“It has always been clear: in times of peace and in times of war, nothing works without women”

Our founder and president, Ruth-Gaby Vermot, is stepping down. For decades, she has championed the visibility of the often undervalued work of women in countries affected by war and armed conflict. Her courageous vision of collectively nominating 1,000 women from around the world for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize lives on in our collaboration with women and feminist activists in our programmes and within the Feminists Connecting for Peace network. In an interview with our colleague Larissa Mina Lee, she talks about successes, setbacks and hopes.

Dear Gaby, we are here in our office on Weissensteinstrasse, which we opened together just over a year ago. Which other places along your journey with “1000 Women for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize” and PeaceWomen Across the Globe (PWAG) hold special significance for you?

The places that motivated me to launch the “1000 Women for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize” initiative were more like “non-places”. And the successor organisation, PeaceWomen Across the Globe, is also active in various non-places around the world. These are places where peace processes have never taken place, where peace agreements have never been implemented or have only been implemented inadequately, where war criminals run a country as if they were entitled to do so, and where the war dead have still not been found and given a proper burial.

Refugee camps are also non-places. In those I visited as a member of the Swiss National Council and the Council of Europe on behalf of the Refugee Commission, I constantly encountered women whose selfless and ceaseless care work motivated me in the first place to conceive of the initiative. These “motivating” non-places – a contradiction in terms – were Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. Regions that were devastated by wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. There I met women who lived with their families in miserable conditions on marshy ground, in unheated caravans or tin shacks. They lacked food and water. They had been forgotten by their governments. I was deeply impressed by how the women in these desolate places, with great courage – and no doubt often anger too – ensured the survival of their children and of the people in the camps, and by how much they achieved through their unwavering care.

Can you think of a specific example of this care work?

I witnessed a striking example of how care work is perceived in times of war in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. When I wanted to talk to the women living in a half-destroyed house about their difficult care work, they were very surprised. No one had ever asked them about this before, even though it was obvious that these women were putting themselves in great danger when they ran outside to get medicine, milk or bread. The fact that they were taking responsibility for people, caring for the injured and looking after lost children and sick elderly people, clearly interested no one. Raising awareness of this seemingly worthless care work, making it visible and bringing it into the political discourse were the main objectives of our peace initiative.

I spoke to everyone who wanted to listen – or even those who didn’t – about our peace project.

What places have been a source of inspiration for you?

One inspiring place was the Council of Europe, the organisation for democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Europe. When the idea of nominating 1,000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize began to take off, I used my connections as a delegate there, a place where parliamentarians from 46 countries, diplomats, experts and organisations staging protests or making appeals come together. I spoke to everyone who wanted to listen – or even those who didn’t – about our peace project. The idea was new and it encouraged people to engage with it. After a detailed discussion of our criteria, many women parliamentarians were willing to propose women from their countries for nomination.

Zurich also proved to be a good place. It was here that we were able to open our “Faces of Peace” exhibition for the first time – in the presence of all the coordinators, board members, translators and donors involved in the initiative, and thanks to the significant support of the Zurich city government. All 1,000 nominated women received the “PeaceWomen Across the Globe” book as a token of our gratitude; it was printed on Bible paper and ran to 2,200 pages. Almost daily, we received media reports and updates about the exhibition, which local women’s organisations around the world displayed hundreds of times. There, they spoke to many people about their practical peace work and the closely related care work carried out in times of war. It was always clear: in times of peace and in times of war, nothing works without women – they are the agents, the doers, the ones who maintain structures, hope and confidence, and who, despite violence, destruction and suffering, reinvent everyday life for those affected by war.

Women are the agents, the doers (...), who reinvent everyday life for those affected by war..

In 2015, the UN, as a place of peace, enabled us to display the “No women – no peace” exhibition, curated especially for us, right outside the doors of the Security Council. Together with nominated PeaceWomen, we organised discussions on peace processes and the role of women with members of the Security Council and the then-president of the UN General Assembly, former Swiss Federal Councillor Joseph Deiss.

