Diaspora women building peace against state violence

Until Lasting Peace: Black Women Peacebuilders in Britain

Fri , Aug 0& 2026 /Mpelembe Media/ — The USD report, “Until Lasting Peace: Diaspora Women Building Peace Where They Are,” co-created by Women PeaceMaker Fellows Bochra Laghssais, Mariia Levchenko, and Temi Mwale, explores how diaspora women act as vital, yet often invisible, agents of peace and social cohesion. By bridging international frameworks like the Women, Peace, and Security agenda with grassroots activism, the research challenges traditional definitions of peacebuilding, arguing that true peace is not merely the absence of war, but the daily presence of justice, community care, and collective safety. In her case study on Britain, Mwale examines how Black women lead the resistance against systemic racism and carceral violence within the criminal legal system. This work, however, extracts a massive physical, emotional, and mental toll, exacerbated by the “strong Black woman” trope, which forces women to suppress vulnerability and neglect their own health. Mwale highlights an urgent need for sustainable, trust-based funding and public safety strategies that prioritize “healing justice” and build care infrastructures to protect the wellbeing of frontline leaders.

The operational journey of Mwale’s youth-led social enterprise, The 4Front Project, serves as a powerful testament to this model of peacebuilding. Founded in 2012 when Mwale was just sixteen, the initiative was born out of grief following the murder of her childhood friend, Marvin Henry. Based on Grahame Park Estate in Colindale, 4Front grew from a grassroots campaign into a national force, establishing Jahiem’s Justice Centre in 2020 as a sanctuary of healing and creative expression in memory of the late 17-year-old youth worker and parliamentary advocate, Jahiem Legister-Hall. However, as local municipal redevelopment plans progressed toward the demolition of Grahame Park, the physical space of the center became temporary. Recognizing that continuing national advocacy without daily, embodied local grounding would compromise the organization’s core values, the leadership chose a responsible and intentional wind-down. This transition incorporates specialized support packages for its members, secondary trauma recovery packages for staff, and the creation of a digital Legacy Archive scheduled for 2026 to guide future organizers.

In parallel, Bochra Laghssais’s case study in the Netherlands documents how Amazigh Moroccan-Dutch women actively build peace from the margins. These women lead grassroots neighborhood mothers’ initiatives (Buurtmoeders) and engage in creative cultural curation to challenge structural discrimination and reclaim their historical narratives. Together, these case studies emphasize that when diaspora women are provided with recognized, gender-responsive social infrastructure and long-term, self-care resources, they can transform spaces of exclusion into powerful networks of collective liberation.

The Silent ‘K’ in Knowledge: Why Global Peacebuilding Starts on Your Street, Not at a Negotiating Table

When we hear the word “peacebuilding,” our minds often drift to high-ceilinged rooms in Geneva or images of UN observers in blue helmets patrolling distant borders. We have been conditioned to view peace as a top-down endeavor—a grand project reserved for career diplomats and state actors. However, this traditional lens overlooks a critical frontline where the most enduring work is actually being done: within the diaspora communities of our own neighborhoods.In an era defined by global mobility and reinforcing crises, diaspora women in countries like Britain and the Netherlands have emerged as vital, yet largely invisible, architects of social cohesion. The landmark report,  “Until Lasting Peace”: Diaspora Women Building Peace Where They Are , co-created by Women PeaceMaker Fellows Temi Mwale, Bochra Laghssais, and Mariia Levchenko, challenges us to look closer at the transnational networks right in our midst. These women are not just “integrating”; they are building infrastructures of safety where the state has left only an “abyss.”This work is rarely a career choice; it is a labor of survival. It is personal, embodied, and uniquely exhausting because it bridges the gap between ancestral trauma and modern-day systemic neglect. Why is this work so essential, yet so draining? By examining the lived experiences of these women—who are often sisters and co-organizers working outside formal NGO structures—we find six surprising takeaways that redefine what it means to build a peaceful society.

1. Peace is the “Silent K” in Knowledge

Traditional policy defines peace simply as the absence of war. For diaspora women leading justice work, this definition is dangerously hollow. They argue that peace cannot exist without the presence of justice, safety, and “collective flourishing.” To them, peace is not the goal; it is the essential, though often unvoiced, foundation of any work that seeks to make a community whole.The research highlights a profound analogy regarding this relationship:”The work that we do, we automatically always call it racial justice work… But actually, peace is inserted right before it in a silent way, you know, like you’ve got the letter K in front of knowledge… I feel peace is like that letter K, you know?… absolutely you can’t remove it. It is silent, but it’s essential.” —  Zahra, ContributorThis perspective is counter-intuitive to Western frameworks. It suggests that what the state calls “peace”—a quiet, orderly status quo—is often just state-sanctioned order that hides underlying systemic violence. Just as you cannot have “knowledge” without the “K,” you cannot have a functional society without the peace these women provide, even if it goes unpronounced by the state.

