 Hello everyone. My name is Joseph Sonny, Vice President of the Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace. Thank you for joining the U.S. Institute of Peace for today's event, amplifying women's voices for equity and inclusion. But let me begin by presenting the United States Institute of Peace. USIP was founded by the U.S. Congress in 1984 as an independent nonpartisan national institute dedicated to preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict. We do this work by working in conflict zones around the world, providing people, organization, and governments with the research, instruments, knowledge, and support to manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and resolve it when it does. Today's event speaks to key concepts of our mission. In fact, inclusion, justice, diversity, and accessibility, JDEIA, constitute the foundation of peace-building. As a nonpartisan, congressionally founded institute, working to build a more peaceful, inclusive world, USIP recognizes JDEIA as a valuable and essential framework. However, we also see that implementing these principles remains an ongoing challenge. USIP's JDEIA initiative stems out of a desire to address systems of injustice, inequity, and discrimination in the field of peace-building through a framework that addresses those divisional challenges that exist in diverse cultural contexts. We collaborate with practitioners in a variety of international NGOs and in US agencies through workshops and working groups by elevating the voices of those working throughout the field towards the same goal, through publications, events, and our new podcast, Reimagined Diversity and Equity. We strive to collaboratively promote and embed JDEIA in peace-building. Today conversations centers around two critical aspects of this initiative, equity and inclusion through the voices of women working in peace-building organizations as scholars and as practitioners to establish these values within every level of the field. We will not only recognize the challenges to equity and inclusion that women in this field have encountered, but we'll take time to recognize the significance of their contributions to the progression of practice, policies, and understanding of these issues. We have a food program today, including a keynote address, closing remarks, a moderated conversation with a generationally and regionally diverse panel of women, and also we have time for Q&A. Our question chat box is live, so we invite you all to please consider asking questions for one or all our panelists. We are fortunate to have with us today, as our keynote speaker, a leader in the field of peace-building, my Jeff friend, Lee is young, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Lee has served in leadership positions for over 25 years in an array of organizations with accomplishments, including establishing the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at USAID, serving as the Chief Legal Counsel and Head of the Election Commission Secretariat in Bosnia-Ezegovina and Kosovo. Lee's also worked for the International Rescue Committee in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bosnia-Eleven. Today, Lee leads the Alliance for Peacebuilding. AFP is a community that strives to advance the field of peace-building by enabling peace-building organizations to achieve greater impact by creating standard best practices, accelerating collective action, and tackling issues too large for individual peace-building organizations to address alone. Lee, thank you for joining us today. We look forward to hearing your perspective. Thank you, my friend. Good morning, and as Joseph Sonny said, I'm Lee's Hume and I'm the Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and I want to thank my dear friend Sonny and everyone at USIP for inviting me here today. I first want to start off to ensure you that women and inclusion issues are significantly woven into our work at AFP, because we know there are long-standing structural injustices and inequality which are significant grievances that can drive violent conflict and prevent peace-building, and I can assure you that if we don't, Megan Corrado, AFP's incredible Director of Policy and Advocacy will make sure it gets done. But before we look back, sorry, before we look forward, I want to look back for a moment. My grandmother, who had such an incredible impact on my life, she was born without the right to vote, so let's stop and think about that for a moment. A person who had the most important, was one of the most important people in my life did not have the right to vote. She and her sister protested. They finally got the vote, but they were in college. But we know, unfortunately, this struggle continued for women of color in the United States until 1965, when they finally got legal protections to vote. My mother, who just recently passed away, got pregnant with my brother in the early 60s. She had to quit teaching when her pregnancy started to show. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act wasn't signed into law until 1978 when I was 10 years old. I grew up on cigarette commercials that told us we'd come a long way, baby, so you can imagine my surprise and confusion in the early 1990s when I was openly sexually harassed at my first job at a law firm by a lawyer. But one of my proudest moments was when I was at the OSCE in the late 1990s, when I realized, in Bosnia, they didn't have a sexual harassment policy. And as the chief legal counsel, I wrote their first one that was used throughout all of the OSCE. These are personal stories from right here in the United States. And many of you have stories like this from your own countries. And internationally, just celebrated the 22nd anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which created the framework for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. And I know that doesn't seem like a lot, given everything that's happened. But the peacebuilding field is still a young field. And in 20 years, we have gotten the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and started to get some really incredible wins. But I'm not going to deny that the last few years have been extremely difficult for equality inclusion. In Afghanistan, women and girls' rights have been ripped away from them. Crane rape is being used once again as a weapon of war on a mass scale. Women in Iran are fighting for their rights not to be beaten and dragged to prison for how they dress. And even though there are more women now holding seats in African parliaments, 40% of these lawmakers reported that they had experienced sexual harassment. Here in the U.S., some women's rights, actually about one in three, reproductive health rights, have been taken away. And thanks to COVID, women's safety and equality globally has significantly declined. So first, what do we need to do? We need to build diversity of leadership in our organizations because it is the just thing to do, but because substantial research shows us that organizations that are more diverse and inclusive perform better and are more innovative. In 2018, spurred on by the hashtag MeToo movement in Black Lives Matter, I got AFP to conduct research on AFP's members. We looked at their leadership and we recently updated that research again in 2022. So what did we do with this data? We published it. We used it to show our board. We used our agency to show our board that we had to do better in the peace building field, that we had to look at our own board and say, we need a requirement that 50% of our board are women and that diversity and inclusion was a critical priority. So what did we find in this data? Looking at our US-based members of AFP, they've made some progress. And I'm happy to report that representation of women and people of color on boards of directors