Gender, Ukraine and imagining a just, sustainable peace

This short article seeks to highlight gender blind spots and discuss ways to address them in the context of peace negotiation in bringing the war in Ukraine to a close. This shall be achieved specifically by focusing on women’s experiences during the war, in peace negotiation and mediation to argue that women’s experiences and voices matter for a just and sustainable peace in Ukraine. Moreover, different women combatants have different needs and priorities, especially as it is significant to recall that the positionality and experience of women in war is never monolithic. This involves reckoning with the gendered silences, ideas, and practices that undergird the peace negotiation, peace process, and post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding – dimensions that, so far, have been missing from the conversation about peace.