Kenya backs gendered peace model, urges IGAD to act
Gender Cabinet Secretary, Hannah Wendot, said the current peace models overlook key voices, warning that excluding women and young people weakens the region’s ability to achieve lasting peace.
Kenya is pushing for a bold shift in how the region approaches peacebuilding, with the Gender Cabinet Secretary, Hannah Wendot, calling on IGAD to formally adopt a gender-inclusive framework that places women and youth at the centre of conflict prevention and resolution.
Speaking at the IGAD Regional Forum for Eminent Personalities and Leaders for Peace in Nairobi, Wendot said the current peace models overlook key voices, warning that excluding women and young people weakens the region’s ability to achieve lasting peace.
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“A peace process that excludes women and youth ignores half our region’s wisdom. Peace that silences their voices cannot endure,” she said on Thursday.
The CS pointed out that the region must build a strong and diverse pool of local mediators, from youth to elders, equipped with trauma-sensitive tools and grounded in community heritage.
She described this approach as essential to creating trust and familiarity, conditions she said are often missing in formal peace talks.
“Picture with me modular, gender-sensitive training in negotiation, psychosocial support, and trauma-aware facilitation, delivered from capital to village,” Wendot said.
She urged IGAD to support 'Track II Mediation', which focuses on informal peace processes outside government channels, and formally integrate women and youth into such efforts.
The Gender CS highlighted that local actors, particularly women, often mediate tensions and restore trust through informal dialogue that is rooted in culture, tradition, and lived experience.
“Their wisdom, born from lived experience and community rootedness, represents an untapped reservoir for regional stability,” she said.
At the same time, the CS pointed to Kenya’s progress in gender mainstreaming through the 2019 National Gender and Development Policy, constitutional provisions like the two-thirds gender rule, and laws protecting women’s rights.
Wendot also credited youth-led peacebuilding in conflict-prone counties, where young mediators, most of them women, continue to rebuild fractured communities.
She said Kenya is fully aligned with the initiative under President William Ruto’s 9-Point Agenda for Women, which includes gender-responsive budgeting, care work policies, and economic inclusion.
In addition, CS Wendot called on IGAD and its development partners to endorse and fund the proposed model, urging the Council of Eminent Personalities to embed it within the organisation’s peace architecture.
“We propose a bold regional framework that harnesses our collective wisdom systematically,” she said.
The CS also confirmed Kenya’s participation in upcoming platforms such as the IGAD Youth Forum in Entebbe, the UN-AU Women’s Forum in Addis Ababa, and the continental Youth Peace Conference to be held in Nairobi later this year.
“The genius of this IGAD council is that by harnessing Track II, cultural arts, and our shared heritage, we are leveraging trust, familiarity, and rootedness - spaces where women and youth excel. Including them is not about meeting quotas; it is about harnessing our region’s full collective wisdom,” Wendot noted
She pledged full institutional, financial, and legal support from the Kenyan government to help the regional council advance this gender-inclusive peace agenda.
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