The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that 65.3 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide in 2015 as a result of conflict, persecution, generalized violence or human rights violations.

The number of forcibly displaced globally, according to UNHCR, is the highest since the aftermath of World War II. If the total global population of forcibly displaced people were a country, they would be the 21^st largest in the world – bigger than the entire population of the United Kingdom.

According to UN Women, the representative sample of 31 major peace processes between 1992 and 2011 showed that only 4% of signatories, 3.7% of witnesses, 2.4% of chief mediators and 9% of negotiators were women.

There is a substantial amount of evidence that links women’s participation with peace and stability in society.

 Reason #1: Women’s Participation Increases the Probability of a Long-Lasting Peace Agreement

A statistical analysis by Laurel Stone showed that out of the 182 signed peace agreements worldwide between 1989 and 2011, an agreement is 35% more likely to last at least 15 years if women participate in its creation.

Reason #2: State is Less Likely to Use Violence with High Percentage of Women in Parliament

Using data on international crises over four decades, Mary Caprioli and Mark Boyer’s study on “Gender, Violence, and International Crisis” showed that a state is five times less likely to use force when faced with an international crisis when the percentage of women in parliament increases by five percent.

Reason #3: Women Moderate Violent Extremism

Abigail Disney and Gini Reticker, in the article entitled “When it comes to ‘networks of death,’ women don’t need saving — they are our saviors” published in The New York Times, wrote that Mossarat Qadeem took matters into her own hands and founded PAIMAN Alumni Trust to counter Pakistan’s dangerous radicalization. One of the programs of PAIMAN helps mothers in high-conflict regions de-radicalize their sons. PAIMAN, according to Disney and Reticker, trained more than 655 mothers to rehabilitate and reintegrate 1,024 radicalized boys and young men.

Reason #4: Women Break the Conflict Cycle

When 35% of the legislature is female, the risk of conflict relapse is near zero, this according to the study “Female Participation and Civil War Relapse” by Jacqueline Demeritt and Angela Nichols.

“The empirical evidence is overwhelming: where women’s inclusion is prioritized, peace is more likely – particularly when women are in a position to influence decision making,” Marie O’Reilly, Head of Research at The Institute for Inclusive Security, wrote in the document called “Why Women? Inclusive Security and Peaceful Societies.”