Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran - UNAMID. Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran - UNAMID

Every day across the world women and men strive to prevent violence and create sustainable peace. Their work has urgency and their passion is powerful, yet their efforts are often overlooked. At the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), we believe that sharing the stories of successful peacebuilding will help create a stronger constituency for peace, and will lead to improved peacebuilding practice.

Building Peace was created in that spirit.

A free, semi-annual online publication, Building Peace: A Forum for Peace and Security in the 21st Century highlights the people, communities, and organizations that are transforming the face of peace and security around the world. Created and written for an audience not deeply familiar with peacebuilding, Building Peace gives voice to peacebuilders who work to create resilient, peaceful, and inclusive societies.

Today, we are pleased to announce the release of our third issue: Women, Men, and Peace. This issue explores questions of gender and peace through the first-hand realities of peacebuilders - both women and men - across the globe. Evidence demonstrates that inclusive peace processes are significantly more effective in gaining and sustaining peace. Inside are the stories of, and about, men and women working towards achieving this ideal.

Women, Men, and Peace is dedicated to gender equality and a world where women and men collaborate to achieve lasting peace in conflict contexts. Inside, you will find a series of compelling articles, including:

  • Azra Jafari, Afghanistan’s only female mayor, speaks out about her experience as mayor of a remote community;
  • In an interview with Building Peace Editor-in-Chief Jessica Berns and AfP President and CEO Melanie Greenberg, Abigail Disney, an award-winning American filmmaker, shares her belief in the power of film to highlight the role of women as agents of change.
We hope that after reading this issue you will have a more concrete sense of what making peace, building peace, and keeping the peace looks like. We encourage you to share Building Peace with your own networks. Visit us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, “like” and join the dialogue on our new Facebook page, and share Building Peace directly with any individuals, institutions, and networks in your sphere of work or community.

We appreciate your energy and support in making this issue of Building Peace our most successful yet and look forward to our continued collaboration.

This blog post was written by Melanie Greenberg & Jessica Berns.