The Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace hosted a November 2024 multinational forum in Ghana with leading experts, movement leaders, and policymakers on cross-mobilization strategies. During heightened electoral cycles, gender justice movements have led critical conversations about the different forms of violence often present during electoral seasons, ranging from gender-based violence to misinformation, to physical and structural harms. The forum explored notions of peace and political mobilization in light of current and upcoming elections, as well as cross-mobilization strategies used across a range of country contexts for peace and democracy.
The forum consisted of a regional, comparative multiday workshop bringing together expert participants from six countries with recent/upcoming elections — Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, South Sudan, and Kenya — as well as regional facilitators from Uganda, South Africa, and Kenya. The participants’ areas of expertise include human rights, peacebuilding, freedom of information and free speech, women’s political participation, gender-based violence, law and legal policy, and youth organizing.
The comparative forum ended with a dynamic panel co-sponsored by the African Women’s Development Fund featuring journalists, feminist leaders, policymakers, and international workshop participants. IGLTP Executive Director and Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee spoke at the keynote panel and reflected on themes and strategies discussed over the course of the workshop.
Three CUNY students — Sandrine Sugi (CUNY Law ’26), Francesca Phanius (Brooklyn College ’25), and Diana Reyes (Brooklyn College ’25) — comprised the Institute’s inaugural cohort of student fellows. The fellows were trained in participatory research methods and documentation practices before the workshop. In Accra, they captured critical documentation of the wisdom and strategies shared by participants, which they will write about in blogs to be published this winter.
Stay tuned for more insights and narratives from this year’s Global Forum on the Institute’s website.
Photo Credit: Illiminous Photography
