Women Peacebuilders at the Forefront of COVID-19: Documenting Feminist Approaches to Reducing Impacts of Crises

Feminist discussions of COVID-19 highlight women and women-led organizations’ critical role as frontline responders. During the initial periods of the pandemic, women peacebuilders utilized their profound understanding of local communities to identify new or deepened vulnerabilities and respond efficiently and effectively. At the same time, they worked to protect the hard-won gains in peacebuilding and gender equality—preventing peace from “becoming a casualty of the pandemic” (Gasperetti et al. 2021). Despite increased attention, women peacebuilders’ pandemic responses remain largely unrecognized. The lack of official records on women-led responses to COVID-19, particularly in conflict-affected and fragile contexts, is concerning as governments and multilateral organizations move to promote a feminist and just recovery. What was the role of women peacebuilders in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how can we ensure their contributions are not sidelined? This paper responds to this question and showcases the COVID-19 and Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Database (Global Network of Women Peacebuilders 2020) as a case study of a tool created to document efforts that would have otherwise gone unrecognized. In doing so, it highlights the importance of documenting women’s responses to the pandemic and argues that this evidence is critical for making the case for a gender-inclusive, just, and sustainable recovery. Connecting to the emerging literature on alternative approaches to archiving, it further argues that such acts of recording, collecting, and archiving are indeed sites of resistance and feminist practice. Women peacebuilders have long been at the forefront of social cohesion efforts. While similar in many dimensions to other feminist counterparts, such as activists and human rights defenders, peacebuilders are unique in their ability to connect to and build relationships with groups, communities, or parties that are opposed or in conflict with one another. Before the pandemic, the agency of women peacebuilders in building and maintaining community peace was documented. From Sierra Leone to Nepal, women-led peacebuilding initiatives defied harmful norms and actively demanded peaceful solutions to local conflicts. The 2019 global study on women’s perceptions of “peace” (Fal Dutra Santos 2019) reports that women understand peace as more than the mere absence of war and believe that prioritizing a “culture of peace” is necessary for sustaining peace. This depth of understanding of women peacebuilders has made them vital contributors to conflicts and global crises. Despite this recognized role, the contributions of women peacebuilders to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and protecting gains in peacebuilding and inequality during the prolonged crisis are not well known. The Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), a coalition of over 100 women’s organizations from countries around the world experiencing humanitarian crises or conflict, recognized this growing gap in the early days of the pandemic and responded to it by creating the COVID-19 and WPS database. Pairing information provided directly by organizations working on the ground with secondary research, the database includes over 300 entries on twenty conflict-affected or otherwise insecure countries across the world. It recorded the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and gender equality, women’s rights and peacebuilding organizations, peace and security, and women-led humanitarian, peacebuilding, and conflict prevention responses. The database is a unique and valuable tool for documenting and centralizing information about the role of women peacebuilders and is especially valuable because of its focus on women’s knowledge and expertise, with many entries drawing on first-hand accounts of the pandemic shared by women leaders, peacebuilders, and organizations. Feminist archiving and archives are increasingly explored by women and gender literature.1 It can be seen as an “alternative” way of archiving, which “[resists] dominant historical narratives (and particularly the erasure of certain struggles within these narratives) and the authoritative powers that construct, consolidate, and disseminate such narratives” (Chazan et al. 2015, 62–3). Such feminist approaches push back against the rigid rules of archiving, which often exclude and reject practices that do not adhere to the apparent rules, terminologies, and boundaries of what archiving should be, rooted in white and Western traditions.2 When one woman’s organization collects evidence of the critical role of other women’s organizations, it resists ignorance and erasure. In doing so, the acts of collecting and documenting become feminist practice and archiving; a site of resistance. This piece explores database entries from Central and South Africa, providing a peek into the types of detailed information the database managed to capture. Across the continent, the pandemic had distinct and disproportionate gendered impacts. In many African entries, women reported increased rates of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and reduced access to SGBV and sexual and reproductive health and rights resources and services. Increased SGBV at the hands of police enforcing pandemic response measures and rates of child and teenage pregnancies were also recorded. Women with intersecting identities faced significant challenges. For example, women living with disabilities in Uganda felt more vulnerable to early pregnancies due to the mandatory confinements, which made them overly reliant on men in their households. Mobility restrictions and limitations on gatherings also severely hindered women peacebuilders’ ability to conduct peacebuilding activities (see Al-Thaibani’s research on women peacebuilders in Yemen; in this forum). Initiatives bringing together community members were no longer possible, while virtual spaces were not conducive to dialogue and trust-building. Women were hesitant to participate virtually due to privacy concerns, particularly when discussing sensitive issues such as SGBV. Virtual peacebuilding activities were not accessible for many women who did not have digital devices, smartphones, radio spots, or had limited digital and basic literacy. Rural and urban women also faced unreliable electricity and internet connectivity. New barriers posed by pandemic-related “digitalization” affected a wide variety of efforts led by women peacebuilders. For example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Synergie des Femmes pour les Victimes des Violences Sexuelles (SFVS) reported that restrictions on in-person gatherings significantly limited their monitoring of violence against women and girls. In Cameroon, women peacebuilders lamented limited access to socially marginalized women, including incarcerated women, who could no longer benefit from the services they provided. Despite new limitations