News
Feminist-led peace
UK and allies fail to fund women peacebuilders 25 years after UN pledge.
25 October 2025
This article first appeared in our International Women’s Day 2026 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: Rebecca Irby at the United Nations
When people hear that I work with the United Nations, they often imagine grand rooms, formal statements and decisive action.
Sometimes that’s how it is – but more often, the reality is quieter and far more complicated than you might think.
As a woman working in global policy spaces, I live in a constant paradox: what I call the liminal space between power and progress.
I am close to decision-making power, and yet I can see and feel how painfully slow progress actually is.
I sit in rooms where the future of our world is discussed, yet I know that the voices most impacted are often missing from those decisions.
International Women’s Day is, for me, not so much a celebration as a moment of accountability. A reminder to always ask: who is being heard? Who is being protected? Who has been left out? Who is being harmed? Who have we not yet considered?
My role at the United Nations has been to create and hold space, and to witness and report what I see happening on the ground.
I see both the promise and the limits of international cooperation and multilateralism; I see what becomes possible when we choose dialogue over dominance.
I also see how easily fear, and especially ego, stops progress and takes precedence over universal values.
When profit is placed above people, we always lose. Yet too often, that equation remains weighted towards profit.
As a woman in these spaces, much of the work I do is invisible. It is the holding of space, relationship-building, diplomacy, deep listening and the translation of complexity across cultures. These skills are rarely celebrated, yet they are often the only ones that move negotiations forward.
Women at the UN are doing this work every day, not just in March, and they deserve recognition all year round.
I also want to address a common misunderstanding about how the United Nations functions. It is a membership organisation that has been systematically defunded over the past two decades. People are not entirely wrong when they say the UN is not functioning, but it’s not for the reasons they think.
By withholding dues, some countries have placed intentional strain on the organisation – a strain then used to argue that the institution itself is unnecessary. What we are witnessing is not a failure but a conscious dismantling.
Alongside my work at the United Nations, I lead the PEAC Institute, an organisation rooted in peace, education, art and culture.
PEAC exists because policy alone cannot transform the world; change requires imagination, dignity and connection.
Our work centres young people who, historically, have been excluded from global decision-making. We create pathways for them to engage as contributors rather than as spectators, bridging policy rooms and lived experience.
I believe art is our most universal language. I have seen it cut through even the most difficult conversations by inviting people to lead from their hearts rather than their heads. PEAC is about ensuring power is accountable, relational and grounded in everyday realities.
This work can be exhausting, and I am often asked why I stay. Why remain in systems that can feel incremental at best, mired in bureaucracy and, at times, deeply compromised? When confronted with these questions, I understand my presence as a responsibility, not an ambition.
I stay because I believe care is a form of leadership. I believe imagination is a political act. I believe building trust across difference is one of the most radical things we can do in a fractured world.
Persistence does not always look like force; sometimes it looks like staying present. Sometimes it looks like refusing to harden. Sometimes it looks like choosing collaboration when competition would be easier. I choose to centre joy and love when the world would have us choose fear and hate.
As a woman, I have learned this not in theory but in practice. Leadership is not about control, it is about stewardship. It is about tending relationships, holding complexity and staying accountable to the people most impacted by our decisions. This is not a softer form of leadership, it is a more durable one – and it is exactly what our global systems require right now.
In this chapter of my work, my hope is not abstract. It is practised daily, in rooms where power is negotiated and in communities where its consequences are felt.
I want young people to see themselves reflected in international spaces. I want dignity to be foundational, not optional. I want us to remember that systems are made by people, and that means that these very systems can also be remade by people.
This matters because no one is coming to save us; we are the ones we have been waiting for – not through the power of domination, but through the power of ‘we’ – through collective courage, shared imagination and the refusal to accept a world that only works for some.
International Women’s Day is a moment to remember that transformation has always come from those who are willing to stay, to imagine and to act together.
I am committed to ensuring the world works for 100% of us, because anything less is not enough.
UK and allies fail to fund women peacebuilders 25 years after UN pledge.
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