In 2022, only 16% of negotiators in UN-led peace processes were women.
Sixteen percent.
Not because women weren’t ready. Not because they lacked the skills, the knowledge, or the courage.
Because the doors weren’t open.
But here’s what the data doesn’t capture: while formal negotiations happened in rooms women weren’t allowed to enter, women were already building peace everywhere else.
In Syria, women who once considered each other enemies were sitting down together — planning how to repair wells, rebuild schools, and govern communities that conflict had shattered. At the start of one Search program, only 29% believed they could work alongside someone from a different background. By the end, 76% had committed to doing exactly that.
Not because someone convinced them peace was possible.
Because someone gave them a room, a process, and the space to discover it themselves.
In Sri Lanka, after decades of civil war and the wounds that followed — disappearances, seized land, bombings — women trained through Search’s Amplifying Women’s Influence in Peacebuilding initiative didn’t wait for conflict to escalate. They intervened. They went to their neighbors. They sat with people in dispute. They mediated.
52% personally stepped in to prevent violence in their communities.
Local monitoring recorded a 27% drop in intercommunal tension in the districts where they worked.
One participant put it plainly: “Before, I didn’t think I had the right or the ability to step in. Now, if there’s a fight between neighbors or ethnic groups, I go. I talk to them. I know what to say, and they listen — because I’m not alone anymore.”
She was never unqualified.
She was just untrained, under-resourced, and isolated.
Fix those three things, and watch what happens.
In Israel and Palestine — perhaps the most scrutinized conflict on earth, where every peace effort is declared impossible before it begins — 315 women from both sides kept meeting. Kept drafting policy briefs. Kept building cross-border collaboration. Even after October 7. Even as the ground shook beneath them.
By the project’s end, 42% felt equipped to initiate cross-border collaboration — surpassing the target of 30%.
As one Palestinian participant said: “This project pushed us out of our comfort zones. It gave us tools, language, and confidence to take our place in policy spaces, even as independent women with no institutional backing.”
In Kenya, the threat was digital. Online harassment was silencing women, and systems weren’t responding. Search’s LOGIN East Africa! initiative didn’t just train advocates — it changed the institutions. By the project’s end, confidence in reporting through police systems nearly doubled. Abusive accounts were removed within 48 hours. Systems that had looked away started paying attention.
“I used to think reporting online harassment was pointless,” one advocate said. “But when the platform banned my harasser and the police desk called me the next day, I realized these systems truly work.”
Trust, rebuilt. One response at a time.
And in Sudan — where hospitals have been bombed, where hundreds of thousands have been displaced, where Search’s own office was forced to relocate — local women’s leaders kept working. Community mediators trained through Search resolved over 120 disputes. Radio campaigns reached over 2 million listeners. Peace committees were rebuilt in places where governance had completely collapsed.
When a mediator in South Kordofan helped two communities agree to co-manage a shared water point, it wasn’t a footnote.
It was proof that peace doesn’t wait for ceasefires.
The research is clear. When women participate in peace negotiations, agreements are 20% more likely to last two years. 35% more likely to last fifteen.
Those aren’t small numbers. Those are generations.
The women are ready.
They’ve always been ready.
The question is, who is still standing in the doorway?
