Where is the conference being held?

The conference is scheduled to take place in Cairo, EGY.

What is the primary focus of this conference?

The conference focuses on the intersections of gender studies, peace processes, and violence prevention, aiming to integrate gender perspectives into conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts.

What is the format of the conference?

The conference is an in-person event held in Cairo, EGY.

International Conference on Gender Studies, Peace Processes, and Violence Prevention

Name: International Conference on Gender Studies, Peace Processes, and Violence Prevention
Start: 2026-09-29T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-29T00:00:00Z
Location: Cairo

Sep 29, 2026Cairo, EgyptIn-person

Registration open

The International Conference on Gender Studies, Peace Processes, and Violence Prevention convenes in Cairo, EGY, to explore the critical intersections of gender, conflict resolution, and the prevention of violence. This event serves as a platform for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to share insights and develop strategies for more inclusive and effective peacebuilding initiatives. The conference aims to highlight the indispensable role of gender perspectives in understanding and addressing the root causes and consequences of conflict.

Committees & topics

Topics
Gender Studies and Peace Processes · Impact of Violence on Women's Peacebuilding Roles · Gender-Sensitive Approaches to Conflict Resolution · Women's Roles in Peace Negotiations · Feminist Perspectives on Conflict Resolution · Gender-Based Violence in Conflict Zones · Transitional Justice and Gender Equality · Human Rights and Gender Advocacy

Why it matters

The integration of gender studies into peace processes and violence prevention is not merely an ethical imperative but a strategic necessity for achieving sustainable peace. Traditional approaches to conflict often overlook the distinct experiences and contributions of women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals, leading to incomplete analyses and less effective interventions. By centering gender, this conference seeks to illuminate how power dynamics, social norms, and gendered violence perpetuate cycles of conflict and instability.

Understanding these dynamics is crucial for crafting comprehensive peace agreements and prevention strategies that address the full spectrum of societal needs. For instance, the exclusion of women from peace negotiations has been shown to correlate with less durable peace. Conversely, their meaningful participation often leads to more inclusive and lasting outcomes. This conference provides a vital forum for advancing this understanding and fostering collaboration among diverse stakeholders committed to gender-inclusive peacebuilding.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for this conference should focus on developing a nuanced understanding of how gender intersects with various forms of violence and peace processes. This involves examining case studies from different regions and contexts, considering both successes and challenges in integrating gender perspectives. Familiarity with frameworks for analyzing gender dynamics in conflict, such as those discussed in the lesson on "Gender Dynamics Across Cultures," will be particularly beneficial.

Furthermore, participants should be prepared to engage with diverse viewpoints and methodologies. The conference's emphasis on both academic research and practical application suggests that presentations and discussions will span theoretical analyses, empirical studies, and programmatic interventions. Considering the insights from the lesson on "Hidden Stakeholders" can also help in identifying and understanding the roles of often-overlooked actors in peace and conflict settings, fostering a more comprehensive approach to the conference themes.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Egypt

As the host nation, EGY plays a crucial role in facilitating dialogue on gender, peace, and security, particularly within the regional context.

Role in topic

EGY's position in the region makes it a significant location for discussions on peace processes and violence prevention. The country's experiences and perspectives on gender roles and societal structures will contribute to the broader understanding of the conference themes.

United States

The USA is a key advocate for gender equality in peace and security, often supporting initiatives and research in this area.

Role in topic

The USA has historically been a significant donor and policy influencer in promoting women's participation in peace processes and combating gender-based violence globally. Its diplomatic efforts and funding for relevant programs shape international discourse and action.

Sweden

SWE is a leading proponent of feminist foreign policy, integrating gender perspectives across its diplomatic and development efforts.

