BLOG POST | 17 Dec 2025
Strengthening women insider mediators by navigating context specific gender dynamics
How can women’s roles in mediation be truly meaningful? Read Carla Schraml’s blog to find out.
By Carla Schraml
In 2025, the international community marked the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. The resolution undeniably transformed global norms. It elevated the role of women in peace processes and established binding commitments for their participation. However, meaningful and sustained inclusion of women in peace processes remains fragile, and sometimes symbolic.
In conferences and discussions on peace mediation that I recently attended, I observed a recurring question emerge, often raised by women who have played key roles in peace processes or are prominent advocates. Despite their renowned contributions, they expressed a shared skepticism: Can we ensure meaningful inclusion of women in peace processes?
During an online event that I recently moderated, the Syrian peacebuilder Abir Haj Ibrahim captured this challenge vividly. She noted that among all members of the Women’s Advisory Board in the UN-led Geneva process, only very few were later included in Syria’s National Dialogue. For her, this exemplified a deeper problem: women’s participation is often not grounded in local realities or gender dynamics.
Context-specific gender norms shape women’s access
This reflection points to a broader issue. In conflicts around the world, women play essential roles, and global discourse increasingly acknowledges their importance in peace efforts. However, it frequently overlooks that context-specific gender norms and dynamics shape the actual influence of women, especially in the case of women insider mediators.
These mediators strengthen relationships between conflict parties, build consensus, facilitate dialogue, and negotiate with armed actors, directly contributing to violence reduction, conflict prevention, and building sustainable peace. Their effectiveness depends on how they are perceived within their societies. Social legitimacy, credibility, and access are defined by local gender norms and dynamics that can both enable and constrain their work.
A nuanced, context-sensitive approach is therefore essential, one that supports women mediators by recognising the social dynamics and norms that grant or restrict legitimacy and open or close entry points.
Women’s unique roles and entry points
Women often gain access to negotiation spaces and conflict stakeholders in ways that others cannot. In contexts such as Cameroon, Colombia, Iraq, Syria, and Myanmar, women are often perceived as less politically aligned or threatening, which allows them to move more freely between factions. In Syria, for example, Nour Burhan and a network of faith-based and elderly women helped lift the siege of Al-Zabadani in 2015 because they were viewed as neutral and outside the power struggle.
Socially legitimised roles, especially those linked to motherhood and care, can also open doors for dialogue. Ugandan mediator Betty Bigombe recounted how the rebel leader Joseph Kony suddenly addressed her as “Mother”, creating a moment of human connection that facilitated communication. Similarly, in Cameroon, Esther Omam and other women organised powerful “Lamentation Campaigns” as mothers and women, using their moral authority to protest violence and push for peace.
Women mediators also draw on unique access to women’s networks that male mediators often cannot reach. In Nigeria, Amina Ahmed, Lantana Abdullahi Bako, and Justina Ngwobia built an interfaith women’s mediation team during the Jos crisis in 2001, in which religiously motivated violence polarised the once peaceful city. By uniting Christian and Muslim women, the team was able to negotiate agreements for the mitigation of violence in communities of Bassa, Kanam, and Wase LGAs, amongst others.
Across contexts, such efforts have yielded tangible outcomes, including prisoner releases in Yemen and local ceasefires in Cameroon.
Adapting strategies to overcome context-specific challenges
However, the same gender norms that provide women with access can also serve as barriers. In many settings, women lack the social or political legitimacy to convene communities or engage with decision-makers or armed groups. Women are often excluded from formal or high-level mediation spaces and confined to more informal, or even private spheres. These gender norms and dynamics pose challenges for the effectiveness of the mediation work of women.
Yet in conversative environments, women mediators strategically leverage those very spaces. For example, the spouse of a former high-ranking fighter of the Al-Nusra Front in Syria was approached and provided with information by women who were relatives to abductees and hostages made by Al-Nusra. Through her husband, she was able to negotiate and pass on information which were relevant for the release of the hostages in 2021.
Women insider mediators also strengthen their legitimacy through concrete results, such as securing ceasefires or humanitarian access. Esther Omam’s trajectory in Cameroon exemplifies this approach: through community mobilisation, humanitarian work, and negotiations with armed actors, she built credibility that eventually enabled her participation in high-level negotiations and dialogues. Similarly, Pastor Adelaida Jiménez was appointed as a government negotiator in the negotiations with the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) thanks to her excellent reputation and previous success mediating conflicts at the local level. She then worked closely with Monseñor Hector Fabio Henao, the delegate for Church-State relations and a key figure in different peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the ELN, and other armed factions, who invited her as a co-celebrant to mass. This act of inclusion by her male counterpart legitimised her role as mediator.
Unique access and constraints are obviously not shaped by gender alone. Social class, age, religion, and ethnicity also play defining roles. During the height of the Boko Haram crisis, for instance, Hamsatu Alamin’s religious background, humanitarian work, and local networks enabled her to build trust with insurgents and facilitate dialogue. Such intersectional perspectives are essential for understanding and strengthening the diverse ways (women) mediators contribute to building peace from within their communities.
Toward meaningful inclusion
Meaningful inclusion of women in peace processes requires an understanding of the specific contexts, gender dynamics, and norms that shape their engagement. Supporting women insider mediators means amplifying their strategies, adapting assistance and programming to their realities, and recognising both their unique access and the constraints they face.
Only by grounding women’s participation in local legitimacy, context, and community dynamics can peace processes benefit from the full potential that women mediators bring to building peace from within.
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