PeaceWomen Across the Globe is an internationally active feminist peace organisation based in Bern with an office in Colombia. We support women and feminist peacebuilders in contexts affected by armed conflict in their diverse efforts to build lasting peace. To ensure their full, equal and meaningful participation in all stages of peace processes, we amplify their visions and demands, boost their efforts to shape peace processes and connect women and feminist peacebuilders within conflict-affected countries and across regions impacted by armed conflict.

Our programmes create spaces where women can develop and advance their diverse efforts to achieve lasting peace. Our goal is the full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women in all phases of peace processes. Together with them, we advocate for a feminist understanding of peace that questions power relations and strives for transformative change.

In this programme, we focus on the point in time when there is little or no talk of peace and narratives revolve primarily around military and humanitarian measures. But peace work is relevant long before negotiations begin. The conditions must be actively created long before that: peace intentions and visions need to be developed and peace activists and their networks can be supported even during armed conflict. In this way, we can ensure that women are prepared to engage with the post-conflict period and to strategically plan for and participate in structural, transformative change. 

War has been raging in eastern Ukraine since 2014. In 2022, Russia expanded its war of aggression in eastern Ukraine and to other parts of the country. As early as summer 2021, we launched a pilot programme in conflict-affected communities along the then-contact line between Russia and regions in eastern Ukraine, where women for years have been affected by rampant poverty, social insecurity and gender-based violence. Our Ukraine programme gave them the space they needed to work together on strategies for safety and security in their daily lives and equal participation in peacebuilding. We continue building peace with them during the war.

Interview with Olena Zinenko, project coordinator at KRF Public Alternative, about the tense situation in Ukraine a few days before the start of the Russian war of aggression on 24 February 2022.

In February 2022, we had just finalised an interview with our programme coordinator Olena Zinenko in Ukraine. Two days later, the Russian army attacked. As the second anniversary of the war of aggression approaches, Olena recalls her state of shock in those early days and months of the war and the journey she has taken since then. She also explains why talking about peace in Ukraine can create divisions and how women need to be the driving forces for a forward-looking “life agenda”.

Women living in communities close to the contact line are affected by the war between Ukraine and the autonomous Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in multiple ways. At the Women’s Peace Tables they can both network and freely share their experiences and visions of peace. We interview Board member Margret Kiener Nellen and our project coordinator Annemarie Sancar after their project visit in September

“Ukraine talks,” “peace negotiations,” “US-brokered peace talks”: for weeks, the media have been reporting on the so-called “peace process” for Ukraine led by the United States. The reporting largely ignores whether such negotiations can be effective. Nor does it address the question everyone should be asking: who should be determining Ukraine's future?

Since the beginning of our programme, and especially since Russia's war of aggression in 2022, we have been building trust with women affected by the war in Ukraine. Our meetings have fostered an environment where women can openly share experiences and talk about their visions for peace – whether they have gone into exile, remained in eastern Ukraine or were displaced to other parts of the country. Following the launch of the redesigned Ukraine programme in the autumn of 2024, we organised a train-the-trainer workshop in Krakow in February for women who play a leading role in their municipalities.

The war in Ukraine has led to the increasing celebration of toxic masculinity in the region. As a result, male identity is experiencing a serious crisis that affects a large number of men and women, writes Belarusian peace activist Olga Karatch in her article in the 2. edition of the "Feminists Connecting for Peace" magazine. She lists five ways to counter these patriarchal narratives.

"I had to close my heart and soul to work." Valentina Cherevatenko, Russian PeaceWoman, human rights defender and member of Women's Initiatives for Peace in Donbas(s) describes her despair after the Russian war of aggression began.

Despite a growing awareness that the full, equal, safe and meaningful participation of women leads to more sustainable peace agreements, women remain largely excluded from formal peace negotiations. We strengthen women's participation in peace negotiations by finding creative ways to link formal and informal women's initiatives.

As part of a pilot programme in Sudan, we are connecting peace activists in the Dilling region in the south of Sudan with Sudanese activists who have lived in exile since 2023 due to the ongoing violence. Together with our local partner, we promote the targeted development of skills that these women can use to participate fully and meaningfully in peace negotiations and drive social change.

Fostering connections and exchange among women and feminist peacebuilders from countries affected by violent conflict is a central aim across all our programmes. To advance this goal, we invited two Sudanese and two Colombian peace activists to Switzerland. Over four days they shared experiences, strategies and approaches to feminist peacebuilding. They also met with decision-makers to highlight the challenges faced by women peace activists, particularly young ones, in their respective countries – and to voice their expectations.

Together with our partners, we work to ensure that peace activists play an active role in implementing peace agreements as well as in processes of dealing with the past after armed conflicts – thereby contributing to the prevention of violent conflict and renewed escalation.

Since the signing of the peace agreement in Colombia with the FARC-EP guerillas in 2016, we have been actively supporting the participation of conflict-affected women in its implementation. In our programme, we are committed to ensuring that their experiences and concerns are included in the transition to a sustainable, peaceful society.

Women continue to live with the complex effects of the ten-year armed conflict that ended with a peace agreement in 2006. Yet, they were effectively excluded from the peace negotiations and their participation in transitional justice processes remains severely restricted. With our programme, we strengthen the agency of women and young people affected by the conflict and enable their access to political decision-makers so that they can hold the government accountable to deal finally with the violent past and its consequences.

The armed conflict over self-determination between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Muslim majority region of Mindanao lasted more than 50 years. Women were already driving forces in the peace process. Since the 2014 peace agreement, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao has been in the process of building political structures. This is a key moment for women to anchor their demands for a gender-equal society within the new political and social structures.

In the fall of 2019, we brought together peace activists from Colombia, Nepal and the Philippines to share their experiences of armed conflict and of the subsequent peace efforts in their countries and to benefit from each other's expertise. As different as the political contexts are, the women found many similarities. The solidarity they felt at the meeting gives them the strength to continue their often arduous peace work.

A short film from 2023 about a participant of a Women's Peace Table in Nepal, whose husband was disappeared during that country's decade-long armed conflict. We support our partner Nagarik Aawaz in using Women's Peace Tables as a means to address the long-term reparative needs of conflict-affected women and to localise transitional justice in communities.

Film about the Women's Peace Tables carried out by our partner Nagarik Aawaz with our support in Nepal until 2019.

It was a unique exchange that we were able to organise with our partners in the Philippines in December: at various events, two representatives of the Gender Working Group of the Colombian Truth Commission exchanged their experiences with peace activists from the Philippines. Many moments of recognition and understanding emerged at during these exchanges. Our programme managers Andrea Filippi and Karin Widmer were there.

Eighteen years on, since the signing of the peace agreement, there can still be no talk of peace in Nepal. The lack of political will, patriarchal social norms as well as political instability are hindering its implementation, leading to intergenerational consequences for those affected by the conflict. They want to be recognised as victims of the violence of war and demand the truth. Our colleagues Camille Bernheim and Karin Widmer listened to them at a Women's Peace Table.