Bridgers Roundtable: Strategies for Peace in Divided Societies

Bridger’s Roundtable: Strategies for Peace in Divided Societies is a bimonthly conversation series hosted jointly by OBI’s Democracy & Belonging Forum and the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), which spearheads the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), a global network of women peacebuilders. The series brings together bridgers from the Democracy & Belonging Forum with peacebuilders from WASL for exchange around conflict transformation, peacebuilding, and engaging across lines of difference in highly polarized contexts. In each session, a peacebuilder and bridger from each network will offer catalyzing remarks on a shared challenge to spark discussion among session participants, sharing reflections on their unique contexts and experiences. The goals of this series include collective learning, strategy exchange, and strengthening collective efforts toward peace, equity, and belonging worldwide. Building on a session introducing the two networks held in January 2025, future sessions will address some of the most critical topics of our time, including:

• Tactics of bridging and peacebuilding

• Addressing dynamics of identity, gender, and power 

• Strategies for coalition-building

• Approaches to self-care and wellness 

• The role of religious leaders and faith in bridging and peacebuilding

About ICAN

ICAN promotes inclusive and sustainable peace globally by shaping and guiding peace and security policies through thought leadership, strategic advice, and gender-responsive analysis and fostering a global movement of locally rooted women peacebuilders. Since 2011, ICAN supports women peacebuilders to have voice and influence in matters of peace, conflict, rights, and human security, countering the rapid spread of extremism and state authoritarianism. ICAN co-created the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) in 2015 as the first global women’s network to embrace women’s leadership in addressing violent extremism and promoting peace, resilience, equal rights, and pluralism. 

About WASL 

WASL brings together existing women’s networks, practitioners, and organizations with long-standing experience in addressing extremism and promoting peace, rights and pluralism to improve practices in communities affected by violence, and inform and offer pragmatic policy solutions for the international community. The acronym WASL means ‘connect or link’ in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. WASL comprises 99 independent, locally rooted women-led peacebuilding organizations and women peacebuilders active in 39 countries affected by violence and war. 

This series is only open to Forum members. If you are not yet a member, apply to join us here.