has increased, which is now 58% of US-based organizations have gender balance boards compared to 45% in 2019. However, there has been little change in the percentages of women and people of color in the top executive positions. The percentage of women CEOs is now 41% compared to 43% in September 19. And the percentage of female board chairs is now 39% compared to 36%. That has to change. So this is just one example. So here's my challenge. We have to have hope. But more importantly, we need collective agency. And we have more power than we think to demand diversity of leadership within all our organizations, including your own organization, like we did at AFP. And if your leadership is not posted publicly, make sure it is. Celebrate organizations like WCAPS, who was one of AFP's first DEI champion of change awardees and amplify this achievement. Learn what they're doing and see how you can bring that back into your own organization to commit that when you see sexism in the peace building field, like I did at a conference on US peace building right here in DC only a few years ago. Don't freeze at the table like I and other women did, wondering what we should do. Use your power and say something. We ended up writing a whole chapter about it in a book on US peace building. Make sure that donors fund and we do the necessary research to advance women and inclusion issues because good data is critical to building better policies and programs. We know that when women are part of the peace process, they are 35% more likely to last beyond 15 years. This data has been critical for our advocacy, but we need more of it. Also commit to publishing more so that our voices are at the top of the search engines. The organization wise reminded me recently that data shows that diverse and inclusive voices conducting critical research with women are lacking. Invest more in women-led organizations everywhere, but especially at the locally led level. Ensure WPS is successfully implemented, starting with advocating that women must be robustly integrated into peace processes. Support and celebrate organizations like I can say for word counterpart and so many others that even though they weren't required to, because WPS principles hadn't been put into action, they put these principles into action in their programs and they shared their findings. We also need to find where we can embed this work, advocate for this work, looking forward. UN, the national agenda for peace in the UN and looking at the UN summit for the future, looking at Papua New Guinea for the Global Fragility Act where we know women's issues are so critical. These are just some of the examples. There's so much more we can do. We have more agency than we think, but we have to use it. Melinda Gates recently said that true equality for women was about 100 years away. It's highly likely I'm not going to see it in my lifetime and either will my daughters, but I think of my grandmother and my great-aunt and what they achieved and I'm still hopeful. Even if it takes 100 years, I'm confident that collectively the women and our allies here today and beyond and the women to come will continue to build on our agency so that our daughters' daughters experience true equality and justice even if it takes another 100 years. Thank you. Thank you, Liz, for those comments. That reflection I think really resonates with me and a lot of other people on this panel and in our audience today. Good morning, everyone. My name is Maria Antonia Montez. I'm a program officer for the Latin America Program at the United States Institute of Peace. I am joined today by a distinguished panel of practitioners and academics who are pioneering the field of equity and inclusion, particularly at the nexus of women and gender identities and particularly in violent contexts around the world. If you'll allow me some brief introductions today, I am pleased to share the virtual stage with Dr. Dorothy Nyambi. Dr. Nyambi is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Mennonite Economic Development Associates. Prior to joining MEDA, she was Executive Vice President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and served as Leader and Founding Member of the Gender Summit Africa in Cape Town and Kigali. Dr. Ezra Choudhara is a senior expert for dialogue and inclusion at the United States Institute of Peace on the Inclusive Peace Processes team. From 2011 to 2020, Dr. Choudhara was Regional Mediator for the World Bank. She was also an Associate Professor of Political Science at Billikent University in Turkey and a Senior Fellow at the Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative in Geneva. Shannon Page is a Policy Associate at Peace Direct. Mrs. Page joined Peace Direct as a 2020 Scoville Peace Fellow. She now serves as a Policy Associate and leads Peace Direct's research and advocacy efforts around decolonizing the peacebuilding system and the development of the organization's US peacebuilding program. Thank you to our panelists for joining us today. So I wanted to get started with a first question and this is for all of you to share some reflections. The experience of peacebuilding for women is not a monolith and we recognize that no individual on our panel can represent the totality of women within this field. So to our panelists, in your experience, how do perceptions of the role of women in peacebuilding and of equity and inclusion vary in different cultural or organizational contexts? Azra, would you like to begin? Sure. Why not? Thank you for the introduction, Tonis. And such a great panel. I'm very much honored to be here this morning and I am a big champion of this initiative within USIP and also in our field actually. So someone was doing research on inclusion and inclusion of women. I'm very excited to be here today. So to answer your question, yes, exactly. This is not the experience of women, it's not a monolith. And I think the key word here is social context. As Liz also mentioned, during her talk, WPS agenda is a normative agenda, which has been successful in some ways. But all these normative frameworks that we have seen in the last two decades, let's say, they tried to standardize, of course, women inclusion in peacebuilding. And they have achieved a lot and it was a great achievement in some sense. But it's also an ideal, right? It's an ideal standard for our field. So in practice, we see a huge variation according changing from one context to another. So cultural context, definitely culture is one aspect. It certainly plays a role, I think. We see some cultures that are more open to adopting these norms, the WPS norms, for example. And we also, and contributions of women in peacebuilding. And we also see some cultures that are more hostile to these norms. That's one fact. But when we say cultures, I would like to actually open that up a little bit. I don't mean national cultures necessarily. Culture is also not a monolith, right? We have Kathleen here, who's an anthropologist and she can say more about this. But when we say culture, we also see variation in this area from organizational culture, professional culture, and even what I would call as generational culture. And in my research with women peacebuilders, we have seen this variation. Certain professional groups, for example, and peacebuilders, I consider them as a professional group. Although they may come from very different countries, very different ethnicities, religions, their perspective is very similar. So you will find many similarities in how a Sudanese women peacebuilder thinks about and sees peace with a Bosnian women peacebuilder, for example. I've also seen a lot of variation across generations of women. That's another sort of cultural variation, I think. I've seen this in my research interviewing different women from different women peacebuilders