Role in topic

SWE has been at the forefront of advocating for gender-sensitive approaches to peace and security, actively promoting the inclusion of women in all stages of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Its policies and funding often reflect a strong commitment to these principles.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Gender Studies and Peace Processes

The integration of gender analysis into peace processes gained formal international standing with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, which recognized the disproportionate impact of armed conflict on women and called for their full participation in peace and security decision-making. This resolution launched the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, supported by nine subsequent Security Council resolutions and dozens of National Action Plans developed by member states. Gender studies as a discipline has shaped this agenda by demonstrating how militarized masculinities, sexual violence, and gendered economic exclusion structure both the causes and aftermath of conflict. Despite these normative gains, implementation remains uneven. UN Women data consistently shows that women constitute a small minority of negotiators, mediators, and signatories in major peace processes, including in talks on Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Recent processes — such as the 2016 Colombian peace accord with the FARC, which included a dedicated gender sub-commission — are cited as benchmarks for what substantive inclusion can look like, though backlash and partial implementation have followed. Today, the debate centers on moving from rhetorical commitments to enforceable participation quotas, financing for women-led civil society, and embedding gender provisions in ceasefire and security sector reform arrangements, especially as several major donor states roll back gender-focused foreign assistance.

Key players

Impact of Violence on Women's Peacebuilding Roles

Women peacebuilders — from grassroots mediators to human rights defenders — face systematic threats that shape and often constrain their participation in conflict resolution. UN Women, OHCHR and Front Line Defenders have documented escalating targeted violence against women human rights defenders in conflict and post-conflict settings including Afghanistan after the 2021 Taliban return, Myanmar after the 2021 coup, Sudan since the 2023 outbreak of war, and parts of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Threats range from sexual violence and assassination to digital harassment, criminalization, and family-based reprisals. This violence is not incidental to peacebuilding; it actively suppresses it. Studies by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security show that when women's civil society organizations are attacked or defunded, the durability of peace agreements declines. The 2015 Global Study on Resolution 1325 emphasized that protection and participation are inseparable: without physical and economic security, meaningful inclusion is impossible. Current debates focus on protective mechanisms (emergency relocation, shielded funding), accountability for attacks on women defenders, and ensuring that ceasefire monitoring and DDR (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration) processes address gendered violence rather than treating it as a private matter.

Key players

Gender-Sensitive Approaches to Conflict Resolution

Gender-sensitive conflict resolution refers to methodologies that account for how conflict, mediation, and settlement differently affect women, men, and gender-diverse people. The approach was institutionalized through the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs' Guidance on Gender and Inclusive Mediation Strategies (2017) and the African Union's FemWise-Africa network, established in 2017 to deploy women mediators across the continent. In practice, gender-sensitive mediation involves inclusive party selection, gendered conflict analysis, dedicated technical expertise on sexual violence and economic gender gaps, and provisions in final agreements addressing land rights, citizenship, reparations, and security sector reform. Evidence compiled by the Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative and the Council on Foreign Relations indicates that agreements with substantive women's participation are significantly more likely to be implemented and to endure beyond fifteen years. The contemporary challenge is integration: many high-level processes, including those addressing Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, and the Sahel, still treat gender as a side track. Debates focus on standardizing gender expertise on mediation teams, conditioning donor support on inclusion benchmarks, and reconciling gender-sensitive approaches with parties that reject the framework on cultural or political grounds.

Key players

Women's Roles in Peace Negotiations

Women have historically been excluded from formal Track I peace negotiations even when they have led informal mobilization to end fighting. Council on Foreign Relations data covering major peace processes from 1992 to 2019 show that women made up roughly 13 percent of negotiators, 6 percent of mediators, and 6 percent of signatories. Notable exceptions include Liberia, where a women's mass movement helped pressure parties to the 2003 Accra Agreement; Northern Ireland, where the Women's Coalition shaped the 1998 Good Friday Agreement; and Colombia, where women constituted roughly one-third of negotiators at Havana. Research from the International Peace Institute indicates that when women's groups exercise meaningful influence on negotiations, agreements are markedly more likely to be reached and implemented. Yet recent high-profile processes — Syrian constitutional talks, Afghan negotiations in Doha, and current Sudan-related tracks — have featured minimal female representation, reflecting both party resistance and the structural design of envoy-led diplomacy. Current debate centers on whether voluntary commitments under UNSCR 1325 are sufficient, or whether the Security Council, regional organizations, and donors should impose participation thresholds, fund women's delegations directly, and require gender provisions in mandates given to UN Special Envoys.

