’s fragmented world where experts from one field rarely speak constructively to those from another. It has been proved beyond doubt that innovation happens through connections. This is why, at the GFI, we highlight individuals – and most particularly women – who have spent their lives engaged in promoting peace and security, and breaking the bias against women’s full participation in all spheres of life. We offer them a safe space to learn, reflect, share, and lead actions for peace and security by building bridges, challenging assumptions, and breaking down silos. And we do not only do this on International Women's Day, but for 365 days a year, every year.

If you want to find out more about the Global Fellowship Initiative or apply to become one of our Fellows, please email [email protected].

Disclaimer: The views, information and opinions expressed in the written publications are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those shared by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy or its employees. The GCSP is not responsible for and may not always verify the accuracy of the information contained in the written publications submitted by a writer.