from different contexts. For example, older generations of women and younger generations of women often have very different views on women's role in peacebuilding. I've seen this in Sudan, for example, talking with some of the Sudanese peacebuilders. They both support women's role. They're both active in they're both very supportive in making women, you know, involved in peacebuilding processes. They all support inclusion, but they still differ very much on the prioritization of issues, the priority or the means, the methods of including women in peacebuilding, for example. We see these generational cultural differences in other places too. And finally, I will stop by adding the point that in addition to culture, I think the cultural context, organization, professional generation, I think we also need to add the individual level variable. That creates a huge variation in the implementation of the JDI agenda from one context to another. And what I mean by the individual level is the role of leadership, for instance. In an organization, this is very crucial. We've seen this in many examples, especially, you know, with individuals, their biases, micro behaviors. These are really crucial in the implementation of the JDI agenda, even though the norms are in general adopted by the organizations, respected by the organizations, the individual differences within that organization or peacebuilding organization may still create a lot of variation in the implementation. Thank you. I'll stop at this point. Thanks, Ezra, for those first reflections. I think what resonates with me is kind of also the concept of intersectionality, how generationally, how contextually the different identities we carry as women also play a factor in that variation of both the mechanisms for participation and the prioritization of issues as you suggested. I wanted to see if Shannon or Dr. Nyambi wanted to pick up on that thread. Yeah, no, thank you, Tonis. You know, just sort of picking up on what Ezra just said, but thank you for the invitation to come onto this panel. I think when we think about peace, you know, I keep repeating, we're always thinking about how we react to conflict. And I think I'm going to approach it, you know, from the perspective of what are the things we need to do to prevent conflict? And what's the role of women, you know, in that context, and how looking at that through a different cultural lens, you know, hopefully can add to the conversation. So I just want to begin by saying I work in economic development. And what that has pushed me to continue to think about is the fact that if we look at the things that cause conflict in general, we look at, you know, people fight or get into conflict because of inequalities, and women suffer that some sense of people feeling excluded, some sense of exclusion, and a sense of injustice, you know, whether it's economic injustice, it's social injustice, those things are the things that push people into conflict, or there's some wealth that they cannot get, and others are benefiting from it. So with respect to women, you know, I think Liz said it really well in her opening remarks in the keynote was how the things that her grandmother experienced have certainly changed from what her experiences, maybe what our children and grandchildren would experience. But if equality is only going to come a hundred years from now, it will certainly be above us. So I think for those of us now, it is really, what do we need to do to prevent? And, you know, prevention is always better than pure. And so economic development for me is that aspect of the intervention around peace, where I believe, you know, women bring a lot, you know, to the picture. It is so important that when we look at how we prevent conflict, you know, where women, how economically empowered are women? How much are women engaged in the systems of policy, the decision making at a level of countries institutions? Because if women have agency at all levels within societies and within countries, then I think the ability for us to prevent conflict, you know, becomes higher. But once conflict has happened, I think there's also literature that suggests and says very clearly that when you actually bring women to the negotiating table, you know, the outcomes and the decisions that are made would last longer. They stay longer as part of the process. They think more beyond themselves, you know, and I speak as an African woman, you know, who is settled, you know, in another part of the world. But it is so much about a feminist approach, you know, for most women where it is beyond you, it is your community, it is your family, much bigger than you. So with those kinds of thinking, I think women are really well placed, better placed to be your policy makers, decision makers, and irrespective of culture, I think, you know, they will bring that aspect, you know, into the peace process. The other piece for me is the sense of injustice that causes conflict, and how women, you know, always want to, starting from the family units and get into organizations, country, and regions, is how do you reduce that injustice gap? And women tend to certainly bring a different mindset. So I just want to conclude by saying that it is certainly not a monolith, you know, how women show up in the peace building process. It is very different, I think, culturally, the fight for peace in the United States is very different from the fight for peace in the Central African Republic is different from what's happening in Myanmar. And so the women in those contexts understand their context better than somebody living from Canada to go and try to tell them what they need to do in Myanmar. So I think it is also that subsidiarity of even we as women, allowing the women who are facing the problems to be the ones that are coming up with the solutions, you know, that will actually get them out of the conflict, you know. So I'll stop there for now. Thank you, Dr. Namib. And Shannon, I saw you nodding along and I wanted to ask you of which parts of those that might resonate with the work that you're doing as well. I'm so grateful to be here and really, really grateful to have a chance to think through this with Esra and Dorothy. Really, at PACE Direct, we talk a lot about the necessity of local leadership. And when we're thinking about that, I think something that we really have struggled with historically has been the vitality of women's leadership. And what does that actually look like? And so we've heard a lot that women aren't a monolith. But I also think we need to recognize that our organization's perception of the role of women is also not monolithic. And one thing that is, however, continuous threat throughout all of the conflicts that I've been engaged with since joining has been that long before the international community has noticed what is happening, women's groups are already responding. This was true in Afghanistan, this was true in Ukraine, this was true in Yemen, this is true truly across the world in the United States as well. We have seen that women's groups remain one of the earliest access points for the international community to know what is happening and to begin responding. And that is not something that we can overlook. And we do. And we say this every time a conflict arises, and we recognize their leadership. And then when it comes to the peace process, where are they? And I think something that really, I know we're talking about equity, we're talking about inclusion today. But I want to think about accessibility as we have this conversation, I would like us to think about justice as well. Those two elements are key for us to have true equity, true inclusion when we're thinking about women, and when we're thinking about why are women absent? Because we know we have the studies that as well established