Keypoints:
- Africa needs funded peace commitments, not declarations
- Women remain excluded from crucial peace negotiations
- Prevention, protection and accountability require real budgets
EVERY September 21, the world observes the International Day of Peace. Bells ring. Statements are issued. Governments reaffirm commitments, civil society organisations hold dialogues, and the familiar language of peace, unity, tolerance, reconciliation and non-violence once again fills public platforms.
But after more than four decades of commemorating this day, perhaps the important question is no longer whether the world believes in peace. It is whether we are prepared to invest in it — politically, socially and financially.
The theme of the 2026 International Day of Peace, ‘Investing in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day’, challenges the assumption that peace is simply what remains when guns stop firing. It presents peace as something deliberately constructed and continually sustained through diplomacy, functioning institutions, education, healthcare, human rights, social protection, dialogue and inclusive decision-making.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasised in his 2026 message, achieving peace is neither passive nor automatic. It is an active and deliberate choice.
For Africa, that distinction matters enormously.
Peace is more than a ceasefire
The UN General Assembly established the International Day of Peace in 1981 through Resolution 36/67, with the first observance taking place in September 1982.
Two decades later, Resolution 55/282 permanently designated September 21 as an annual day of non-violence and ceasefire.
That evolution represented progress. Peace Day moved from commemorating an ideal towards asking belligerents to do something tangible: stop fighting, even if only temporarily.
Over the years, its themes have embraced education, sustainable development, climate action, dignity, human rights and inclusion. The message has gradually become clearer: peace cannot be separated from the conditions in which people live.
Yet the paradox remains.
The world has accumulated declarations, resolutions, frameworks and institutions devoted to peace while conflicts continue to devastate communities. Africa knows this contradiction particularly well.
Africa has no shortage of frameworks
The African Union’s Agenda 2063 envisages a peaceful and secure continent, while its flagship Silencing the Guns initiative has sought to tackle armed conflict, illicit weapons and insecurity.
The AU adopted its Master Roadmap of Practical Steps to Silencing the Guns in 2017 and established Africa Amnesty Month to encourage the surrender and collection of illegally owned weapons. The UN Security Council endorsed the wider Silencing the Guns initiative through Resolution 2457 in 2019.
These are significant institutional achievements.
But guns are still speaking.
For women and girls, peace has always needed to mean more than ceasefire.
A woman who no longer hears gunfire but cannot safely collect water is not entirely at peace. A girl whose school has reopened but who risks sexual violence travelling there is not living securely. Neither is a displaced mother without food, healthcare or protection, nor a survivor who watches her perpetrator walk freely through her community.
Women experience peace differently
Sudan provides a devastating illustration.
According to UNFPA, more than 9.2 million people were internally displaced across the country’s 18 states as of January 2026, with women and girls experiencing particularly severe and overlapping protection risks.
By July, UNFPA’s $129.2m appeal for sexual and reproductive health and protection services in Sudan was only 34 percent funded, leaving an $86m shortfall.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN Joint Human Rights Office documented 887 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2025, affecting 1,534 victims, overwhelmingly women and girls. Stigma, insecurity and fear of reprisals mean documented cases are unlikely to capture the full scale of abuse.
In South Sudan, UNFPA estimates that about 2.5 million women and girls need gender-based violence response and protection services.
So when the world says ‘invest in peace’, African women are entitled to ask: invest where?
The answer must include protection from gender-based violence, functioning justice systems, girls’ education, livelihoods, healthcare and psychosocial support. It must include the women-led organisations that often keep communities functioning long after international attention has shifted elsewhere.
But investment must also mean something more politically uncomfortable: investing in women’s power.
Women need seats where peace is made
In 2000, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1325, formally recognising a principle women peacebuilders had championed for years: women are not merely victims requiring protection during conflict. They must participate meaningfully in preventing conflict, negotiating peace and rebuilding societies.
The Women, Peace and Security agenda has expanded substantially since then. UN Women now reports that 117 countries and territories are implementing national action plans intended to translate those commitments into policy and practice.
Africa has also built its own institutional architecture. The AU appointed its first Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security in 2014, developed the FemWise-Africa mediation network and established a Continental Results Framework to monitor implementation of the agenda.
