Arab Women’s Unseen Leadership in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
The role that women can play in maintaining peace in the Arab region has received long-overdue recognition as the region is still grappling with periodic cycles of political instability, armed conflicts and social fragmentation in 2025. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 that defined the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has become strikingly contrasting: women are still largely marginalized in formal political decision-making, yet they are also simultaneously leading the significant grassroots peacebuilding processes.
Women are also stepping in to mediate local conflicts, provide humanitarian support and organize communities to end violence, despite not being officially involved in the talks. Their work reiterates a wider reality that there is no possible sustainable peace in the Arab world without the awareness and encouragement of women as participants in the formal and informal spheres of conflict management.
Structural exclusion and informal agency
In the Arab countries, women are exposed to structural and institutional challenges that impede their access to formal peace processes to a great extent. Strong patriarchal values, increased political repression, current armed conflict and legal systems that suppress civic participation are all factors that suppress the political agency of women. These issues are constant in the war on the states like Syria, Libya, Yemen and Palestine.
Underrepresentation in formal peace processes
According to statistical results, in the Arab region, women usually make up less than 10 percent of the parties involved in peace negotiations. It is not just symbolic that they are not there, but structural opposition to inclusive governance. During the Yemen peace process, as will be seen, even after a few rounds of negotiating by the UN, the role women played was mainly peripheral and consultative. The same has been noted in the Astana negotiations on Syria and in other reconciliation conferences in Libya where female voices have been muted through male proxies or civil society connections as opposed to direct representation.
Scarce resources for women-led initiatives
Finance is a vital obstacle. Only less than 1 percent of the international aid in gender-related programming finds its way to the grassroots women organizations in conflict areas. These underserved agencies can be a reliable source of regular health care services and education as well as mental health services in places that are not attended to by the government. Their resources are too limited to scale interventions, or play a meaningful role in policy discourse, yet they have a high level of community trust and experience of operation.
Ground-level peacebuilding and community resilience
Amid such official exclusions, Arab women remain on the ground running peace initiatives. Not only is their work courageous, but it is also critical in the situations where the institutions of the state failed or are perceived with distrust by the local peoples.
Grassroots strategies and community leadership
Women’s committees in Palestine have neighbourhood services that provide trauma support and continuation of education in children caught in the siege. With Syria being a divided terrain, civil society networks of women organize humanitarian roads and inter-sect communications. Women in Yemen have been on the forefront in reconciliation work at village levels to stop tribal conflicts and to bring back those who have been displaced.
The interventions are usually done at a very serious personal expense and not backed by the institution. But they always come in handy to restore faith in fractured societies, particularly when formal action has been thwarted or broken.
The role of women in social stabilization
Women’s grassroots involvement in peacebuilding often extends beyond traditional caregiving roles. Their ability to navigate social norms, mediate domestic tensions, and engage across ethnic and religious lines has made them uniquely effective in preventing local conflicts from escalating. These efforts act as stabilizing forces and, in many cases, fill the gaps left by absent or dysfunctional state institutions.
Evidence supporting inclusive peace
Grassroots participation of women in peacebuilding is not necessarily confined to normal caregiving practices. Their skill in maneuvering social norms, brokerage of domestic strains and inter-ethnic and inter-religious interaction has rendered them particularly useful in ensuring that local conflicts do not spiral out. These initiatives serve as balancing powers and in most instances they occupy the gaps created by weak or absent institutions of the state.
Gender inclusion improves outcomes
Women involvement in lasting peace is not a mere incident, but it is becoming supported by world evidence. Comparing international case studies, including Colombia and Northern Ireland, reveals that women can offer more inclusive, broader perspectives to the negotiating table and they are often interested in justice, rehabilitation and long term reconciliation as opposed to their own short term political benefits.
Implications for the Arab peace landscape
Studies indicate that peace agreements that have a high number of female participants have 35 percent chances of being sustained 15 years or above. Such agreements are more likely to mirror the larger societal demands such as those affecting minorities, transitional justice processes, and even social and economic development promises. These are particularly applicable in the Arab setting where post-conflict reconstruction does not tend to seek the gendered effects of war.
Bridging local action and international frameworks
Efforts are underway to formalize women’s participation and bring grassroots voices into international policy arenas. These initiatives seek to ensure that the WPS agenda does not remain a rhetorical commitment but becomes a lived reality for women in conflict zones.
Regional partnerships and advocacy networks
Groups like the WPS Working Group for Arab States are working to bridge the gap between global norms and local realities. Supported by entities such as UN Women, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and regional NGOs, these platforms facilitate training, political advocacy, and funding access for women peacebuilders.
They aim to institutionalize women’s inclusion by ensuring that peacekeeping missions, reconstruction programs, and political transitions embed gender-sensitive frameworks from the outset.
Recognition of Arab women’s leadership
This person has spoken on the topic, recognizing the critical importance of empowering women leaders to sustain peace in conflicted Arab societies:
Their remarks echo a broader shift in understanding that elevating women’s leadership is not optional but essential to long-term regional stability.
Navigating systemic change through inclusion
Women in the Arab world continue to face a lot of pressure both politically, culturally as well as economically, but their role in peace cannot be ignored and is gradually being recorded. The 25th anniversary of the WPS agenda in 2025 presents a timely chance to stop paying lip service and get down to business of policy change.
This cannot be done without the full integration of women in national discourses, constitutional processes and in transitional justice systems to realize sustainable peace in the Arab region. This does not just take rhetorical backing. It requires specialized investment, policy adjustment, statutory safety, and long-term campaigning. Whether women should be part of peacebuilding or not is no longer a question but whether states and institutions are ready to share power and redefine security in an inclusive manner.
The way these decisions are realized during the next stage of regional transition specifically in such states as Libya, Syria, and Yemen will determine whether the role of women in peace will continue to be marginal or the central factor in post-conflict recovery and democratic resilience.
