COVID-19 threatens to slow progress on the implementation of peace agreements, and reverse hard-won gains of women peacebuilders’ work towards holistic, gender-equal peace, rooted in human security. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of women peacebuilders in Colombia, South Sudan, the Philippines, and Ukraine, this article contributes to a greater understanding of the pandemic’s impact on women’s peace activism, as these peacebuilders adapted to emerging realities and became first responders. We argue that the pandemic has deepened the marginalization of women peacebuilders from formal peace processes, possibly to detriment of both immediate recovery and long-term peacebuilding.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos, Nikou Salamat, Sena Bölükoğlu, Katherine Benjabhawadee Baron, Christine Choi, Heidi M Gasperetti, Lockdown on Peace? COVID-19’s Impact on Women Peacebuilders, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2022;, jxab050, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxab050