Rebuilding Homes, Rebuilding Futures: Women and Girls Leading Urban Recovery and Peacebuilding

Armed conflicts, disasters, and climate crises are transforming many cities with large-scale destruction, displacement, and profound social fragmentation. The systematic destruction of homes and neighborhoods not only causes massive internal displacement but also highlights how recovery and reconstruction processes risk reproducing pre-existing inequalities. Although women and girls are among those most affected by the loss of homes, security, and livelihoods, and are key actors in supporting communities, organizing assistance, and advocating for housing and land rights, their leadership and knowledge remain insufficiently recognized in formal reconstruction frameworks. This networking event aims to promote a feminist and human rights-based perspective on urban recovery in post-conflict and post-disaster contexts. It challenges models that treat housing primarily as a technical or financial resource and instead frames housing reconstruction as a profound social and political process, in which power, voice, care, and access to employment and rights are at stake. The event will present concrete experiences in which women's organizations, community groups, and local actors contribute to recovery and peacebuilding by protecting housing, land, and property rights, preventing secondary displacement, and addressing the risks of gender-based violence in displaced and informal urban settings, with particular reference to the European context. Through this exchange of concrete experiences, the session will explore how urban and housing reconstruction strategies can go beyond a gender-neutral approach and discuss how cities, governments, and partners can concretely support gender mainstreaming and gender-responsive housing recovery. By promoting dialogue and building alliances across sectors and regions, the event aims to contribute to a transformative vision of post-crisis reconstruction, since placing women and girls at the center of housing reconstruction is not only a matter of inclusion, but a political necessity for building just, resilient, and democratic cities, as well as for achieving sustainable peace. Objectives • Strengthen connections and alliances between women-led organizations, community groups, national and local governments, professionals, and international actors engaged in urban recovery, reconstruction, and peacebuilding. • Highlight and share concrete practices of women's leadership in housing, land and property rights, neighborhood reconstruction, care, and community-led recovery in post-conflict and post-disaster contexts. • Promote feminist and rights-based approaches to housing reconstruction that address structural inequalities, support care and reduce the risk of gender-based violence. • Shared understanding of housing reconstruction as a peacebuilding process, essential for social cohesion, care, accountability, and long-term urban resilience. • Develop a checklist of actions and policy recommendations for access to housing, including temporary housing, public spaces, services and transportation, aiming to stimulate structural change in urban planning, focused on women's and youth approaches considering the New European Bauhaus, Agenda 2030 and NUA visions.