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Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of women as grassroots peacebuilders in southern Kyrgyzstan following the violent conflict of June 2010. While women are commonly portrayted as victims in post-conflict narratives, this research highlights their contribution in rebuilding trust between ethnic groups and community resilience. This paper based on primary sources as reports from local NGOs, interviews with women leaders, media narratives and observations in the field, I examine how women initiated and led small-scale reconciliation efforts like informal dialogue between groups and community projects in Osh.

By using the frameworks of women peacebuilding and everyday citizenship, I argue that women’s actions though often ignored show a form of gendered governance from below, filling the vacuum left by the state institutions. Women-led NGOs and local informal women-leaders played a key role in mediating tensions, distributing humanitarian aid and creating safe spaces for dialogue between communities. These efforts contributed to the long-term peacebuilding and redefined women’s roles in the public sphere. These women’s collective actions show a form of everyday governance and social transformation, demonstrating moral and gendered nature of citizenship in Kyrgyzstan.

By centering women's post-conflict activism, this paper contributes to the broader field of gender history in Central Eurasia, it is challenging assumptions about women’s political invisibility and passive position in conflict and post-conflict contexts. It reveals how women’s informal leadership operates as both a survival strategy and a form of transformative agency, offering a new view the intersection of gender, power and peace in the region.