that women's inclusion better is the outcome of a peace process. We know this. And so why are we still struggling with women's inclusion? What are the barriers that we are struggling to name, to recognize, and to address? And one thing that I think really needs to be brought into this space is what are the systems that are acting against those of us here who've been doing this work for some time? And it can be uncomfortable in the peacebuilding sector, I think especially in DC to name patriarchy as a system that is negatively impacting the peacebuilding work that we are trying to do. And yet it is one, it is present, it is active. And it manifests differently in these different contexts, which is where we have to have that cultural understanding, that ability to turn to local communities and say, what does this look like for you? What are you seeing that we couldn't understand? And I think when I think about our perceptions of the role of women, I really come down to my own organization. And I want to take a moment to be candid here, which is that Peace Direct has failed to meaningfully integrate women in a lot of our peacebuilding efforts. We've talked about local leadership, but we have failed to explicitly name women's leadership as something that we are committed to. And there are two reasons for that. And I'll just go over them very briefly. The first is that we have taken a gender mainstreaming approach. And with that, we have allowed ourselves to say, well, by virtue of working with local communities, we are also working with women, which to some degree has been true, but that is an oversimplification. And I think when we're thinking about organizational contacts, that's a risk that certain organizations based in the global north could potentially fall into. We think that we're beyond needing to explicitly name gender and women's inclusion as a central element that needs to be centered. And I think the second one is our wariness of imposing our own notions of feminism on the local communities that we are working with. We partner with organizations in 14, 15 different countries that are very culturally diverse. And as part of that, we defer to their leadership in terms of how to access more remote communities, who needs to be present, who even constitutes a local leader. And we have failed to recognize what that looks like. Apology. We have failed to recognize what that looks like when these communities are different, when these communities may not necessarily value women's leadership in the same way, or value certain women's leadership over others. And so as an organization, we're in this period of really humbly trying to learn, trying to ask our partners what that looks like and trying to investigate our own past of inadvertently excluding women from their rightful role. Thanks, Shannon, for that. I think the humility and the candor of seeing where we've also kind of had our own shortcomings as organizations trying to move in advance this agenda. And so I think that segues really well into my next question, which is, from your perspective, what are the structural, and Shannon, you named some structural systemic barriers that we see in, we've seen for women working and make a distinction between peace building and peace making, because I think there they can be oftentimes conflated. And so I wanted to ask you what those systems are, what those systemic barriers are. And then, of course, we always say, and what are the opportunities to break down those barriers as well? Ezra, or Dorothy, if you'd like to take that one. I will take that one. So I guess, because most of my research is focused on resistance to women inclusion in peace building, I kind of see the half empty side of the glass more often, perhaps than the half full side of the glass a bit more. This is not to basically deny all these contributions or achievements that have been there so far. But I think we still have a long way to go, right? And to answer your question, Tonis, in our USIP research, interviewing with various women, 30, 40 women working at different levels from ground, you know, from grassroots facilitators to high level women negotiators, mediators, two things that, I mean, there are various reasons, there are various barriers. But the experience of women working at different levels is also different. I think we also need to recognize this. Some women peace builders working at the very local level grassroots level as facilitators, they're facing different barriers than women mediators working at the UN or working at peace NGOs, they're facing very different barriers. And I think we really need to recognize this as well if we want to advance this agenda. What are some of these barriers that I came across within my own research? I don't have time to go over each one, one by one, but competition, especially within peace NGOs, and there's huge competition for resources and power for taking jobs. And we often see that women peace builders are sort of pushed aside by their male colleagues, actually, working as peace builders. I've heard many stories telling me, you know, that because of the competition for limited resources available for peace building, even though they're hired as cool facilitators, for example, they're often sort of sidelined, etc. This is a reality. Another challenge which Shannon referred to as patriarchy, perhaps a barrier, this is very evasive, right? It's very widespread at every level in a way. But I actually prefer to call it identity threat in my research. And what I mean by that is women's inclusion either in high level peace processes or local level peace building efforts, referring to our peacemaking peace building distinction. Women's inclusion is seen as an identity threat by some people. What does this mean? For example, rejecting women's inclusion as this is a Western plot, right? This is actually something that has to do with Western values, Western cultures, and they are trying to impose their cultural values on us. So we see that a lot in local level, for example. Or the discourse saying that this is a threat to the traditional family structure, right? If more women are involved in peace processes, peace building, this is threatening our family structure. This is also another thing that we hear a lot from these women. I can actually enumerate the examples, all these stories that I heard from women peace builders. But overall, the issue here is that some people or some identity groups perceive threats to their privileged identity status. If women are involved more as equal, so that identity threat factor is there. It's a social identity threat. Another barrier that I saw in my work and my research with women is existing mental models. What I mean by this is like, oh, this is how we are used to do things around here. So we'll continue doing things the same way, right? This is perhaps relevant to Shannon's point about what happens in their own organization, right? It is not necessarily an intentional thing. But it is something more habitual that you have learned and the system one, system two thinking, right? I mean, we often operate on system one because it's more efficient. We don't need to think, we don't need to change. It's actually things get done more quickly and more efficiently. And we don't really think about changing things to something new because we're so mentally used to doing things that way. This is another barrier that I experienced. And finally, let me also mention that one of the things that at least frustrated, frustrate me most still with as a barrier is lack of protection for women peace builders, especially at the grassroots level. I mean, about 20% of the women that I interviewed mentioned that they were threatened physically or they did not feel safe, even though they work as peace builders, they face threats of physical violence. So protection of women peace builders on the ground is a serious necessity. But we need to be really talking about how we do this. It's not just saying, go women, be more involved, do your thing. We really need to think about providing more protection and security for them to do their work. If I have time, I can also perhaps say one more thing about what I call a symbolic inclusion is another threat. But I can actually perhaps talk about this a little bit more in the next round of questions. What I mean by that is that sometimes people in different organizations, they don't act in a pure exclusive way or these organizations are not exclusive as we understand it. So I mean, on the surface, it looks like they include women, but there are so many other subtle non-inclusive ways that they are using to implement the WPS agenda. And I call this symbolic inclusion because it's very different from real inclusion. There is a difference between real inclusion and symbolic inclusion. And I can actually open that up a little bit more if there is time or I will actually wait for the next round of questions. Tonis? