Speaker Information

Opening Session

Keynote Speech

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini

  • Founder and CEO, International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, is the Founder and CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). With nearly 30 years’ experience, she is a globally recognised thought-leader and practitioner in the field of Women, Peace and Security (WPS), whose career combines pioneering research, institutional innovation, grassroots leadership and policy influence. In 2000, she was among the civil-society architects behind UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — the landmark UN resolution that first placed women’s meaningful participation in peace and security processes at the centre of global policy.

Her book, Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters (Lynne Rienner, 2007), remains foundational in documenting women’s contributions to peacebuilding and shaping the discourse that links lived experience to structural change.

At ICAN Ms. Naraghi Anderlini leads the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), globally connecting over 85 local women-led organisations in 42 countries, and established the only independent multi-donor fund dedicated to women-led peacebuilding—ICAN’s Innovative Peace Fund (IPF). The IPF has disbursed over $10M to women's peacebuilding organizations in over 30 countries to date.

Her practical and institutional experience ranges from the UN to local contexts: she served as the first Senior Expert on Gender and Inclusion for the United Nations Mediation Standby Team (working in Somalia, Libya, Syria and other contexts), advised UN DPPA, UNFPA and member-states, and has trained hundreds of UN personnel, mediators and government officials in gender-responsive peace-process design, led missions into Maoist camps in Nepal and gangland neighborhoods in Jamaica.

She holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and is a Richard von Weizsacker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. She has taught at Georgetown and Columbia universities and led the LSE's Women Peace and Security Centre for 2 years. In 2020 she was honoured in the United Kingdom with the title of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to international peacebuilding and women’s rights.

SanamNaraghi Anderlini is Iranian born and a British citizen. She speaks four languages and is mother to 24-year-old identical twin girls. She is also host of the podcast 'If You Were in Charge'.

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