While the war in Gaza and Ukraine are heading towards the end of 2025 with no resolution in sight, and United Nations prepares to open the election process for its next secretary general in 2026, a question crosses the international agenda: how much women can—and are allowed—to participate in peace processes, national security, and diplomacy at the highest level. “After 80 years, the time has come for a woman to lead this organization,” Chile’s representative to the UN recently defended, calling for “an open, participatory process with a gender focus” to elect the person to replace the current Secretary General, António Guterres.
“Conflicts and their resolution continue to be in the hands of men. The majority of those who sit down to negotiate peace are political and military authorities, and the majority are men,” Mabel González Bustelo, advisor on peace processes in conflicts such as Ukraine or Israel-Palestine, explains to EL PERIÓDICO. Although mediation teams tend to be somewhat more diverse, he warns, the imbalance reappears when we enter the hard core of the negotiation. “If women are half the population, they have to have something to say about war and about peace in their countries.”
Mabel González Bustelo, expert in peace and conflict resolution, member of the Committee of Experts of the Ibero-American Network of Women Mediators and of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Conflict Studies and Humanitarian Action (IECAH) / JORDI COTRINA/ EL PERIÓDICO
Male-dominated peace tables
The data confirm this exclusion. The women were just the 7% of people sitting at negotiation tables to resolve conflictsand almost nine out of ten tables They did not include any, according to the UN report ‘Monitoring women in peace processes’. In mediation, the average was 14%and in the signing of agreements just 20%a figure inflated by a few cases that hide massive exclusions in other contexts.
“If that other half of the population is represented, the view of what needs to be resolved is more complete.“summarizes González Bustelo. Not because of essentialism, but because of plurality: because it expands what is negotiable beyond the military.
More conflict, less inclusion
In 2024 they registered 61 active conflicts where at least one of the parties was a Statethe highest number since 1946. At the same time, negotiations tend to shift toward closed formats and partial agreements —ceasefires, humanitarian access—that reduce opportunities for inclusion and make it difficult to incorporate a gender perspectiveaccording to the latest report from the UN General Secretariat on Women, Peace and Security.
The consequences are reflected on the ground. The UN report documents a serious increase in conflict-related sexual violence: incidents against girls grew by 35% in 2024and documented violations skyrocketed 87% in just two years. At the end of that same year, 123.2 million people They were forcibly displaced in the world. In Gazathe UN confirmed in August 2025 a situation of faminewith more than half a million people affected.
“Do not normalize violence”
From Colombia, Gloria Cuartas Montoya puts a face to that gap between formal presence and real power. He arrived at the mayor’s office of Apartadó, one of the epicenters of the armed conflict in the nineties, in a context that he today defines as instrumental. “In this town they killed 1,200 people while I was mayor,” she explains to this newspaper. “Death was imposed on the region and men had to be protected from politics. We had to have a mayor and an agreement had to be made for peace.”
Cuartas refused to be a “woman’s face” for political-military decisions made by others. His career—from the local to the Senate and today at the head of the Peace Agreement Implementation Unitcommissioned by President Gustavo Petro—is marked by an idea that he repeats as a vital lesson: do not normalize violence or give autonomy as the price of political participation.
“Women have to ask ourselves why we are in that position,” says Montoya: what is expected of them and in exchange for what. “You don’t have to give up your dignity to stay in that place and that has been a very difficult school,” he adds.
Gloria Cuartas, director of the Colombian Peace Agreement Implementation Unit and former Colombian senator, photographed in Barcelona / Victòria Rovira / El Periódico
Diplomacy and power: a persistent gap
The diagnosis is repeated in formal diplomacy. The report of European Parliament on women in foreign affairs and international security finds that, by the end of 2024, only 26 countries They had a woman as head of state or government. The women occupied the 23% of ministerial portfoliosbut only the 12% in Outdoors.
In the military sphere, the gap is even greater. In 2024, women represented the 24% of personnel in EU civilian missions, but only to 7,3% in military operations. In UN missions, female military personnel do not exceed 8,6%.
The lack of parity persists in office diplomacy. Only the 21% of embassies are occupied by women, according to a study by the London School of Economics. The causes, he points out, are that the glass ceilingsbiases in assigned destinations, especially in tense areas, and barriers linked to conciliation, mobility or harassment.
It is not symbolic, it is strategic
Far from being a decorative issue, the three reports agree that the inclusion of women improves quality and efficiency of the decisions. Integrate a gender perspective It allows us to avoid blind policies and better address conflict prevention, the protection of civilians and post-war reconstruction.
Cuartas Montoya translates it into a concrete political practice. “I have never had bodyguards. I go against all security structures,” he says. Deactivate symbols of power, mix with people and dismantle hierarchies as part of a less visible, but more human diplomacy.
As the UN prepares to elect its next leadership and conflicts drag on with no way out, the gap between formal recognition and real participation of women remains wide open. The question is no longer whether their presence matters, but What cost does it cost to continue negotiating peace without them?.
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