Women Waging Peace

Mission:

Women Waging Peace (now a part of the Women Peacemakers Program housed at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (Kroc IPJ) advocates for the full participation of women in formal and informal peace processes around the world. Originally part of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and then part of Inclusive Security, Women Waging Peace was founded by peace and security expert Ambassador Swanee Hunt.

The Women Waging Peace Network is a network of more than 1,000 women peacemakers from conflict areas around the world. The Network was launched in 1999 to connect these women with each other and with policy shapers. Members of the Network, all demonstrated leaders among women peacebuilders, are elected and appointed government officials, directors of non-governmental organizations and movements in civil society, scholars and educators, businesspeople, representatives of multilateral organizations, and journalists. With varied backgrounds, perspectives, and skills, they bring a vast array of expertise to the peacemaking process.

The Network now resides at the Kroc IPJ, as Inclusive Security continues to pursue strategies for global advocacy to ensure women inform and influence U.S. and international policy agendas on women, peace, and security.
The Kroc IPJ provides opportunities to foster learning and connect members meaningfully within the Network, and integrate their leadership models and strategies into Kroc IPJ’s learning and practice

Delegates include grassroots organizers, parliamentary members, journalists, academics, military officers, lawyers, judges and other civil society activists.  Women Waging Peace discussions and trainings promoted ratification, implementation and enforcement of international human rights, as defined in the UDHR, CEDAW and Security Council Resolution 1325.

The range of delegates’ peace and security work includes conflict resolution bridging ethnic and party lines, negotiation of peace agreements, demanding recognition of rape as a war crime, instituting women’s rights and gender equity in constitutions, establishing rapid response teams and strategies to counter terrorist actions, survival trainings, trauma processing for victims of rape, torture and imprisonment, reconciliation processes for reintegration of ex-combatants and repatriations, investigation and documentation of war crimes, increasing women’s participation in electoral government and observation of elections, founding progressive political parties, bringing human rights training to women in refugee camps, educating youth in human rights conflict resolution and non-violence, and building the presence and influence of social justice NGO’s in civil societies.