Our tiny office in Bern was also a good place, where we – the coordinators from 15 regions of the world, the board and many supporters – worked hard for three years, met with the media and grappled with financial problems. It was from here that the letter containing the 1,000 nominations was sent off, ceremoniously signed by the then-foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey. On 10 December 2005, crowded together and on tenterhooks, we waited, along with all those who could join us online and with extensive media coverage, for the announcement from the Nobel Committee in Oslo. The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize went to Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Not to the courageous 1,000 women!

How did you react to this disappointment?

Even though we knew that with 1,000 women and a broad concept of peace, we had completely overwhelmed the Nobel Prize jury, we were disappointed and frustrated. For several months, we wavered between giving up and carrying on. As we were aware that peace work is a long-term endeavour and is only possible through dialogue and networking with women from many countries, we – the team of coordinators worldwide and the board – decided to pull ourselves out of our slump and carry on, supported by sympathetic people and experts in peace issues.

Bern then proved to be the right place to sort out many issues, restructure the organisation and tackle our greatest challenge: getting peace work off the ground in collaboration with experts and activists in specific countries. We defined what peace entails, how peace processes unfold and which issues and roles women must take on in order to cease being excluded and instead become active participants. In discussions with women experts and academics, and at meetings with peace activists and politicians, we explored the multifaceted topic of peace. Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peace and Security”, which the UN Security Council unanimously adopted in 2000, provided us with a compass for all critical issues.

What was the biggest challenge?

The biggest difficulties we faced were with funding – from the very beginning right up to today. It was a constant struggle. When I was a child, whenever we five siblings were feeling desperate about something, my mother would sing the same song to us over and over again: “…and when you think you can’t go on, a little light will come from somewhere …”. The melody would resurface in moments of despair. Evidently, a mother’s songs give hope! Time and again, in our search for long-term funding, we encountered people who were sympathetic to our peace work. It wasn’t gold bars that glistened, but it was solid money that allowed us to keep working. We utilised women’s networks, organised conferences, held peace roundtables, which we called peace tables, and staged exhibitions in war zones and countless other places. And we spoke time and again about peace!

After 20 years as president of PeaceWomen Across the Globe, you are stepping down. Apart from this milestone and your remarkably long tenure in the role, why is now the right time?

Yes, I am now handing over the presidency. It’s not easy and it makes me sad, as I feel very connected to the organisation’s history and to its women. However, now is the right time. We have a wonderful team and I have great respect for the work being done here. A lot is happening, including in the countries where we work with our programme partners – in Ukraine, Colombia, Nepal, Sudan and elsewhere. One of my key priorities – to establish PWAG not only in Switzerland but also in countries with partner organisations – has been realised with the opening of a PWAG office in Colombia. A younger colleague from the Bern office is spending several months there this year to familiarise herself with the perspectives and working methods of our Colombian partners and to support the two colleagues in Bogotá.

It is also the right time because our current financial situation gives me confidence that our peace work will continue to be funded by a supportive and generous community of donors in the future. In recent years, we have established many guiding principles for both our internal work and our collaboration with our partners and we have developed a new strategy. The search for my successor is underway. Furthermore, I repeatedly encounter a great deal of respect for our work in the public sphere. Yes, we are currently in a good place for a handover.

You sound very confident.

My resignation is also tinged with a mixture of relief, wistfulness and deep concern. Not for the organisation, but for what is currently being wrought in the world by certain violent, inhumane statesmen with their wars, instigated out of pure lust for power and waged with new, highly efficient weapon systems. It is civil society that suffers, being dragged into wars without being asked and forced to endure senseless losses. I also see how, here in Switzerland, the army sucks funds out of other departments like a giant vacuum cleaner – under the false logic that only a country with a highly armed military can offer its inhabitants comprehensive security. Arms build-up, militarisation and readiness to face various enemies are the demands of the moment. This stokes public fear and ensures support for rearmament and militarisation.

It worries me that there is no talk of peace, that peace has even become a taboo word.

