25 May 2026
Bilbao
Women from across academia and social activism, including several from the University of Deusto, took part in the 15th International Women’s Worlds Congress, held in the Basque Country (Gernika and Bilbao) from 20 to 24 May 2026. This year’s central theme was “Women and Peaces”, in the plural, recognising the many different ways in which women contribute to a culture of peace.
The University of Deusto was one of the main host venues, welcoming numerous sessions in spaces including the Garate Room, the Barandiaran Room and various classrooms across its buildings. The congress, led by Gernika Gogoratuz and Gernikatik Mundura, was distinctive in having been co-designed by women’s*, feminist and peace organisations from the Basque Country, Colombia and Mozambique. It was the outcome of a collective process known as the “Internationalist Women for Peace Seedbed”, through which women, grassroots groups and organisations have strengthened alliances and sown ideas around the concept of “peaces” – in the plural and rooted in everyday life.
At the opening ceremony, Ane Ferran Zubillaga, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, highlighted the significant contribution made by the University community. Among the most notable sessions, she drew attention to the roundtable entitled “Collective Subjects for the Peaces: Indigenous Institutions, Territorial Defence and the Sustainability of Life in Abya Yala”*. One of the leaders of the University of Deusto’s Human Rights Education Programme for Indigenous Leaders from Latin America took part in this session. With more than 25 years of experience, the programme is delivered in collaboration with the Basque Government – Basque Agency for Cooperation and Solidarity – and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and has trained almost 200 participants to date. The session was introduced by Carolina de León and chaired by Asier Martínez de Bringas, both from the Pedro Arrupe Human Rights Institute.
Among the University of Deusto participants were Tonka Marić, who analysed memorialisation initiatives and restorative justice led by women’s associations in the Western Balkans following the Yugoslav Wars; Annelisse Villa, from the Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree, and Izaskun Sáez de la Fuente, from the Centre for Applied Ethics, who took part in the panel “Critical memory of violence to rethink peace”; María López Belloso, who presented on “Everyday peace and dignified care”; Itziar Gandarias and Raquel Royo Prieto, who delivered the workshop “(Re)thinking care strategies together through feminist self-defence”; and Irene Pérez-Tirado and Álvaro Ramírez Calvo, who presented a systematic review of the challenges faced by women researchers in conflict settings.
