Executive Summary
This report was produced in collaboration with the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), a coalition of women’s groups and other civil society organizations from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Middle East and Arab World.
GNWP conducted qualitative analyses to contextualize the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index, to illustrate what peace looks like for the people affected, and to provide a voice to women peacebuilders. In this paper, we look at how women fare across the three dimensions of justice, inclusion, and security in Colombia, South Sudan, and Ukraine. The analysis draws on GNWP’s experiences in working with local women’s rights organizations in the three countries, as well as in-depth interviews with local women leaders and other qualitative research and mapping produced by GNWP, its partners, and other stakeholders.
This paper finds that women’s inclusion in peace and security processes remains limited across countries. Where it occurs, it is hard-won and requires sustained advocacy from women activists and civil society. Another commonality is that women in all three countries have similarly low perceptions of community safety. The experiences and lessons from groups like GNWP add flavor to the quantitative data captured by the WPS Index.