It worries me that there is no talk of peace, that peace has even become a taboo word. At the same time, civilian service in Switzerland for people who do not wish to serve in the military is to be made more difficult in order to increase the army’s “strength”. How often have I seen women in war-torn countries receiving their children back in coffins, draped in the national flag, with the assurance that their sons had died a heroic death. This grief, this despair over these senseless deaths haunts me!

I ask myself, how can we continue to think through and negotiate peace in all its implications amidst all these threatening developments? But ultimately, I remain cautiously optimistic and hopeful, despite all the current adverse geopolitical developments, despite growing demands from the far right and racist contempt that harm people, democracies and faith in international agreements such as international law and human rights. I remain hopeful that many people and organisations working together can move this broken world, against all odds, towards peace.

Both in our programme work with our partners and within the PWAG network, team and board, we focus on intergenerational approaches to sustainable peacebuilding. Your handover and the stepping down of a number of board members is also a process that you and many others are tackling across generations and with the greatest care.

I know that there are many young women too who are getting involved, speaking out and contributing their ideas – both among our partners, but also here in Switzerland. For me, intergenerational collaboration is one of the foundations for the further development of our feminist organisation. We also know that peace processes take years and, unfortunately, often decades. There is progress and there are also repeated setbacks when wars break out again, when the negotiated and agreed demands are not implemented. Peace work requires patience and a great deal of time.

One challenge is that young women are usually in the midst of planning their own lives, which demands energy and time. A certain degree of care and understanding of the different “stages of life” and personal journeys is therefore needed to prevent a creeping frustration and the feeling of becoming overwhelmed, which would spoil the joy of intergenerational peace work. But care is essential: we cannot work for peace whilst excluding one another.

You once said: “security is always fragile and vulnerable!” In fact, this is something that heads of state and military leaders are repeatedly saying at the moment, using it to call for rearmament. I know that you draw very different conclusions when you say that security is always fragile and vulnerable. What aspects of your own life have shaped your knowledge and understanding of security?

Looking back, the issue of security was an important, albeit vague, one for me during my childhood and youth. I did have a roof over my head, parents who looked after me and my siblings. I was able to go to school and had enough to eat. My mother was also a very strong and politically minded woman who stood by us unconditionally and, at times, relentlessly. But despite all that, we were children of the war and the post-war era. Even though Switzerland managed to avoid the war through arms and gold trading, the exclusion of Jewish refugees, and “good services” rendered to the Nazis.

My parents were day labourers, often unemployed. My mother swapped ration cards with other mothers, sometimes for oil or milk, sometimes for rice or chocolate. Poverty accompanied me and my family throughout my entire childhood. Poverty often undermines and destroys pride and the zest for life. To this day, I feel that my sense of security is constantly being shattered and that I am forced to piece these fragments back together into a solid sense of security. The certainty that I have had a remarkable career does nothing to change that!

Thus, the question: “what makes us feel safe?”

This question has taken on increasing importance in conversations with women in war zones. It is never the vast security apparatus and arsenals of armies and warlords that provide security. Even if this is now repeated like a mantra by the arms lobby. The opposite is true: armed security wears people down, makes them distrustful and destroys confidence in a peaceful future. Conversations with Ukrainian women in our network show that it is not weapons that create security, but the things of daily life: a pension that arrives, a healthcare system that works, schools that remain open despite the war, a reliable rubbish collection service, accessible food shops and intact housing. That is what security looks like in practice. And to ensure a minimum quality of life during wartime, women take on the daily care work. In doing so even in dangerous times they invest in life rather than in destruction. The same applies in peacetime: it is not weapons that foster social cohesion, but the everyday, anxiety-free, familiar provision of basic needs and a sense of belonging to society.

Twenty years as president of PWAG, with successes but also setbacks, worries and uncertainties along the way. What and who gave you strength in those moments?