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Ezra. I think you're... My time is up, I guess. Sounds good. I saw Dorothy wanting to chime in on some of these points that you made earlier on some of those barriers that she's also recognized. No, I think I agree with everything that Ezra has said, but I think one of the systemic things, the two systemic things I want to pull out and certainly ties into what Ezra said. For me, the first one is the power dynamics in all of this, whether it is through the mental models, whether it is through the patriarchy, whether it's global north, global south. I think one of the barriers is our inability to actually explore and understand who is bringing what power to the table. And until we can face it and actually act on it correctly, I think as Ezra said, it will just be a symbolic trying to include women because it's really all about power. So I think that power analysis and conversation around power needs to be put on the table very clearly. The other issue which I feel is systemic, which we need to address it as we think about peace is what I really put in the bucket of climate change because no matter what we do, a lot of the things that cause conflict, as you look at it, whether it's the inequities, the injustice, the exclusion is the climate change factor that is happening. People don't have enough water, rain, food, they cannot survive economically. And so whilst it is not in one person's hand, I really believe that it is so important that as we look at the systemic things that are barriers to peace building, that climate change is certainly looked at as one of those things. And for me again, it will always be what are the things we need to do to prevent conflict rather than react to conflict. I know conflict is inevitable, but I'll continue to focus on the role of women in doing the things that will help us to prevent conflict and build more peaceful societies rather than always waiting. But no, absolutely agree with Ezra. And I think it was Shannon who said it, the women on the ground in Ukraine in Myanmar, they understand their troubles more. And I think Northern NGOs need to understand that there is a certain different cultural context and those women and people, they have agency, they have knowledge, but others have to give them space so that they can come to the table with that agency and bring that power to the table. So and I think that is really systemic in the sector of this work where we've transformed it and we're going to go into Ukraine and we're going to help fix it because we're a Northern based NGO. So I think that's a systemic issue that needs to be dealt with. Absolutely. I think I work in the context of Latin America and particularly in Colombia where Colombian women have answers to their issues at every level. And so providing that space and elevating it also I think is partly our work. I wanted to segue into our next question, which looks at more maybe of the positive contributions that you all have seen with women working in this field. Perhaps you can highlight some of those examples of women who are creating an impact at either international, national, regional, grassroots levels of peacebuilding and conflict affected countries. I would love to chime in because Peace Direct, we partner with some incredible, incredible women. And so I want to start by sharing, I won't be able to share names for everybody, but we partner with these incredible sisters, Gulalai Ismail, Savai Ismail, maybe you've heard of them, and they founded Aware Girls. And a lot of what they do is they started by looking around what's happening in their communities. They started by speaking to other girls and they started by noticing, well, where are the gaps in knowledge that are causing harm and that are leading to conflict? Dorothy, I'm so glad that you keep referencing the fact that we need to think about these precursors to conflict and that we need to think about it from the development perspective as well. And that's something that we're hearing a lot. And then they're also thinking about research. What are women saying? What are the gaps that the sector is not noticing? How is intimate partner violence also going to be an indicator for conflict on a larger scale? How was that an indicator of peace that hasn't fully arrived? How can we actually measure these things, track these things? And I am deeply grateful to be able to work with these women because I think what it invites us to do is to pay attention. And I think, Dorothy, you mentioned power again, absolutely a vital part of this conversation. We're thinking about power and we're thinking about the position we have in the global north. What does it mean for us to meaningfully engage with these women and their positive contributions? It means that we have to slow down and we have to be listening and we have to be paying attention as they so often are. And so to that end, I think part of what it means is also shifting how we think of expertise, how we think of competency. And so another example that I'll share is an incredible woman, Peace Boulder, who works in Yemen, who was able to leverage her preexisting relationships with young men who are now part of various armed groups to negotiate detainee releases. She's a mother. She's known a lot of these young men since they were little boys. And the respect that they have for her in this context is something that she was able to leverage her peace, able to leverage for justice truly. And she is a middle-aged mom that our sector would so quickly have overlooked and has overlooked. And so even now that she can share her work, so often she has to ask to be included in these spaces because she isn't viewed as an expert because she doesn't hold XYZ titles or degrees. And so when we're thinking about women's inclusion, we're thinking about women's leadership around peace, both prevention and resolution, part of it is really us looking at ourselves and who are the women that we are considering as our experts. And so there are so many more that I could go to, but I am sensitive to time, so I'm going to pass it to my co-panelists. I'll just jump in really quickly to say, I wouldn't even name an example. I think every woman, I would just say it is Fatima sitting in Northern Nigeria where there is conflict and doing the best she can to help educate her neighbors, her family, and working in that community. So I think when it comes to women and peace and leadership, it is every woman exercising it in every corner where they sit. They just recently had in I think Bogota, Colombia, I don't have the details, almost one of the first women in peace building conference for Central and Latin America. And I was so excited