Peacekeeping comprises activities, especially military ones, intended to create conditions that favor lasting peace. Research generally finds that peacekeeping reduces civilian and battlefield deaths, as well as reduces the risk of renewed warfare.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global humanitarian aid, relief, and development nongovernmental organization. Founded in 1933 as the International Relief Association, at the request of Albert Einstein, and changing its name in 1942 after amalgamating with the similar Emergency Rescue Committee, the IRC provides emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by war, persecution, or natural disaster. The IRC is currently working in about 40 countries and 26 U.S. cities where it resettles refugees and helps them become self-sufficient. It focuses mainly on health, education, economic wellbeing, power, and safety.
Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance, usually in the short-term, to people in need. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity.
Human security is a paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities whose proponents challenge the traditional notion of national security through military security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be at the human rather than the national level. Human security reveals a people-centred and multi-disciplinary understanding of security which involves a number of research fields, including development studies, international relations, strategic studies, and human rights. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report is considered a milestone publication in the field of human security, with its argument that ensuring "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity.
Peacebuilding is an activity that aims to resolve injustice in nonviolent ways and to transform the cultural and structural conditions that generate deadly or destructive conflict. It revolves around developing constructive personal, group, and political relationships across ethnic, religious, class, national, and racial boundaries. The process includes violence prevention; conflict management, resolution, or transformation; and post-conflict reconciliation or trauma healing before, during, and after any given case of violence.
The roles of women in the Arab world have changed throughout history, as the culture and society in which they live has undergone significant transformations. Historically, as well as presently, the situation of women differs greatly between Arabic speaking regions, their urban or rural population and age groups. Among other factors, these differences can be attributed to local traditions, culture and religion, women's social or legal status, their level of education, health or self-awareness. Since the 19th century, and notably through the influence of the colonization in North Africa, the Arab Renaissance in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, and the end of the Ottoman Empire, the social and economic changes in the Arab world have become greatly accelerated and diversified.
Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese author, public speaker, journalist and human rights activist. She has been selected as one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women by Arabian Business Magazine for her cultural and social activism. In 2021, she was on Apolitical's list of 100 most influential people in Gender Policy. She is founder of Jasad, a quarterly Arabic-language magazine specialized in the arts and literature of the body (2009–2011). Haddad launched a new TV show in November 2018 on Alhurra highlighting the topics of free expression and critical thinking. In September 2019, she founded a youth centered NGO in Beirut called the Joumana Haddad Freedoms Center. In February 2020, in partnership with the Institut Français in Lebanon, she launched the first International Feminisms Festival in the Middle East with a group of local and international co-organizers.
The roles of women in Lebanon have evolved throughout history. The legal status of women transformed over the 20th century, but traditional patriarchal norms and conservative versions of Islamic law continue to influence women's rights in Lebanon.
Refugee women face gender-specific challenges in navigating daily life at every stage of their migration experience. Common challenges for all refugee women, regardless of other demographic data, are access to healthcare and physical abuse and instances of discrimination, sexual violence, and human trafficking are the most common ones. But even if women don't become victims of such actions, they often face abuse and disregard for their specific needs and experiences, which leads to complex consequences including demoralization, stigmatization, and mental and physical health decay. The lack of access to appropriate resources from international humanitarian aid organizations is compounded by the prevailing gender assumptions around the world, though recent shifts in gender mainstreaming are aiming to combat these commonalities.
INTERSOS is an international humanitarian organization, based in Italy, which intervenes in emergencies and crises to bring immediate aid to people whose lives are threatened by conflict, violence, extreme poverty, and natural or artificial disasters.
The Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues is located within the United States Department of State. In 2009, Melanne Verveer was appointed to be the first Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues. From September 2013 to May, 2017, Catherine M. Russell was appointed to this position. From May 2017 through December 2019, there was no ambassador for this office. Kelley Currie, a political appointee, joined the Global Women's Issues Office as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large in January 2020. Geeta Rao Gupta is the current Ambassador-at-Large for the office as of May 18, 2023.
Women in Syria constitute 49.9% of Syria's population. According to World Bank data from 2021, there are around 10.6 million women in Syria. As important members of the Syrian community, they are active participants in social, economic and political factions of society. However, Syrian women and girls still experience challenges, especially since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, in the areas of legal rights, suitable healthcare and challenges precipitated by wartime violence.
Aisling Swaine is a professor of Peace, Security and International Law at University College Dublin.
International reactions to the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen of 2015 were mixed. Most other Arab League nations and several Western governments backed the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition, but other governments warned against an escalation in the violent situation in Yemen.
Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an Executive in Residence at Schmidt Futures. Before that she was Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD). Wanjiru is also the Founder and past Executive Director of Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for African girls and young women and a former Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco.
Carla Ravi Koppell is an American academic who serves as interim Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. As part of her work she collaborates with the Volcker Alliance to spearhead the University Leadership Council on Diversity and Inclusion in International Affairs. In that role, she works with deans of graduate schools of public policy and international affairs to incorporate attention to diversity and inclusion in their curricula and programs.
Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan: The Politics and Effects of Intervention is a 2009 book by Lina AbiRafeh.
Nazanin Ash is the chief executive officer of Welcome.US and has previously worked in the US State Department of state in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs leading the Middle East Partnership Initiative and at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on international development and HIV/AIDS. Born to parents who left Iran, she is an advocate for American support for refugees, and was named in Washingtonian's list of the 500 most influential people in Washington, DC, in 2022.
Qatar has been acting as a third-party mediator in various conflict since the 1990s. Qatar has mediated negotiations between the US and the Taliban, the signing of several peace deals for Lebanon, Yemen, Darfur, and Gaza, and hosted political offices for groups like Hamas in Doha. In addition, Qatar operated as a key mediator in various international hostage crises, leveraging its unique geopolitical standing and relationships with a wide array of actors, including both state and non-state entities.
