In our range of multimedia products you can listen to human rights and women's rights activists talk about their lives and work. You can also learn more about our and our partners’ projects and events.
In the podcast "Where are women’s voices in peace talks?" Deborah Schibler and Larissa Lee , Network & Advocacy , highlight why "ending war does not mean peace" and women and feminist peace activists ready to participate in peace processes are excluded. They are joined by Leandra Bias, Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern, and Mahide Aslan, head of women and diversity at Swiss Armed Forces. (2025)
In the podcast "Feminism and Development"
Podcast series "PeaceWomen Across the Globe" (in the original or with voiceover in English, 2020). Listen here or on Spotify and Apple Music :
"Being a feminist in Albania"
"Bringing peace to Mindanao"
"The power of one: for justice and equal rights"
"The long road to end gender-based violence"
"Truth and gender in the Colombian peace process"
"Building peace across the divide"
"Justice and peace for Afghanistan"
"1000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize" ,
Videos of our partners on joint projects and recordings of our online events can be found on our YouTube channel .
Women
PeaceWoman
War/Armed conflict
Agency
Peace/positive peace
Friedensprozess
By “women” we mean people who identify as female, including trans, inter and cis women. In addition, we stress the need to include the voices and experiences of people who were socialised or are on occasion perceived as women, such as trans men, nonbinary and agender people.
We use the term PeaceWoman to refer to one of the 1000 women who were collectively nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the "1000 Women for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize" initiative launched by our founder and former president Ruth-Gaby Vermot.
More on the initiative and on the 1000 PeaceWomen .
War is both a general term of common language, referring to a phenomenon of organised collective violence that affects the relations between states or the power relations within a society, and a legal term under international law (jus ad bellum and jus in bello). “Armed conflict” describes a state of hostilities that is not dependent on a declaration of war nor on the recognition of the existence of “war” by its parties. In other words, all wars are armed conflicts but not all armed conflicts are declared wars. According to relevant jurisprudence and the International Committee of the Red Cross, an armed conflict exists whenever there is resort to armed forces between States (“international armed conflict”). When protracted armed violence occurs between governmental authorities and organised armed groups or between such groups within a State, it is referred to as a “non-international armed conflict”. In the case of non-international armed conflicts, a certain threshold of intensity is required (isolated incidents, tensions or minor skirmishes are not enough). As a general rule, we use the term “armed conflict”. We use “war” when we want to emphasise our partners‘ views and demands and when this term is better understood by certain audiences.
(Source: International Committee of the Red Cross)
Agency is the human capacity to act and to choose what actions to take to effect change. We use the term “creative agency” to describe the capacity to push against conventional boundaries of gender, question socially assigned roles for women or men and to open new possibilities for engagement. We use the term "creative agency" to highlight the innovative ways in which women (and men) act to change societal norms.
Sources: Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society; Cambridge Dictionary; Annika Björkdahl and Johanna Mannergren Selimovic, Gendering Agency in Transitional Justice (2015)
Peace encompasses social processes and forms of coexistence that are continually concerned with promoting positive living conditions for all people. The basis for this is a holistic understanding of “genuine security” that places people's basic needs, social justice and human dignity at the centre and goes beyond traditional notions of military security. These social processes build on the absence of direct and structural violence and armed conflict, promote equal economic security, political participation and access to resources and guarantee respect for human rights. In debates on definitions of peace, the distinction between negative and positive peace proposed by Johan Galtung has become widely accepted. While “negative peace” means the absence of armed conflict or direct physical violence, “positive peace” encompasses social justice and the creation of a culture of peace between people within and between societies.
(Quelle: Berghof Glossary 2019)
A peace process is the sum of all steps, initiatives and actions of formal and informal peacebuilding that strive for transformative structural change by tackling the root causes of conflict and violence before, during and after armed conflict. A peace process is seldom linear: it takes place in stages or phases that often overlap, without a clear timetable. A peace process is more like a puzzle made up of several successive small steps than a large, meticulously planned attempt to end a conflict based on a manual. At any stage it can go off track – even after a peace agreement has been signed – and suffer setbacks.
See: https://1000peacewomen.org/en/focus-areas/peace-processes