New research by PeaceRep and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs is examining how global fragmentation and multiple, competing peace processes are undermining the Women, Peace and Security agenda, particularly gender equality in peacemaking.
In light of the growing challenges facing gender advocates, the new research shares feminist strategies and policy recommendations to strengthen women’s participation amid fragmented conflicts.
New Research Shows Fragmentation Affecting Gender Equality in Peacemaking
Findings from collaboration between PeaceRep and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs reveal impact of fragmentation on the Women, Peace and Security agenda
New research published by PeaceRep and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs shows the impacts of global fragmentation and multimediation on the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS), particularly on gender equality in peacemaking.
As part of the project ‘Women, Peace and Security in the Age of Fragmentation’, researchers held an expert hybrid workshop at the University of Edinburgh in October 2025. The workshop brought together a group of individuals at multiple career stages from the worlds of diplomacy, governance, research, policy, practice, and activism to collectively make sense of this current moment in peacemaking, and generate new ideas to respond to a common challenge.
Findings from these deliberations have now been published as a Scottish Council on Global Affairs Insight Report, accompanied by a standalone policy brief containing recommendations for donor governments, gender equality advocates, and WPS actors in peace processes.
The report sets out how global fragmentation manifests through diversified and competing peace processes, and highlights some of the contemporary global crises facing the WPS agenda, including anti-gender backlash, securitisation, and modern technological and climate threats to women and gender minorities. The report identifies new challenges faced by gender advocates in navigating peace processes under fragmentation, such as the side-lining of gender in mediation, splintering women’s movements, and funding cuts.
Incorporating a feminist praxis of action and hope, the report also shares some ways that peace and security actors are navigating multimediation to advance gendered perspectives, explores the transformative potentials of inclusive grassroots peacemaking in fragmented conflicts, and suggests some ways to rethink WPS in response to global fragmentation.
Laura Wise, PeaceRep Senior Research Fellow and Principal Investigator of the SCGA project commented:
“The collective workshop and report really show the breadth and depth of the impact that global fragmentation is having on gender equality in peacemaking. The diversification of mediation initiatives is not only engendering new challenges that gender equality advocates now have to confront, but multimediation is also exacerbating longstanding gendered barriers to women and gender minorities participation in peace processes. However, we are encouraged that in the face of such challenges, gender equality actors are still finding creative and feminist ways to navigate and influence peacemaking, and we hope that the tangible recommendations set out in the report serve as a call to action.”
The project has also released a blog post on Women’s Leadership in an Era of Multimediation and Fragmentation authored by Salma Yusuf, and a podcast conversation between Kasia Houghton, Laura Wise, and Fiona Campbell.