Women Are Leading the Climate-Peace Agenda

As the world celebrates International Women's Day, it is without doubt that the contributions of women in promoting climate action, peace and security deserves global recognition. Across continents, women have emerged as key figures in negotiations, policy integrations and grassroots movements that are actively shaping a more sustainable and peaceful world.      

The UN's Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund has supported more than 1,300 women's civil society organisations in 44 countries in crisis since 2016, proof that investment in women-led solutions works. Yet funding remains critically low. In 2022–2023, only 0.4 per cent of bilateral aid to conflict-affected contexts was directed to women-led organisations, far below the one per cent minimum recommended by the United Nations.

UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous put it plainly in her address to world leaders earlier this year: "When women have an equal voice in peace making, peace lasts longer. Yet time and again, women are excluded making up less than 10 per cent of peace negotiators worldwide."

The climate dimension makes the story even more urgent. "Climate change is the defining crisis of our time, and it is not gender-blind,"Bahous warned. Without bold action, 256 million more women and girls could be pushed into food insecurity by 2050.

In Colombia, women peace negotiators helped end the civil war and are now defining transitional justice. In the Lake Chad Basin, where drought has sharpened conflict between farmers and pastoralists, rural women are serving as community mediators and water resource managers, holding together the social fabric that armed groups tear apart.

In Uganda and across East Africa, the story is no different. Women smallholder farmers, who produce most of the region’s food, are navigating both climate shocks and community insecurity without adequate policy protection. Local women's organisations have increasingly stepped into this gap facilitating land dispute mediations, leading tree-planting initiatives and training communities in climate-adaptive agriculture.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres reinforced the urgency of action in his New Year address: "The world has the resources to lift lives, heal the planet, and secure a future of peace and justice. In 2026, I call on leaders everywhere: get serious. Choose people and planet over pain."

Yet investment lags rhetoric. By June 2025, the number of National Action Plans referencing climate had risen to 53 up from 43 in 2023. Progress, but slow. And funding directed to women-led organisations in conflict zones remains critically low far below the one per cent minimum the United Nations recommends.

In 2025, women occupy 44% of positions in international and regional bodies linked to international law compared to 32.5% in 2015. The direction is right. The pace is not.

This Women’s Day, the ask is not symbolic, it is structural, it is funding. It is seats at tables where climate policy, ceasefire agreements and disaster response plans are written. As Bahous concluded in her address “Climate justice and gender justice are inseparable.”