Women & Peacebuilding Memoir Portal

Twenty years after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325, women still struggle in times of conflict and fragile peace to find a place in mediation and peace processes, to negotiate with full impact, and to work amongst themselves to collectively strategize or overcome differences to strengthen their impact on peacemaking and peacebuilding.

Support is sought for the start of a timely, important, multi-partner memoir project and online portal that will bring together the narratives (both written and oral) and advice of leading female figures in mediation, peacemaking and post-conflict governance and security. The portal, which will be developed by leading experts, will also build a series of online learning modules that can be accessed by women building peace all over the world.

The main audience for this project is women, especially young women, around the globe working on or learning about peacebuilding at the local, regional or international level. The narratives and the portal will provide a learning resource for the study of techniques, challenges and the way that women building peace have, inter-alia, advanced issues, overcome differences between themselves, run for office, maintained political alliances, and conquered challenges. A secondary audience is policy makers who will be able to study and use the site as well to learn how women have made a difference through readily accessible examples that demonstrate impact. The international business community might also find the narratives and site helpful for their work/business in fragile situations. Ultimately, the narratives and the site will add, writ large, to the body of literature on peace and conflict mainly dominated by men’s narratives and experience of war and peace.

The project will be administrated by ICDP in partnership with two major academic institutions. These partners will be brought together to build and implement this project given their unique placements and areas of expertise in the women, peace and security field. 

The first phase of the project will undertake a mapping of existing, as well as un-captured narratives of important women peacemakers or women leaders involved in mediation and peace processes. It will also provide an overview of existing tools and training material on/for women and peacemaking and will build a globally accessible online portal containing narratives, videos, advice, and online e-learning modules for women and peacebuilding worldwide. Phase 1 of project will also coordinate the publishing (“E” and/or print) of memoirs of two well-known female mediators.