{"id":6625,"date":"2025-12-16T08:27:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/?p=6625"},"modified":"2025-12-16T08:27:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:27:51","slug":"afghanistan-women-at-the-centre-of-peace-processes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/6625\/afghanistan-women-at-the-centre-of-peace-processes\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan \u2014 Women at the Centre of Peace Processes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elham Kohistani and Maryam Ranjbar have long worked to advance human rights and peace in Afghanistan and beyond. Forced into exile in 2021, they co-founded Femina Afghanistan despite never having met in person. Their shared commitment to strengthening Afghan women\u2019s leadership and influence in peace processes is what led them to start this organization.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What experiences led you to co-found Femina Afghanistan?<\/strong>
Elham:<\/em>
I finished my Master\u2019s in peace and conflict resolution in 2019, at the peak of the Doha peace talks. The limited involvement of women and youth made me think about how to preserve and share practical knowledge on participation in peace processes. I began exploring network-building to help transfer knowledge from one generation to the next so future women peacebuilders would not have to start from zero each time. But Covid and the\u00a0political collapse of Afghanistan, induced by the Taliban\u2019s return to power in 2021 put those plans on hold. In 2022, through the OSCE Women\u2019s Peace Leadership Program, I met Maryam. Even without meeting in person, we instantly connected and realized we shared the same vision and values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maryam:<\/em>
This is how the idea for Femina Afghanistan emerged: we wanted Afghan women to lead and contribute to peacebuilding both inside and outside the country, supported by long-term leadership programs. I grew up witnessing the suffering and resilience of women survivors, and Femina Afghanistan became a way to imagine a future and perspectives for Afghan women. We want to ensure they are equipped to participate meaningfully in future decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And how do you do that?<\/strong>
Elham:<\/em>
In January of 2025, PeaceWomen Across the Globe reached out. Their openness and support encouraged us to formally start Femina Afghanistan. With their support, we launched the “Her Peace \u2013 Afghan Women at the Centre of Peace Processes\u201d initiative, offering virtual training in advanced facilitation, negotiation and mediation techniques for experienced women peacebuilders, and foundational knowledge in peace education and advocacy for local activists. We shared the call for applications through our networks inside Afghanistan and were amazed to receive 60 responses. We hadn\u2019t expected such interest, especially as we were new, working from exile, and for security reasons unable to publish an open call. Yet women still sent their detailed bios and motivation statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maryam:<\/em>
This showed us how passionate and proactive, eager to learn and build peace women in Afghanistan are. Concerned about their safety, we implemented risk-mitigation measures, including individual calls with the 20 selected participants to assess their situations. Many initially joined the training under aliases. We could not have foreseen this, but it showed us how important the initiative was: after the second training session we received many messages from participants telling us they now trust each other and want to use their real names. They felt they weren\u2019t isolated anymore and wanted to keep building this network and community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How should the international community support Afghan women peacebuilders?<\/strong>
Maryam:<\/em>
What the international community and organizations should provide, not just for Femina Afghanistan, but for all women in Afghanistan, is long-term, flexible and trust-based support for the inclusion of women. They should support us and our vision, not just aim for our tokenistic involvement, so we can truly influence decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elham:<\/em>
I have experienced this tokenism many times. International organizations often don\u2019t trust local organizations. They come up with policies and activities, build the structures and then just ask us to implement them. We appreciate strategic, technical, financial and logistic support, but the leadership should remain in the hands of Afghan women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elham Kohistani and Maryam Ranjbar have long worked to advance human rights and peace in Afghanistan and beyond. Forced into exile in 2021, they co-founded Femina Afghanistan despite never having met in person. Their shared commitment to strengthening Afghan women\u2019s leadership and influence in peace processes is what led them to start this organization. What … Afghanistan \u2014 Women at the Centre of Peace Processes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"issue":[449],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"\u00e0 propos","author_link":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/author\/apropos\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/WB191PWAG-600x331.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Reports<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Reports<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 9 months ago","modified":"Updated 9 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on December 16, 2025","modified":"Updated on December 16, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on December 16, 2025 8:27 am","modified":"Updated on December 16, 2025 8:27 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6625"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6625"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6860,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6625\/revisions\/6860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6625"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=6625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}