Women Waging Peace Network Holds Third Convening on Women, Mediation and Negotiation in Brussels

The European Institute of Peace (EIP), Kroc IPJ: Women Waging Peace Network, the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), and the Mediation Support Project: Center for Security Studies ETH Zürich (CSS) convened a conference on Women, Mediation and Negotiation on 27-29th January 2020 in Brussels, Belgium.

This workshop was part of a practice-oriented research project, which aims to improve the understanding of the role of women negotiators and mediators in track 1 peace processes. It aims to learn from the experiences of senior professionals by looking closely at the practical methods and strategies that women negotiators and mediators have used in their respective processes. It kicked off with a convening of a select group of women negotiators with extensive experience in track one processes from around the world. This was followed by a second one hosted by the FBA in Stockholm, which brought together women mediators and mediation support actors for a knowledge exchange.

The Brussels convening brought together both women negotiators and mediators for a structured and well-rounded discussion of the art and craft of peace processes, as well as navigating from both mediator and negotiator perspectives. A range of topics were covered during the convening, such as:

• Key challenges and opportunities for both mediators and negotiators in navigating their respective processes;
• Leadership styles for both the mediators and negotiators, and the role of gender in these leaderships roles;
• What the changing contexts within modern day peace processes are, and how new challenges in these spaces might be effectively navigated.

This was the third and final convening of our joint initiative. The next phase of this work will focus on bringing together the powerful learnings and insights from the past three convenings to inform a policy/practiced based report.