to see it because it gives opportunity for Fatima sitting in Northern Nigeria or as well sitting somewhere else to say they can see role models, they can see how coalitions come together and bring voice to what they are all experiencing individually. So for me, I think every woman can be a leader in peace building and I wouldn't single out any person in particular. Yeah, I agree with everything that Shannon and Dorothy said. And so many women, great examples, but I don't want to actually give names right now. But I want to just say a few of my observations working with some of these women in the last two, three years at USIP. We have a project now and inclusive peace processes team on insiders, insider mediators facilitators. And a lot of the people that we are considering as successful insiders happen to be women. Because it's probably because what Shannon said, they are really in full grasp of the local indicators for conflict. They are so much connected to the communities. They understand the root causes of conflicts really well. And another thing that I really observed with working with women peace builders is they are very successful in building trust with conflict parties in their communities. And for this, sometimes they even take extra risk, where others like sometimes men that are expected to play these leadership roles, they refrain from taking these risks. But women actually, because they want to prove themselves and they really want to engage with these processes, they are really willing to take these additional risks, which really helps at the end to build trust with these communities. It has a disarming effect in a way, like these conflict parties, armed groups and communities, they're really surprised when they see a woman taking all that risk and going into the jungle and talking with them. So it really creates sort of like a cognitive perhaps dissonance and in that sense, very powerful. They're also very good at creating alternative channels for critical information gathering, for example. Because as we said, they're more grounded. So these are also some of the things I think women peace builders are really good at doing. I mean, I'm not saying this, I'm purely saying this based on my observation. I'm not saying this because there was a systematic research on this, but this is my observation with some of the women peace builders that we work with. Thank you all for those reflections. And many of us working in peace and development have a common goal of solidifying inclusion and cultivating meaningful allyship, particularly in the future of equity and inclusion for women in marginalized populations, so that these are inextricable from the work of peace building. And so I'll end this with kind of my final question. And this is a reminder to the audience that we are collecting questions so that we can move into a Q&A portion of this panel. But my final question for you all are what are some of the most effective steps you have seen to advance these goals and what steps do we still need to take? Maybe Dorothy, if you'd like to. I can start. Yeah. Tony, great question. And as I said, I will keep coming at it at the prevention from the prevention lens. And I think, you know, for women to have voice and bring agency, they need to be economically empowered. They need to have, you know, what is education, agency knowledge, but they need to also be able to be able to take care of their own lives in a manner that allows them to spread themselves over to this peace building, conflict resolution, conflict prevention space. So for me, it will be about just continuing to make sure that we're not just empowering women about, you know, giving them knowledge, you know, training capacity building. But what are they doing to make sure that, you know, they have good jobs, good knowledge, and that it's across the entire chain, you know, from women who may not be educated to the one who is the lawyer, who is the policymaker that across that spectrum, you know, there's representation. And in that way, people who have the lens higher up, you know, alpha are able to see what, you know, somebody further down the food chain needs. So for me, it is really economic empowerment that will help and that will contribute to maintaining peace, but also allow people to come to the table with voice and agency that they might not have if they're coming to the table in a manner that people feel they cannot have the agency because they don't have the economic value that is necessary. And I just want to quickly end to say, once we talk about conflict as conflict, you know, in general conflict, you know, has two sides. It's an economic tool for some. And there is a cost to conflict, right? So there's an expense to those who suffer. And it is also a business for those who perpetrate it. So it is really, as we move forward, making sure that, you know, both sides of the issue are looked at really critically, but with an economic lens. Thanks, Dorothy. I'll continue. So I want to enter in this question. I want to go back to my point on symbolic inclusion, Tonis, because I think Liz mentioned and Shannon mentioned earlier in the event that we have come a long way in terms of increasing the quantity of women, right? The numbers are going up, but not necessarily the quality. So I think from now on, we really need to focus on enhancing the quality of women inclusion in peacebuilding. And with that, I think what we really need to tackle is the symbolic inclusion issue. And what I mean by that is, you know, real inclusion meets a fundamental human need. And this is a universal need, not just for women, but because it's been denied from women for a long time. This is why we're talking about this. What I mean by that is it needs to meet women's needs, the inclusion of women, it needs to meet women's needs, needs in terms of belongingness, a real belongingness, the need for belongingness, and also the need for uniqueness, right? These are established by research and social psychology, for example, as two key fundamental human needs. And the inclusion optimizes the satisfaction of these two essential needs at the same time. So for example, other things that look like inclusion may be, in fact, more like assimilation, right, in peacebuilding, meaning like, oh, we include you, but please act like men, something like that, right? This is assimilation, or it's symbolic inclusion, not real inclusion. Or sometimes it actually looks more like differentiation, what I call is differentiation. Yes, we include you, but please just talk about women's issues, you know, don't actually talk about security or law or justice or whatever, right? So we really need to spend a lot more effort to deal with these kinds of symbolic fake inclusion. And I see a lot of examples of this going on right now under what is called as women inclusion, I mean, can give so many examples, you know, to these, just being one of them, for example, in a conversation, I'm not going to talk about the context and the location, but in a conversation with a peace builder, sister working on the ground with communities in Africa, West Africa, she talked about the fact that in a lot of times, she cannot get her work done because the places she travels to are extremely non-hygienic, and the mission and the activities are totally designed according to men. And so she cannot go to these places when she has her period, for example, you know, there are a lot of issues that in a lot of these activities, a lot of these programs are designed basically around men's needs and around men and never really taking women's needs in consideration. So even though she's a great peace builder, you know, this kind of structural inequality is preventing her from doing her work. And you cannot just tell these women like, you have to act like men, you know, you have