When is Peace?Women’s Post-Accord Experiences in Three Countries What Has Happened to Women’s Hopes for Peace in Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Israel-Palestine?

Peace is elusive. I don’t mean that it eludes us in a practical sense – we think we have it, and then war returns. This is often so, of course. No. I mean in the sense that it’s difficult to be sure what conditions we may confidently say add up to a time of peace. In 1995-6 I went to interview peace-minded women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine. It was a time when peace agreements were in the air. In early 2012 I went back to revisit as many of the original women as I could find, and to ask them what had flowed from that hopeful moment. I wanted to find out how their campaigns had fared in the intervening years – and what had become of peace.