News and Updates
Race, Power and Peacebuilding
Race, Power and Peacebuilding aims to explore and to understand how racism manifests itself in the peacebuilding sector. This report has been produced by Peace Direct in collaboration with the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY).
Upcoming High-Level Hybrid Roundtable: Innovative Solutions for Feminist Financing for Peacebuilding
ICAN together with GPPAC, GNWP, Kvinna till Kvinna, Permanent Missions of Bangladesh, Ireland and Sweden to the United Nations, UN Women, WILPF and WPS-HA Compact cordially invite you to a high-level hybrid roundtable on Innovative Solutions for Feminist Financing for Peacebuilding, to take place on 26 April 2022 at 1:15-2:45pm EDT as part of discussions surrounding the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Peacebuilding.
Please Help Provide a Critical Lifeline to Afghan Women Peacebuilders this Spring
At ICAN, we rarely ask for individual donations but, these are unprecedented times. We need your help as we continue supporting our Afghan partners and their families.
Gender and Extremisms: ICAN Delivers Training in Cameroon
ICAN facilitated a training on gender and violent extremism organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Unit, from 3-5 March in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The training served as a follow-up to the 2019 workshop delivered by ICAN. Participants traveled from all regions of Cameroon to participate in the workshop.
She Builds Peace on International Women’s Day 2022
International Women’s Day 2022 marks the two-year anniversary of the She Builds Peace campaign to stand with women peacebuilders. As locally-rooted, trusted leaders in their communities, they are often the first responders to the world’s crises. Now more than ever, in the face of war, humanitarian disaster, economic collapse, and climate change, they need our support.
Economic Security of Women Peacebuilders and the Role of the Private Sector in Supporting Them and Their Work
On January 26, 2022, Her Royal Highness The Countess of Wessex joined ICAN and members of WASL for a discussion on the economic security of women peacebuilders and the role of the private sector in supporting their work.
The work of peacebuilding, as evidenced by the poor implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 16 which emphasizes on the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, is often perceived as the purview of governments with little to no contribution from the private sector. But peace and security are essential for economic growth including infrastructure, development, and investment in human resources. The nexus of the private and peacebuilding sectors could be strengthened and benefit from a strong partnership.
The Coming of Age of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: 21 in 2021
Nearly every month through 2021, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini MBE, founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and director of LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security, hosted conversations with pioneering women peacebuilders from around the world and their allies working internationally on issues of peace and security.
She Builds Peace: New Campaign Tools and Materials
ICAN and the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) would like to share the She Builds Peace campaign kit, updated for 2022, which describes the background and overview of the campaign, ways that you can get involved, and links to key resources including a digital kit and the Frameworks for Action.
The updated campaign kit includes new tools and materials to help you implement the She Builds Peace campaign. The Participation, Protection and Funding Frameworks now each consist of an analytical brief, operational guidance, pledge, and action tool.
Sanam Naraghi Anderlini Interview on Times Radio
ICAN Founder and CEO, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, talks to Darryl Morris for Times Radio about the Taliban’s latest directive, restricting Afghan women’s travel without a male relative chaperone, which she describes as “devastating, disappointing but honestly not surprising.”
Self-Resourcing and Income-Generation in Peacebuilding Work: How Women Peacebuilders Put the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus into Practice
ICAN and our partners in WASL have always recognized the need to break down silos between the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding sectors. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated in stark terms how women peacebuilders are present, active, preemptive, and responsive to crises, leveraging limited resources to tackle multiple challenges in fragile contexts. To better respond to situations as they arise and meet the immediate humanitarian and security needs of their communities, women peacebuilders are combining their peacebuilding work with the provision of livelihoods training activities. To complement donor funding, some women peacebuilders are implementing income generation and “self-resourcing” strategies that enable them to autonomously fund and sustain their peacebuilding work.
On Wednesday 15th December, we held the first of an ongoing series of discussions about this expansive topic. In our final thematic WASL call of 2021, WASL members from Yemen, Cameroon, Tajikistan, Libya, Liberia and Syria shared their experiences combining livelihoods support, income-generation and self-resourcing with peacebuilding activities.
Fund Us Like You Want Us To Win: Feminist Solutions for more Impactful Financing for Peacebuilding
This background paper for the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Peacebuilding was prepared by the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), Kvinna till Kvinna, MADRE, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
The paper focuses on six structural barriers faced by diverse women peacebuilders in accessing funds to support their work. While acknowledging that existing solutions to mitigate challenges need to be further amplified and strengthened, this paper explores innovative avenues to transform the current system of peacebuilding financing to sustainably address the challenges faced by diverse women peacebuilders in the pursuit of inclusive and lasting peace.
Call for Female Heads of State to Protect our Afghan Colleagues and Sisters
The Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) and Women Mediators Across the Commonwealth (WMC) authored this letter to female heads of state on behalf of Afghan colleagues and sisters. The letter requests meetings with political leaders to ensure the protection of Afghan women, specifically with regard to issuing visas for resettlement, safeguarding human rights within country, upholding measures against forced marriage, and the inclusion of Afghan women in dialogue with the Taliban and the delivery of gender-responsive humanitarian aid.
Urgent Demand to Donors from the Feminist Action for Afghanistan
The Feminist Action for Afghanistan (FAA) in which ICAN participates is sending this letter to States, the UN agencies, and INGOs to keep the focus on the priority needs for Afghanistan and to ensure that Afghan women are absolutely present and shaping policy in these critical areas of concern.
Giving Tuesday: Please Support our Afghanistan Emergency Relief Fund
Several months have passed since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Though global media attention is dying down, the crisis continues and the risk faced by our partners increases with each passing day as the Taliban ramps up violence against Afghan civil society.
Following the fall of Kabul, we formed the Afghan Solidarity Coalition with a small band of NGOs, academics and others. Together, we are working to get our Afghan colleagues and families, around 2,000 in total, to safety.
On Giving Tuesday, please support our Afghanistan Emergency Relief Fund. See how your money can help save lives and futures and re-share to spread the word.
How the Counterterrorism Agenda Has Failed Women Peacebuilders – and Where Do We Go from Here?
The crisis in Afghanistan has forced many of us to reckon with the failures of the C/PVE agenda, as well as with the lack of will of the international community to protect the human rights of the women peacebuilders who have been asked to support it.
What is the meaning of counterterrorism when the world has collectively abandoned a country and its people to be governed by a terrorist organization? How can states speak of gender-sensitive P/CVE or of the importance of women, peace, and security, when they have left Afghan women to their fate? To engage in a conversation on these questions and more, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, joined the weekly WASL call on September 23, 2021. Click to read a summary of the call.