BENGALURU, India, Sep 15 2025 (IPS) - Wars and oppression leave behind not just rubble and graves. They leave behind invisible wounds, profound trauma carried by survivors. And most often, women carry the largest burden. They are targeted not only because of their gender, but because surviving and leading threaten structures based on patriarchy and domination.
Mozn Hassan
“Violence against women is never accidental,” Hassan explains. “It is systematic. It’s about control, silencing, and making sure women do not have the tools to stand up, to resist, to create alternative futures.”
In this report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the percentage of women killed in armed conflict doubled in 2024, accounting for 40 percent of all civilian casualties. “Over 600 million women and girls live in conflict-affected areas, a 50 percent increase since 2017.” The report points out that nearly every person exposed to a humanitarian crisis suffers from psychological distress, and 1 in 5 people go on to develop long term mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. “Only 2 percent get the care they need”.
The matter of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) has been brought up during the previous two reviews of the UN peacebuilding architecture (2020 and 2024) mentioned in this report of the International Peace Institute, “a peaceful society cannot exist if psychological impacts of war (such as grief, depression, stress and trauma) are left unaddressed in individuals, families and communities.”
Hassan has been a pioneer in the application of narrative exposure therapy (NET) among women in refugee camps and war zones. In contrast to other therapy models that concentrate on one-on-one psychological treatment, through NET she pushes for collective healing ans solidarity.
“Narrative exposure therapy is one of the tools of community psychology. It puts collective trauma-informed therapy higher than individual approaches,” she explains. “Being within collective spaces brings sharing of experiences, solidarities, and makes the community itself resilient. They can go through this afterward by themselves, they don’t need another, more educated person in a power dynamic over them.”
The approach, according to Mozn, has shown to be successful in dealing with Syrian, Palestinian, and Lebanese women in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey. Through five- or six-day workshops, participants narrate and re-narrate their stories, building strength on each other while creating knowledge and data on the realities of war.
Hassan remembers how women in camps, frequently from various ethnic or religious minorities, drew strength not just from sharing their own experiences but from hearing others. In this way, they developed resilience where there should have been none. “But when it’s collective, people are not left alone with their pain. They gain tools, they gain solidarity, and they gain resilience.”
Hassan points out that trauma is not a monolithic experience: “Studies show that only 20–25% of people who face trauma develop PTSD. One of the misconceptions has been that everyone who experiences trauma must have PTSD, it’s not true. Collective approaches make interventions more applicable and save resources, which are always limited for women.”
Above all, NET has given strength and mechanisms to these women to move forward. “Trauma doesn’t happen overnight, it’s an accumulation. Healing is the same. It’s not about saying: I was sick, and now I’m healed. Healing is a process. When you are triggered, you shouldn’t go back to the first point. You can have your own tools to say: I don’t want to be this version of myself while I was facing trauma,” she reflects.
For Hassan, one of the key questions of feminist peacebuilding is why women are so typically assaulted in war, revolution, and even in so-called peacetimes.
“We must stop thinking about peacebuilding only in the traditional way, only when there is open war,” she argues. “Patriarchy, militarization, securitization, and societal violence are all forms of violence that normalize abuse every day. Stability is not the same as peace.”
She points to Egypt as an example. While the country has not witnessed a civil war like Syria or Sudan, it does have systemic gender-based violence: “Egypt has more than 100 million people, half of them women. Official statistics say domestic violence is more than 60%, sexual harassment more than 98%. Femicide is rising. This is the production of collective trauma and acceptance of violence.”
The 2011 revolution, she remembers, brought these dynamics into sharp focus: “What we saw in Tahrir Square, the gang rapes, the mass assaults, was the production of societal violence. Years of harassment and normalization led to an explosion of gender-based violence that was then denied.”
Hassan’s warning is stark: the absence of bombs does not mean peace. “As long as you are not bombed by another country, people say you don’t need peace because you live in peace. But the absence of war is not peace.”
Healing, for Hassan, cannot be separated from politics and accountability. She rejects the idea that healing means forgetting.
“Forgiveness or letting go needs a process. Many people cannot sit at the same table with those who hurt them personally. But maybe it’s not our generation who will forgive. Maybe we can at least leave to others a better daily life than we lived,” she says.
Accountability, she argues, is a requirement for stability. “You couldn’t reach stability while people are thinking only about revenge. Collective healing in Egypt is important, but it also needs accountability, acceptance, and structural change.”
She also criticizes the tendency to depoliticize feminist movements: “Our definition of politics is not only about being in parliament. It is about feminist politics as tools for change everywhere. Too often feminists were pushed to say ‘we are not political.’ That sidelined many women who were engaging directly in politics.”
In spite of repression and trauma, Hassan says that women remain incredibly resilient. What they need most is recognition and tangible support to rebuild their lives and societies.
“The amazing tools of women on resilience gives me hope. I saw it so clearly with Syrian women, leaving everything, rebuilding societies, changing everywhere they go. Their accumulation of resilience is what gives me hope,” she says.
However, Mozn is wary of the narrative that glorifies women’s strength without addressing its costs. “We shouldn’t have to be strong all the time. We should be free, and lead lives where we can just be happy without strength and grit. But unfortunately, the times we live in demand resilience.”
Mozn Hassan’s words make us question what peace actually is. It is not merely ceasefires or agreements, but a challenge to deal with patriarchy, violence, and trauma at its core. Healing is political, accountability matters, and rebuilding with women is imperative. As she says: “Maybe it’s not our generation who will see forgiveness, but we can try to leave to others a better daily life than we lived.”
Her vision is both sobering and optimistic: peace will not be arriving tomorrow, but as long as women keep building resilience and insisting upon self-respect, the way to it is not yet closed.
Sania Farooqui is an independent journalist, host of The Peace Brief, a platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices in peacebuilding and human rights. Sania has previously worked with CNN, Al Jazeera and TIME.
IPS UN Bureau Report