to go to these places, even though you don't have any access to good hygiene. This is another form of not exclusion, perhaps, but it is not real inclusion, recognizing that uniqueness needs of women. So we would like to be really included, treated as equal in this field with men, but we also, so we really need that sort of, we need to feel that belonging, but we also would like our unique characteristics, unique sort of needs to be recognized by people in the field. So I'll just end saying this and then thank you. Pass it on to Shannon. I think that's the perfect transition because what I wanted to talk about was justice and accessibility. And so exactly on that note, when we're talking about women's inclusion, what are the barriers that are potentially uncomfortable in our hyper-professional sector to name bathroom access as one of those barriers? Whether or not you can bring your child to any formal meeting, that is an incredible barrier to women's inclusion, and one that we can name and have named time and again. And yet we continue to create these hostile environments where you absolutely cannot bring a child. And therefore, we are losing, losing so many brains from being able to be present. And so I think when we're thinking about women's inclusion justice and accessibility are absolutely key aspects to this. In what ways is our system unjust? In what ways are we asking women to behave as men do? What ways are we asking women to deny parts of themselves that we have said do not belong in this sector? I'm thinking specifically about emotionality. I'm thinking about an emotional response, a more intuitive response to certain elements we undervalue and undermine women who bring these things to our two spaces, not recognizing the necessity one of emotions and trauma sensitivity in the work that we're doing, but also it is an incredibly hostile environment once again for a number of women, especially when we're talking about women of different cultures. And so finally, to end on the note about justice, I want to bring up a term intersectionality, which has been thrown around a few times in this conversation, but I think it's really, really key. We say we want women's inclusion. If we want the inclusion of women from various cultures and backgrounds, that means that we are going to have peace builders who will cry when they are talking about atrocities. That means that we are going to have peace builders who will not be comfortable going out for drinks after the formal meeting and who will therefore be excluded from some of these conversations. It means that we will have peace builders who again will have children present with them. And what are the ways that we are not only asking women to be like men, but we are asking women from across the world to behave as though they are able-bodied, to behave as though they are from the global North and specifically to behave as though they are white or Christian or and able to function in these systems and in these environments as we have created them. We need to think about our sector differently. We need to think about these barriers more expansively. And again, it comes back to asking people, why aren't you here? We meet incredible women every day. I think that's a privilege of a number of us who are on this call. What would it look like for us to ask them, why are you not present in these other meetings where your voice is invaluable? And when we hear why, bringing that up to those spaces and saying, I'm here, but here's who's missing and here's why they're missing. Thank you, Shannon. I think what you ended on is a fundamental paradigm shift in how we think about these spaces. And so I wanted, we've collected a couple of questions from our audience. We have about seven minutes to tackle these two questions. So I'll name both and anyone can respond to them. The first question is, how can colonial structures be broken down within peace building programs? Are Western leaders such as humanitarian implementers willing to give up power to local communities and women's groups? That's our first question. It got a lot of likes in the chat. Our second question has come from a kind of maybe a USG perspective, but I might broaden the aperture. And it's, do you believe that the establishment of a US cabinet or any cabinet level department of peace building would create infrastructure for change? And I'll just note that again, in the Columbia context, there is a ministry being built on gender and inclusion. And so if we need to think of that level or if it's just some sort of superficial thing that we think might make a difference in these issues. So I'll leave you out to tackle those two great questions. Tonya, I can jump in really quickly on the first question around the colonial aspects and power. I think from where I sit, there's a lot of talk from Northern NGOs, they want to give power to the global south. And I think it's all talk. And it is so important that global north NGOs actually first acknowledge that they have the power, there's that denial. Then when they acknowledge that they have it authentically, then they come to the table so that those in the global south can share and come with their own suggestions of what they think this looks like, where they are. So I think for me, the answer to that question is really the work in the sector is still very colonial, is going to take real action and we're not there. And I would not be shy to say most people just talk and they're not working the talk. Talk is one thing, action is another thing. And for action to take place, it really means certain people really actually do need to get off the table. And so people like that power so they're not getting off. So it is something that it's pertinent. And I don't work in a peace preventive, you know, in a conflict preventing organization, I work in economic development, we face the same issues. And so love to hear what my colleagues were directly with his building, you don't have to say. I would love to chime in on this. When it comes to colonial structures, I think, firstly, we need to acknowledge that colonial structures are not solely responsible for existing exclusion of women. I think it's very comfortable for a number of us to blame colonial structures. And the truth is, a number of contacts functioned in a way where women were excluded previously. One thing that I do think we need to name is that colonial structures spread that globally and made that the norm and then reinforce that dynamic. And I think as we as we're thinking about power Dorothy, you're right, there is a there are a lot of conversations happening right now about what it means to shift power. And I really do not agree that we have the ability to give anybody power. I think power is an innate thing. Now, how the ability to wield that power is where we see some of the some of those main differences. But I really, I really think that one of the necessary paradigm shifts in our sector is what we think we have the power to do. You know, I think oftentimes those of us who are working on peace and, you know, conflict prevention here in the global north, we tend to think that if we are present, our power is going to be enough of a deterrent that conflict will not break out or that, you know, peace will occur. And we've we've seen that that's not that's not truly the case. And so we need to think a little bit more expansively about what does it actually mean to utilize our power? And what and what power are we are we hoping to use? Again, women who have access to their communities, who can reach individuals who can reach experts that we can never hope to reach, is that not in of itself a form of power? And so when we're thinking about the sector, we're thinking about colonialism, part of the challenge is that we are still defaulting to our old ways of thinking, when