and risks, women peacebuilders stood at the frontlines of the pandemic response—being both peacebuilders and humanitarian actors. In Kenya, the Rural Women Peace Link (RWPL) mainstreamed information through radio and text messages in local languages, raising awareness of the gendered impacts of the pandemic. Meanwhile, in Uganda, the Coalition for Action (CoACT) 1325 turned to distributing hygiene products for women in response to their growing needs. In South Sudan, the EVE Organization for Women’s Development worked to combat misinformation by distributing information sheets and resource materials on COVID-19 via caravans. The Nigerian chapter of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) produced a radio show entitled “Let’s Talk COVID and SGBV” to provide an educational platform for experience sharing among its members. Women peacebuilders used their existing trust and relationship with communities and detailed understanding of the needs of women and community members to reach them in ways governments were unable or unwilling to. Their organizations prioritized accessibility, from providing information in local languages to reach linguistically diverse audiences, to distributing critical information through low-barrier information and communication technologies, such as radio. At the height of the pandemic, women peacebuilders provided critical support services to vulnerable communities, including survivors of SGBV and those needing psychosocial accompaniment. In Rwanda, the Rwanda Women’s Network (RWN) opened and operated a mobile clinic responding to SGBV cases in seven districts. In South Africa, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) provided psychosocial counseling and opened shelters for survivors of SGBV. In Uganda, CoACT 1325 held radio shows and additional outreach activities to support survivors, including through legal referrals, support with police reporting, and oversight for the mishandling of cases by authorities. Even in cases where governments or other formal bodies recognized the gendered impacts of the pandemic, they were unable to match the speed and efficiency with which women peacebuilders were able to recognize and respond to needs. Where governments pointed to limitations in funds or human resources, women peacebuilders used minimal resources to provide critical information and services to communities—even when they experienced a loss of funds and resources as a result of the pandemic. In addition to responding to immediate gender-sensitive needs during the pandemic, women peacebuilders led significant advocacy efforts for gender-responsive and inclusive recovery. In Cameroon, the South West/North West Women Task Force released statements on how the government’s initial pandemic response did not address the needs of internally displaced women—demanding a rectification of the shortcomings. In the DRC, SFVS led advocacy campaigns at local and provincial levels for the increased protection of women human rights defenders whose work on COVID-19 made them more susceptible to violence, given the continued instability in the country’s Eastern provinces. The Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA) circulated a petition gathering thousands of signatures advocating for the Ministry of Health to include women and girls in pandemic emergency response measures and address the increased cases of SGBV. In doing so, women’s organizations pushed governments to go beyond recognizing and responding to the different gendered needs of women and girls in the pandemic context and to address the forms of gender inequality that create and perpetuate these needs. The implementation of peace agreements, peace processes, and the development and implementation of peace and security frameworks were also delayed—in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and in the long term. In South Sudan and Uganda, the pandemic was used to justify delays and non-implementation of National Action Plans on WPS. Women peacebuilders continued monitoring ceasefires and the security and political situation in conflict-affected communities, mediating conflicts, and building social cohesion—despite the stagnation of parallel governmental and official efforts. Once again, women peacebuilders managed to focus on peace and security issues that were framed by governments as matters of secondary concern, given the pandemic crisis, and played a critical role in ensuring accountability on government non-action on commitments or rollbacks in progress made in building peace. The pandemic-related changes outlined above were, and continue to be, exacerbated by diminishing funding for peacebuilding and women’s rights organizations. Local women peacebuilders across the continent reported that their funds were cut, and contracts were canceled to divert funding to humanitarian efforts—despite women’s proven ability to identify and respond to community needs and critical role in the pandemic response. The provision of sufficient, flexible, and accessible funding for women-led peacebuilding remains a critical issue, as direct funding for women’s organizations continues to make up a negligible portion of bilateral aid targeting fragile countries (Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, International Civil Society Action Network, Kvinna till Kvinna, MADRE, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 2022). Women continue to face exclusion from formal decision-making processes during crises. Despite their proven track record in crisis recovery, few governments prioritize gender-responsive measures in pandemic responses. For example, only 24 percent of national committees on COVID-19 recovery included women in their formal processes (CARE 2020). In the near term, tools like the database serve as evidence for key areas of advocacy in peacebuilding, including funding for women-led peacebuilding. In the long term, this evidence can be used to advocate for more fundamental shifts in crisis response toward approaches that consider gender sensitivity as essential and non-negotiable. It is such that the very act of gathering and documenting the work of women’s organizations, carried out by women’s organizations, becomes a feminist practice—a form of resistance against ignorance and erasure. This piece explores the frontline role of women peacebuilders in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the question of documenting their work as evidence to demand support for women peacebuilders and their inclusion in decision-making on crisis response. It recognizes this process of documenting and gathering as a form of archiving and situates it within broader conversations on feminist and alternative approaches to archiving. So long as the contributions of women peacebuilders remain systematically undocumented, their perspectives will be overlooked. Documenting the responses led by women peacebuilders during the pandemic and other crises is primordial to maintaining the momentum for the hard-fought gains and maintenance of their rights.

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