Key players

Feminist Perspectives on Conflict Resolution

Feminist approaches to conflict resolution challenge state-centric and militarized framings of security, arguing instead for analyses that center human security, structural inequality, and the political economy of violence. Scholars including Cynthia Enloe, J. Ann Tickner and Christine Chinkin shaped a field that informed Security Council Resolution 1325 and the broader WPS architecture, as well as 'feminist foreign policy' doctrines adopted in varying forms by Sweden (2014–2022), Canada, Mexico, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Chile and others. Feminist conflict resolution emphasizes attention to who is at the table, what counts as 'security,' and how settlement terms — on arms control, transitional justice, land, refugees, and economic recovery — reproduce or disrupt gendered hierarchies. Critics from within the field note that 'feminist' branding has sometimes coexisted with significant arms exports and counterterrorism cooperation, raising concerns about co-optation. The 2022 Swedish government's decision to abandon the label, and shifts in U.S. and several European policies, have intensified this debate. The issue today is the resilience of feminist policy frameworks amid geopolitical realignment: how to maintain analytical and operational commitments to gender equality in conflict resolution when major donor states retrench, and how to translate feminist principles into concrete clauses in agreements rather than aspirational language.

Key players

Gender-Based Violence in Conflict Zones

Conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (CRSV) has been recognized as a weapon of war and, in certain circumstances, as a war crime, crime against humanity, or constituent act of genocide, beginning with the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s and codified in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Security Council Resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1960 (2010) and 2467 (2019) established monitoring, reporting, and sanctions tools, and created the Office of the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. The UN Secretary-General's annual CRSV reports document persistent patterns in conflicts including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia (notably Tigray), Myanmar, Ukraine, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, and Haiti. Survivors continue to face stigma, limited access to medical and psychosocial care, and minimal prospects for judicial accountability, while perpetrators rarely face prosecution. Key debates concern strengthening survivor-centered approaches, including reparations as recognized in UNSCR 2467; closing impunity gaps through national courts, hybrid tribunals, and the ICC; ensuring that ceasefire and peace agreements explicitly prohibit CRSV and integrate it into security sector reform; and addressing under-reported forms including violence against men, boys, and LGBTQ+ persons.

Key players

Transitional Justice and Gender Equality

Transitional justice — encompassing criminal accountability, truth-telling, reparations, institutional reform, and guarantees of non-recurrence — emerged from post-authoritarian transitions in Latin America and post-conflict settings in Africa and the Balkans. Early mechanisms often overlooked gendered harms: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was later criticized for under-addressing sexual violence, while the ICTY and ICTR pioneered jurisprudence treating rape as a serious international crime. More recent processes have explicitly mainstreamed gender. Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Truth Commission, and Search Unit for the Disappeared include gender working groups; Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission held dedicated hearings on women's experiences under authoritarianism; and The Gambia's TRRC examined sexual violence during the Jammeh era. The UN Guidance Note on Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (2014) and the ICC's reparations practice in Lubanga, Katanga, and Ntaganda have advanced gender-responsive remedies. Debates today focus on the gap between transitional justice design and implementation, particularly for reparations; the inclusion of socioeconomic and reproductive harms alongside physical violence; the role of women as truth commissioners and judges; and whether transitional justice can address structural gender inequality or whether it remains limited to acute violations.

Key players

Human Rights and Gender Advocacy

International human rights law has incrementally recognized gender equality as a core obligation, anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICCPR and ICESCR, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its Optional Protocol, the 1993 Vienna Declaration's affirmation that 'women's rights are human rights,' and the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, treaty bodies, and Special Procedures — including the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls and the Working Group on discrimination against women — provide ongoing scrutiny. Despite normative progress, gender advocacy faces significant headwinds. Several states have invoked sovereignty or 'traditional values' to resist sexual and reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ+ persons; restrictions on civil society space have curtailed feminist organizing in numerous jurisdictions; and the rollback of reproductive rights in some democracies has signaled a broader contestation of established norms. The OHCHR has flagged sustained attacks on women human rights defenders and gender equality institutions. The contemporary agenda includes defending CEDAW reservations and reporting cycles, integrating gender across all UPR recommendations, protecting defenders, addressing intersecting discrimination, and adapting human rights protections to digital harms including online gender-based violence and non-consensual intimate imagery.

Key players