Building PeaceFem: The Technical Story Behind a Mobile App for Women’s Peace and Security

The Problem Technology Was Asked to Solve

Women’s participation in peace processes is not just desirable- it is essential. Yet despite two decades since UN Security Council Resolution 1325 -which called for the full, safe, equal and meaningful participation of women in peacemaking women remain frequently excluded from negotiations.

The challenge was not just political. It was informational. Women’s rights advocates, mediation teams, and peace practitioners lacked easy access to the evidence base they needed — case studies of how women had influenced peace processes, data on gender provisions in peace agreements, and strategies that had worked in other contexts. In 2018, UN Women’s Arab States Regional Office and Peace and Security team identified this gap and asked a question: could technology help fill it?

From Concept to Brief — The Technical Challenge

In December 2018, I was assigned as the technical lead for what would become PeaceFem — a mobile application bringing together data and resources on women and peacemaking in a single accessible tool.

The core technical challenge was integration. PeaceFem was not being built in isolation. It needed to incorporate complex peace agreement data from the University of Edinburgh’s PA-X database — one of the most comprehensive repositories of its kind in the world. It needed case studies developed by InclusivePeace and Monash University’s Gender, Peace and Security Centre. And it needed to work for users across the Arab States region and beyond — which meant supporting multiple languages from the start.

The Architecture Decisions

I selected Xamarin as the development framework — a cross-platform tool that allowed us to build a single codebase deployable on both Android and iOS. This was a deliberate budget and sustainability decision: building separate native apps for each platform would have doubled development costs and doubled the ongoing maintenance burden. For a project with limited funding and a UN institutional owner, a single cross-platform codebase was the only responsible choice.

The multilingual requirement was built into the architecture from day one — not retrofitted at the end. The app was designed to support English and Arabic at launch, with the framework structured to accommodate additional languages as the project expanded. This was a collaborative decision, strongly supported by partner organisations who secured additional donor funding to supplement UN Women’s Arab States Regional Office budget and make the expanded language support possible. This decision proved its value in 2023 when PeaceFem V2 added French, Indonesian, Spanish and Burmese expanding reach to West African, Latin American, and Southeast Asian Women, Peace and Security practitioners without requiring a rebuild.

The data integration with the University of Edinburgh’s PA-X database was the most technically complex piece. Rather than a live API connection — which would have created dependency on network availability in contexts where connectivity is often unreliable — we implemented a structured data architecture that allowed the app to function fully offline, with periodic updates when connectivity was available. For a user in a conflict-affected area preparing for a negotiation, this offline capability was not a convenience. It was essential.

Launch, Scale and Version 2

PeaceFem was officially launched on 30 June 2020 — in the middle of a global pandemic that had disrupted every aspect of in-person peacebuilding work. The timing, though unplanned, proved the app’s value. With travel restricted and in-person mediation constrained, a mobile tool providing immediate access to peace process evidence became more relevant, not less.

By 2023, PeaceFem was in use in more than 60 countries — a reach that demonstrated the genuine demand for accessible, evidence-based tools among women’s rights advocates and mediation teams globally. The V2 update added case studies on women’s involvement in peace processes in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Tunisia, expanded to full French, Indonesian, Spanish and Burmese translations alongside English and Arabic, and implemented technical improvements to user experience based on feedback from the growing user community.

As of 2023, PeaceFem has recorded 500+ downloads on Google Play, reached users in 60+ countries, and holds a 5.0★ rating — making it one of the most impactful digital tools developed under UN Women’s peace and security mandate.

What I Learned Building Technology for the Peace and Security Sector

Design for the context, not the ideal. PeaceFem users operate in conflict-affected environments with unreliable connectivity. An app that required a live internet connection would have failed at the moment it was most needed. Offline-first architecture was not optional.

Multilingual is not an add-on. Building Arabic support — a right-to-left language with distinct rendering requirements — into the core architecture from the start was far less costly than retrofitting it later. Language accessibility must be a design principle, not a phase two feature.

Data partnerships are technical partnerships. Integrating peace and security data from across three different projects  required close collaboration with the Edinburgh team on data structures, update cycles, and quality standards. The quality of the app’s evidence base was only as good as the technical integration behind it.

Sustainability requires platform thinking. The cross-platform codebase decision meant PeaceFem V2 was achievable within UN Women’s budget constraints. A native-first approach would have made V2 prohibitively expensive — and the app would not have reached 60+ countries.

PeaceFem is free to download on Google Play and the Apple App Store. The data underpinning the app is maintained by PeaceRep at the University of Edinburgh.

Itban Omair is Manager of ERP Applications at UN Women Headquarters in New York, where he leads enterprise digital solutions across UN Women’s global operations. He served as sole technical lead for the PeaceFem mobile application from inception through Version 2 – an app now used in 60+ countries across conflict-affected regions  and also designed UN Women’s first blockchain cash transfer system in Jordan and the Buy from Women digital marketplace in Costa Rica and Liberia.