At the start of the “1,000 Women for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize” initiative, we worked with a huge variety of women. There were the coordinators from all over the world who, together with the core team and the board in Bern, were responsible for the criteria for the women to be nominated and for the nominations themselves. There were countless volunteer translators, as we had to communicate in around ten different languages. There were people worldwide who nominated the women. There was the film team behind “1,000 Women and a Dream”, the exhibition organisers who imaginatively displayed the 1,000 cards featuring the faces of the 1,000 PeaceWomen, and those who organised events, peace tables and conferences. We were a whole living world. Yet we weren’t as connected as we are today. We had nothing more than a fax machine, sometimes access to email or Skype. The nomination from the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, made by telephone because the women there didn’t yet have internet, remains unforgettable. And yet it all worked out. A few times, however, we wanted to give up because funds were running out, nominations were arriving slowly, conflicts were breaking out among these diverse women, or because deadlines were almost missed – misunderstandings and minor “wars”, as it were. But there were always people who encouraged us.

Was it also hard to carry on after the women did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

We received a great deal of support during the periods of reorientation, which bolstered our work and ensured we could continue. We realised very quickly that the spectacle surrounding the nomination of the 1,000 women had faded and public interest was waning. We had to make a fresh start and redefine peace work once again. We had to clarify our new goals and focus, even though the work itself was never in doubt. We considered how to organise ourselves and which women and partners to collaborate with. We wrote papers, discussed and discarded ideas. These were creative times with difficult phases. However, donors, staff members and the PeaceWomen were always helpful, accompanying us closely for part of the journey and helping us to overcome obstacles with new programme proposals, topics and methods.

When you launched the initiative in 2003 and founded PWAG in 2006, you had specific hopes and goals. If you had to name a positive surprise or a success of which you are particularly proud, what would that be?

The book “1000 PeaceWomen Across the Globe”, the film “1000 Women and a Dream” and the exhibitions “Faces of Peace”: they all came together and were major highlights. The fact that the women did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize was a disappointment. The fact that, together with many people worldwide and the vast network of the 1,000 nominated women, we created a wonderful work of art is a success. Another highlight for me are the numerous awards we have been honoured with, and the largely positive media coverage of the initiative. Added to this is a great deal of appreciation and attention, which I still experience today.

Even the years spent searching for the right direction in peace work were full of pleasant surprises time and again: unexpected visits from PeaceWomen, participation in events on peace and justice, nominated peace activists who told us how much protection the nomination offered them, entire families who gave each other our 1,000 CHF peace shares as Easter gifts, invitations to give talks and take part in discussions on peace work, requests for consultations in political committees. All of this was good for our collective self-confidence and, of course, good for the development of our organisation.

Is there one highlight that stands out?

I’m not usually one for highlights. If we only focus on success, the journey and the experiences that go with it can easily be lost. Yet it is precisely these that are usually far more meaningful. But I am incredibly proud that, after all these years of hard work, financial constraints, issues with direction and staffing, and gaps in innovation – though always with positive moments along the way – we have become a feminist peace organisation. A women’s organisation that, together with partners and a remarkable network, tackles one of the world’s most complex and difficult issues: peace and peace processes. We have weathered stagnation and detours in the development of genuine feminist peace work, discussed decolonial approaches, scrutinised our work for hidden forms of discrimination, and repeatedly achieved progress and clarity. I am proud of that.

For me, this is the highlight of my life as a politician. But we cannot rest on our laurels...

Together with our programme partners and within the Feminists Connecting for Peace network, we help shape peace processes from the perspective of women and the civilian population at every stage. We fight with knowledge, well-considered demands and political pressure to ensure that women, who are still excluded from meaningful participation in peace talks today, are finally taken seriously as equal partners, negotiating on an equal footing and included in all phases of peace processes – even if the road ahead is still long and the reality is not yet satisfactory. I am also delighted that PWAG is now receiving greater public recognition. I would like to thank the team, the board and our partners and network members, with whom we carry out this peace work, for this tremendous effort. For me, this is the highlight of my life as a politician.

But we cannot rest on our laurels, especially in the current situation, where politics worldwide is very far removed from effective peace concepts that prevent war. There is no language of peace, either within governments or parliaments – but there is certainly a language of war and violence. We must do everything in our power to demand, with the greatest urgency, the language of peace, dialogue, listening and understanding, together with our many allies. For peace cannot succeed alone.

Bern, April 2026