2. The Toxic Myth of the “Strong Woman”

If the “Silent K” represents the invisible nature of their work, the “Strong Black Woman” trope represents the weight that threatens to crush the workers. In Britain, researchers found that this stereotype acts as a medical and psychological straitjacket, starting as early as the “Strong Black Girl” years. It creates a barrier to basic care, where Black women’s physical and mental health needs—ranging from fibroids and lupus to chronic anxiety—are pathologized or dismissed.The result is a heartbreaking “abyss” of support. These leaders are expected to hold the grief of an entire community, yet find no one to hold them when they reach out for help. This isn’t just “stress”; it is a state of perpetual harm. Marcia, a contributor to the Britain study, explicitly rejects the medicalized “Post” in PTSD, noting that the trauma is never in the past.”The reason why I keep doing this is because the deaths keep happening… It’s not post-traumatic stress, it’s continuous traumatic stress disorder.” —  Marcia, Contributor

3. Integration Policies Can Actually Be Barriers

While domestic tropes like the “strong woman” drain these leaders internally, state policies often penalize them externally. In the Netherlands, the history of the Amazigh (the “free noble” people) illustrates a bitter irony. In the 1960s and 70s, Dutch policies like OETC (Education in Own Language and Culture) encouraged migrants to maintain cultural ties. However, by the 1990s, the political wind shifted toward the  “problematization of transnationalism.”Connections to the Rif region—a place with a distinct history of resistance like the Hirak El-Rif movement—began to be viewed by leaders as signs of “divided loyalty.” The state moved from supporting these ties to viewing them as barriers to national cohesion. This creates a surreal “loyalty test” for women who are often the most economically empowered and locally oriented members of their communities. Instead of seeing these women as bridges between cultures, current integration discourses penalize them for the very cultural fluency that allows them to build peace.

4. Activism is a “Calling,” Not a Career Choice

For these women, community work isn’t something they found on a job board; it is an ancestral and spiritual compulsion. Many were “thrust into activism” due to the absence of care in their own childhoods or personal losses—police violence, the incarceration of loved ones, or the murder of friends. This lack of support in their younger years became the catalyst to build the safety they never had.This work is described as “personal, embodied, and continuous,” born from a sense of duty to those who came before them. It is a spiritual debt that cannot be ignored.”Particularly Black women, because of our ancestors, we can’t insult them by doing nothing when we are free.” —  Marcia, Contributor

5. Visibility is a Double-Edged Sword

Diaspora leaders often live in a state of “hypervisibility and invisibility” at once. They are visible enough to be targeted by the state, but their actual contributions are erased from history. In Britain, this hypervisibility has visceral consequences: Black children are six times more likely to be targeted for strip searches than their white peers.Leaders who challenge these status quos, such as Temi Mwale, face “structural violence” in the form of surveillance, doxxing, and death threats. Simultaneously, they face “literary erasure,” where their contributions to public health and social justice are omitted from the archives.”When Black women are rendered invisible in accounts of social life in which they were not only present but made significant contribution, this is the literary equivalent of wielding a slave-master’s whip to subjugate and silence.” —  Adele Jones and Diana Watt

6. Rest is a Radical Act of Resistance

Perhaps the most transformative takeaway from the research is the shift toward “healing-centered justice.” Because existing state infrastructures fail them, these sisters and co-organizers are building their own systems where joy and rest are prioritized as political acts. In a world that expects their endless, extracted labor, the act of “simply being” becomes a practice of refusal.Joy is not a luxury to be earned after the fight is over; it is a human right that sustains the fight itself. These women are moving toward a model where the “whole person” is supported, ensuring that the worker is as protected as the work.”Joy is a human right… there has to be joy.” —  Kayza, Contributor

Conclusion: Beyond the Absence of Violence

The work of diaspora women in Britain and the Netherlands teaches us that peacebuilding is not a finite project with a deadline. It is a “pulse”—a continuous effort to sustain life, culture, and legacy in the face of systemic neglect.To support this “invisible pulse,” we must move toward a vision of the future that includes unrestricted funding for the  person  (covering therapy, rest, and security), intergenerational care that honors elder wisdom, and a world where “peace” means the whole community is whole.As we look at our own neighborhoods, we must ask ourselves:  How do we define “safety”?  Is it the presence of order and policing, or is it the “silent K” of justice and collective flourishing? Supporting the leadership in our own backyards is not just an act of solidarity; it is the only way to build a world where everyone has the right to be well.