The exclusion of women from negotiations isn’t just a representation problem—it undermines the prospects for durable peace and long-term security.
As negotiations over conflicts across the Middle East continue, one pattern remains stubbornly familiar: Women are largely absent from the room.
From Gaza to Iran, women are bearing the costs of conflict, repression, displacement and economic collapse, even as negotiations over security, governance, reconstruction and political transition move forward without their meaningful participation.
This exclusion has consequences far beyond representation. Decisions about who governs, who receives aid, who returns home and who is protected, shape whether societies emerge from conflict more secure or more fragile. When women are kept outside these processes, transitions risk reinforcing the inequalities and grievances that helped drive conflict in the first place.
Political transitions unfolding around the globe and across countries, monitored by Georgetown’s Women, Peace and Security Conflict Tracker in 2026—from elections and constitutional reforms to ceasefire talks and reconstruction plans—are poised to deepen instability by overlooking women.
In fragile and conflict-affected contexts, these transitions are rarely neutral moments of reform; they often occur amid armed violence, shrinking civic space and elite power struggles—conditions that disproportionately endanger women and girls while further limiting their ability to shape what comes next.
… Political transitions that exclude women may still produce agreements, elections or temporary pauses in violence, but they are less likely to deliver the inclusive security needed for durable peace.
The risks are already visible in 2026 election cycles.
In Myanmar, the junta-backed and widely condemned electoral process has culminated in Min Aung Hlaing’s appointment as president, consolidating the authority of the military leader who seized power in the February 2021 coup d’état.
Women’s meaningful participation was foreclosed by the conditions under which the election took place: Opposition parties were barred or dismantled, voting was concentrated in areas under military control, and many women activists, journalists, candidates and civil society leaders remained imprisoned, displaced or under threat. Rather than opening a path toward civilian rule, the election further narrowed civic space and sidelined women’s organizations and ethnic minority communities.
Since the coup, more than 30,000 people have been arrested on political grounds, including thousands of women. Women detainees have reported torture, sexual violence and other forms of abuse. In 2025 alone, nearly 800 women were killed in junta attacks.
Myanmar shows how elections held without basic freedoms or civic inclusion can function as tools of authoritarian consolidation—with women among the first to be silenced.
Haiti shows the dangers women face from a collapsed political transition. The pending cancellation of long-promised elections amid state collapse followed a transition process led by a council with seven male voting members and only one woman serving as a non-voting observer. It has left women with even fewer avenues to claim protection, services or political voice amid state collapse, widespread gang control, mass displacement and endemic sexual violence. In a country where armed groups use sexual violence to terrorize communities and constrain movement, the absence of a credible electoral process does not merely delay democracy; it deepens women’s exposure to coercion and abuse.
Under these conditions, participation in public life is not simply difficult—it is dangerous.
For countries where elections are still expected later in 2026, such as South Sudan, the risks to women are likely to grow as voting approaches. Governments and security actors may expand surveillance, restrictive legislation and targeted arrests to preempt dissent. Women human rights defenders, political candidates and journalists are among those frequently singled out, often facing moralized accusations and attacks on their reputation that exploit gender norms to undermine credibility. Digital repression—ranging from coordinated harassment to non-consensual image sharing and AI-enabled deepfakes—is rapidly becoming a defining form of political violence against women.
When women are excluded or intimidated out of public life, election processes become less responsive to community security needs, less able to identify escalating violence and less legitimate in the eyes of those most affected by instability.
This pattern is not confined to conflict zones.
In the United States, threats, harassment and physical attacks against women in public office have risen, alongside legal efforts to narrow women’s rights and civic power, like the SAVE America Act, which Trump desperately wants and continues to hijack Congress over.
Recent datasets tracking political violence show that women officials are more than three times as likely as their male counterparts to be targeted, even after accounting for their underrepresentation in office. These attacks are not incidental; they function as a form of political gatekeeping—raising the personal cost of participation and narrowing who can safely run for office, speak publicly or exercise political authority, even in a democratic system.
Crucially, many of this year’s most consequential political shifts will not take place at the ballot box at all but in rooms where women are frequently unwelcome. Negotiations and transitional arrangements, such as ceasefire talks and power-sharing agreements, are set to shape governance trajectories across contexts such as Ukraine and South Sudan.
Yet women’s participation in these spaces remains limited and repeatedly symbolic, constrained by entrenched gender norms and security-first approaches.
When women are included, they are more likely to raise issues that determine whether peace is livable for civilians: protection from violence, accountability for abuses, access to aid and services, livelihoods and the needs of survivors.
When they are excluded, peace processes are more likely to overlook these priorities, weakening accountability and leaving forms of insecurity—especially violence against women—unaddressed.
Yet even as repression intensifies, women are not retreating from public life. Across conflict-affected regions of Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine and beyond, women are building cross-community coalitions to sustain organizing, support participation and mediate violence.
In Libya, recent municipal elections offered a glimpse of what greater inclusion can look like: Thirty women won municipal council seats across 12 municipalities, exceeding the 21 seats reserved for women, and Jamila Al-Lawati became the country’s second woman mayor. These gains remain fragile, but they show how local political openings can expand women’s leadership in service delivery and community decision-making.
The lesson of 2026 is already clear: Political transitions that exclude women may still produce agreements, elections or temporary pauses in violence, but they are less likely to deliver the inclusive security needed for durable peace. Negotiations that sideline women can end immediate conflict while leaving unresolved the inequalities, grievances and protection gaps that make future instability more likely.
If governments and international institutions are serious about preventing violence and building durable peace, women’s participation cannot remain optional. Women must be included now—in ceasefire implementation, election planning, constitutional reform, reconstruction, transitional governance and accountability processes. Anything less is not only a failure of representation. It is a warning sign for the next crisis.