it comes to who needs to lead, what leadership even looks like, and also what peace and justice look like, we are still continuing to to frame those things within our own, using our own paradigms and our own frameworks. And I think we need to be willing to be more creative, to be more humble. And to Dorothy's point, we need to be willing to no longer always be present, because we aren't always a value add. And so for that, it means, you know, we talk about working ourselves out of a job. Well, maybe we need to rethink what our job is. Is it one of accompaniment? Is it one of leadership? Is it one of financing? That last one is not as popular for us to remove ourselves from, you know, working on the ground and taking a more primarily financial approach to engaging with local communities. Now that isn't to say that's what everybody wants or the best solution, but it is to say that we should be asking these questions if we truly want, you know, systemic changes. Yeah, maybe I'll take on the last question, second question, because Dorothy and Shannon already, I think gave really good answers to the first one. The question about a US cabinet level department on peace building, would it create any change? I will respond to this question, but I really don't know the answer. Maybe it will, maybe it will not. But I would like to actually, because I'm a researcher and I usually like answering these questions based on evidence or data, but I would like to share one thing and not necessarily about a cabinet, but at least another structure of inclusion or modality of inclusion that has been found to be very effective in creating durable peace is commissions that are set up in an inclusive manner. And these are not necessarily permanent bureaucratic structures, but these are commissions, small groups basically, right, committees, commissions that are set up for a specific task to accomplish a specific task. And these commissions are formed in a very inclusive manner. And in a very recent research with Dan Druckmann, we found out that actually this kind of modality, if a commission is set up in an inclusive manner to include the different voices within a peace process, it has the highest impact on durable peace. And we're currently looking into why this is the situation. And you can actually find a lot of examples of this, like Liberia, for example, there were about 12 commissions, and most of these commissions were set up in an inclusive manner, including women, including civil society, et cetera. And it is today actually Liberia ranks quite high in terms of durable peace compared to some other places that have gone through violent conflict. Similarly, South Africa, the peace process in South Africa set up these inclusive commissions. And these were connected, they were set up at different levels, local regional levels, et cetera. And they were very well connected with each other. And again, South Africa is, I think we will all agree that is another success story that we saw. So I guess, not maybe, you know, I don't know about creating a huge bureaucracy, whether it is useful. But I can say that there is some evidence from research suggesting that state committees or commissions that are set up in an inclusive manner are very successful in creating durable peace. Thank you, Ezra. I want to turn over the last couple of minutes to Dr. Kathleen Kenist. She is the director of gender policy and strategy at the US Institute of Peace, and also leads the Institute's grants and fellowships program as a sociocultural anthropologist. Dr. Kenist co-edited the volume of women and more power and protection in the 21st century. So Kathleen, if you could give us some kind of closing reflections from what you've heard today. I know it's a big task, but we welcome those comments. Thank you so much, Tonis. Wonderful job moderating and greetings to the three panelists, Ezra, Dorothy, and Shannon. It has been a stimulating conversation, one that I think really identified some key problems and opportunities, I think, as Tonis framed the conversation. You all have really talked about how women do exercise agency in many of the issues, especially in the context of conflict. But we continue need to ask the question of which women are excluded from what spaces and how do we help women remove these barriers or obstacles while they are seeking a meaningful participation while securing the peace in their communities, in their countries. I think it got very complicated as Dorothy amplified, we really do need to have a better understanding of power dynamics. The astute question about colonial structures, I think, took it to a new level of conversation. One that I think each of you and specifically Ezra kept coming back to is how we named these things. I've been listening to Tim Snyder's lectures on Ukraine. One of the things that historian talks about is we don't learn a language. We become the language and really we do have problems, whether it is a colonial or patriarchal or as we've been talking about symbolic inclusions. All of these are new processes to help us identify this issue of power, as Dorothy mentioned. And Shannon, what power do we have to do what? I mean, you kept our feet to the fire on many of these problems, both globally but within our own organizations, so much harder to look at ourselves than to look outward. So I appreciate each of your dynamic contributions to this conversation that I think is really critical as we move forward in what we all know as the women, peace and security agenda. How do we really incorporate these unique perspectives, diverse contributions of women into justice, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility? One that the latter, the A, has been often left out of our conflict studies, our conflict prevention efforts. In conclusion, I think you all know USIP's mission is to end violent conflict, but we also know that nothing changes the society faster than violence. And we know as well that in these social upheavals, gender roles change and in most instances, roles become less equal. This is a major challenge in our work. And we have to keep coming back to the research, the data, and I will bring up Women's Stats Project out of Texas A&M that has established a key correlation between a country's gender equity and equality and its relative level of peacefulness. This is a reason why we must continue to do more research, why we need to have these conversations, tough ones at that. Thinking about this, and as we conclude, I watched the time carefully here, I do want to invite you all to continue this conversation next week. Again, a USIP virtual event with Victor Madrigal Borlaz, who is the UN's independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. He is going to present his report on protecting gender and sexual minorities during armed conflict. I think this is a part of a story that we didn't quite touch on today, but I'm excited that we are able to bring this conversation into next week. Finally, USIP invites you to view the stories of this year's six finalists for its annual Women Building Peace Award. These women have shown extraordinary commitment, leadership, peacebuilding practice, while working in some of the toughest countries and settings in the world. Colombia, Syria, Uganda, and Yemen. Please join us also on November 30th when USIP will award the final recipient for this year's award. Again, thank you for joining us today. Congratulations to this brilliant panel, and thank you, Joseph, Sonny, and Liz, for your remarkable opening comments. Thank you all, and back to Thomas. Thank you, Kathleen, and thank you to Ezra, Dorothy, Shannon, Joseph Sonny, Liz Hume, and Lindy Tercyn for leading the JDEIA conversation here. Thank you for your brilliant remarks, and thank you for the audience who tuned in. Have a wonderful day.