Yet the numbers reveal the distance between recognition and power.
Across major peace processes globally in 2024, women accounted for only 7 percent of negotiators, 14 percent of mediators and 20 percent of signatories. Of 36 peace agreements reached that year, just 31 percent contained at least one provision referring to women, girls, gender or sexual violence.
This is the uncomfortable truth behind decades of declarations: the international community has become much better at writing women into peace documents than at ensuring women sit at the tables where peace itself is negotiated.
The AU acknowledges the delivery gap
There are signs that African institutions recognise this implementation problem.
On September 15, just days before this year’s International Day of Peace, the Office of the AU Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security launched its 2026–2028 Strategic Plan.
Significantly, the plan identifies a persistent ‘conversion gap’ between commitments and action. It puts women’s participation and leadership at the centre of AU-led peace processes while calling for stronger accountability and predictable financing.
Special Envoy Ambassador Liberata Mulamula captured the challenge succinctly. Africa, she said, does not lack commitments, policies, frameworks, National Action Plans, declarations or decisions.
The question is whether they are being delivered.
That may be one of the most important questions Africa can ask on this International Day of Peace.
Another declaration will not protect a displaced girl. Another conference communiqué will not prevent rape being used during war. Another National Action Plan without adequate financing will not put women around negotiating tables.
And another annual commemoration will not silence a gun unless commitments made on September 21 influence decisions taken during the other 364 days of the year.
Peace requires budgets
What, then, would investing in peace actually look like?
It should begin with prevention rather than waiting until violence requires massive humanitarian intervention.
It means financing local peacebuilders, including women’s organisations that understand community tensions before they become international headlines.
It means investing in girls’ education not simply as development policy, but as part of the social infrastructure that strengthens communities and reduces vulnerability.
It means ensuring women participate in mediation from the beginning instead of being invited into consultations after political settlements have largely been negotiated.
It means confronting the circulation of small arms, strengthening justice and accountability, addressing hate speech and misinformation, responding to climate-related insecurity and giving young people credible alternatives to recruitment by armed groups.
And, crucially, it means budgets.
The contrast in global spending priorities is stark.
According to UN Women, global military expenditure reached a record $2.7tn in 2024. Yet just 0.4 percent of funding and technical assistance sent to conflict-affected countries was directed to women’s organisations.
That imbalance is not merely about money. It reflects what governments and international institutions continue to prioritise when they talk about security.
Africa should widen that definition.
Security must also mean the woman who can travel safely to market. The girl who can remain in school. The survivor who receives justice. The community with institutions capable of resolving tensions before they become armed conflict.
Peace must become something people feel
The International Day of Peace has achieved something important since 1981. It has helped broaden the global conversation from peace as the absence of warfare towards peace as dignity, justice, inclusion, sustainable development and human security.
The institutional architecture has also grown substantially. The UN and AU now possess mechanisms for mediation, peacebuilding, early warning, women’s participation and conflict prevention that barely existed when the first International Day of Peace was observed.
That progress should not be dismissed.
But institutional progress should not be confused with peace itself.
For the African woman negotiating safe passage for her family in Sudan, the Congolese survivor rebuilding her life, the South Sudanese mother fleeing violence with her children, or the girl whose education disappears when conflict reaches her village, peace cannot remain an aspiration printed in resolutions.
It must become something she can experience.
That is ultimately what ‘For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day’ should mean.
Perhaps the measure of the International Day of Peace should therefore not be how many speeches are delivered on September 21, but what has changed by the time the next September 21 arrives.
How many guns have fallen silent? How many girls have safely returned to classrooms? How many survivors have received justice? How many conflicts have been prevented? How much money has moved from promises into peacebuilding? And how many women have moved from the margins of negotiations to the tables where Africa’s future is decided?
Peace deserves a day.
But African women and girls need much more than that.
They need Africa — and the world — to invest in peace every day.
Valerie Ndeneingo-Sia Msoka is a Tanzanian journalist, human rights advocate and policy analyst focused on gender equality, media freedom, and women’s empowerment in Africa, and a Contributing Editor at Africa Briefing
