Amina lives with her children in a camp for Syrian refugees. When Israeli airstrikes began, she and others fled in terror. (Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam)
This summer, I traveled to Seoul with my daughter. This isn't about our vacation, but about one night that made me realize how much the world still needs to improve in peace, leadership, and feminist approaches to security. What should have been a peaceful night turned into hours of anxiety, staring at the apartment door, overwhelmed by fear.
We rented a small apartment online. Everything looked perfect: clean, modern, and equipped with digital keypad locks common across South Korea, Japan, and China. As a mother, my first concern was safety. But when we settled in and turned off the lights, I realized the sleek lock had no internal bolt or chain. Anyone with the code could enter at any time.
I couldn’t sleep. I stacked a table and an umbrella against the door because they would stop anyone, but also because they gave me a fragile sense of control. By 4 a.m., exhausted, I emailed the property manager asking for an internal lock. Within hours, someone arrived, installed a proper lock, apologized, and even left a small coffee and cake voucher.
It was a minor gesture, but it mattered. I felt seen. I felt heard. I felt safer.
The next day, a Korean colleague laughed kindly and explained that in South Korea, it’s normal not to have an internal lock; people trust the system. Her response surprised me. Where I come from, South Asia, a lock is never just a piece of metal. It is a shield that a woman cannot afford to live without. That night made me remember a truth I've carried all my life: women carry an invisible, constant burden of fear. Men can sleep anywhere without the worry of harm. For women, safety is never assured.
This lack of sense of safety of women is so common across the globe and accentuates in time of conflict. Today, nearly one in six countries is at war, making 2024 the fourth most violent year since the end of the Cold War, and the highest recorded number of active state-based conflicts since 1946: 61 across 36 nations. The world now sees nearly 420 conflict deaths every single day—the equivalent of a passenger plane crash daily. In 2023, the number of women killed in armed conflict doubled compared to 2022, and UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence jumped by 50%, the steepest increase on record. There was also a 35% rise in grave violations against girls, showing war is deadlier than ever for women and girls. Oxfam’s latest report ‘Beyond Rhetoric: Feminist Leadership for a Transformative Women, Peace and Security Agenda at 25’ makes a strong case for peace aligned with Gender Justice as whole.
My personal story also serves as a global metaphor. Governments, institutions, and international agencies have spent decades promising to prioritize women, peace, and security. We have UN resolutions, declarations, conferences, glossy reports, and “international days.” But when it comes to real investment in locks on doors, protections in communities, and funding for women-led security initiatives, action is almost always missing.
Formal peace processes continue to sideline women. In 2023, women made up only 5 percent of negotiators and 9 percent in UN-led processes; none of the peace agreements concluded last year had women’s groups or representatives as signatories. Out of 26 peace agreements signed worldwide, only eight contained gender provisions at all.
Trillions are spent on weapons and defence, while the safety and leadership of women are undervalued, underfunded, and overlooked. In 2024, military spending soared to an estimated $2.7 trillion. It is more than 800 times greater than total international aid targeting gender, conflict, peace, and security (GCPS). The funding gap is even more stark when comparing military priorities versus humanitarian needs. In 2024, 84 countries poured $1.5 trillion into war which is more than the GDP of Spain, or enough to fund the entire UN’s humanitarian appeals 30 times over. The planned NATO defence budget for 2035 is $4.2 trillion a year, enough to end world hunger 15 times over and to deliver free quality education to every child on earth for decades. Meanwhile, in 2023, just $149 million, a mere 2% of all GCPS ODA for ending violence against women and girls was allocated to direct protection, again less than the cost of what is spent on military operations every hour. <Published report link to be added>
As Leymah Gbowee said:
“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.”
Women are done tiptoeing. We are done waiting for governments and global institutions to turn words into meaningful action.
Here’s what must change:
Accountability:
Women must have real, measurable roles in all peace processes. Resolutions cannot gather dust.
Funding justice:
As per UN commitments, at least 15% of ODA should go to gender equality, with a minimum of 1% allocated directly to women’s organizations on the ground – which we are far from. However, ideally, we should guarantee that at least half of WPS funding goes directly to grassroots women’s rights organisations.
Invest in local leadership:
Women’s peacebuilding initiatives must be rooted in their communities, not rerouted through distant bureaucracies.
Reimagine security:
Shift from male-dominated military dominance to human security protecting health, education, equality, and community infrastructure.
The homeowner in Seoul didn’t tell me to calm down. They invested their resources to ensure my safety. That’s the kind of action our leaders should take worldwide. Peace without investment in women’s safety is meaningless. Safety is not a luxury. It is a right. Until women can sleep without fear, peace remains hollow.
Without urgent change, the global landscape will look no different in 2030, despite agendas and frameworks promising progress. Research shows that where women are visibly involved in peacebuilding and security decision-making at all levels, violence declines by up to 35%, violent outbreaks last 64% shorter, and recovery accelerates. Yet women remain excluded from these key processes. Change is possible but only if matched by real power and funding.
Stop token gestures. Start funding safety the way you fund weapons, campaigns, and summits. Build the locks on doors, on communities, and on systems meant to protect women.
Peace is more than the absence of war. It is the presence of safety, and women are still waiting. Until women can walk, work, travel, and sleep without fear, global commitments to peace remain nothing but words on paper.
Anila Noor is a refugee activist based in the Netherlands. She is a founder and managing director of New Women Connectors, a movement striving for mainstreaming the unheard voices of migrant and refugee women living across Europe.