Project: From Female Combatants to Filmmakers – Expanding Women’s Agency in War and Peace

Authors: Beatrice Aciro, Grace Arach, Violeta Guetnamova, Isabelle Kawka. Editor, Evelyn Pauls.

This booklet seeks to amplify some of the hidden and forgotten voices in conflict. The stories of female ex-combatants from diverse political, religious, ethnic and national backgrounds show that women and their experiences of armed conflict and its aftermath have to be taken seriously for building sustainable peace.

These are their stories as they tell them to each other. Two ex-combatant women collected the stories, reflecting as they did so on their lives before joining the groups, their time as women in war, and how their lives unfolded once they returned to civilian life. Theirs are stories of community and camaraderie, of life and death, of joy and suffering, perseverance and resistance, and of rebuilding lives after war and continuing the struggle in peaceful ways.