Quhramaana Kakar is a distinguished peace strategist mediator, and leadership development expert, with more than 20-year career focused on peacebuilding and women’s leadership, particularly in conflict and post-conflict regions like Afghanistan. She has gained a reputation for her expertise in strategizing peace leadership, advocating for women’s and youth’s roles in peace processes, and fostering inclusive decision-making frameworks.
As a senior strategic advisor to the Women Mediators across the Commonwealth network, Quhramaana leads initiatives that connect local realities with global peace efforts, ensuring the voices of women and marginalised groups are heard in key diplomatic spaces. She is also the founding director of Women for Peace and Participation, an organisation supporting women’s leadership in the diaspora and locally in Afghanistan, which focuses on addressing women's needs in conflict settings, including trauma responses and leadership development.
Quhramaana has worked closely with women leaders from Afghanistan at all levels—local, national, and international (including in the diaspora)—to address their needs, including leadership skills, access to spaces, and trauma recovery. Her work bridges these efforts, from local peacebuilding to global negotiations, ensuring that women’s perspectives are central to peace processes. Over the past three years, she has been leading a strategic process to provide pathway for meaningful inclusion of women in all decision-making spaces. At the same time providing support to enhance local agency of Afghan women and youth and building their resilience and capacity in addressing issues of protection of women and girls.
A visiting fellow at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics, she is also a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol, where she is researching the role of women in peacebuilding and mediation in Afghanistan. Her scholarship and fieldwork focus on the intersection of gender, conflict, and peace processes, particularly in Afghanistan’s complex socio-political environment.
Despite being displaced, Quhramaana has remained an influential voice in both local and international peace efforts. She has continued to drive change by reshaping policy attitudes toward women in exile, highlighting the critical role that displaced women and communities play in the broader peacebuilding process. Through her work, she emphasizes that the lived experiences of displaced populations offer valuable insights for shaping a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Quhramaana’s resilience in the face of personal adversity further strengthens her leadership, allowing her to advocate for a more inclusive and representative approach to peace and security on the global stage. Her experience underscores the importance of incorporating the voices of women in exile and the broader diaspora, whose contributions to peacebuilding and the rebuilding of societies are often underappreciated.