In a world increasingly affected by conflict, election seasons are particularly vulnerable to violence. Gender justice movements have been critical in opening up discussions around volatile elections. The City University of New York’s Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace (IGLTP) is committed to empowering these movements as they face increasingly turbulent election cycles. Established as a CUNY institute in fall 2023, IGLTP, a joint partnership between CUNY School of Law and Brooklyn College, is a nexus of thought leadership that bridges grassroots peace movements with policymaking and academia. A crucial initiative of the Institute is its student fellowship program for current CUNY students. The fellowship immerses students in hands-on experiences and training focused on participatory action research and documentation practices. In November 2024, two Brooklyn College fellows and political science majors, Diana Reyes ’25 and Francesca Phanius ’25, traveled to Ghana with Institute staff to attend a three-day forum that gathered movement leaders, experts, and policymakers from across Africa to tackle pressing issues related to electoral violence. Election Campaigns as Collective Care: A Global Forum was designed and facilitated by Institute Executive Director, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and 2022 Brooklyn College Honorary Degree recipient Leymah Gbowee, Institute Managing Director Dr. Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, and three expert regional facilitators—with input from the forum’s expert participants collected through pre-workshop interviews. The convening was the second Global Forum since the Institute’s founding, and was co-sponsored by the African Women’s Development Fund. Francesca Phanius “We met with women activists from countries plagued by violence and unrest around elections—Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, South Sudan, and Kenya—as well as other African countries,” says Phanius. “Our assignment was to learn from—so we could later amplify—the voices of the activists, peace workers, and community leaders,” documenting the expertise of the forum participants. Phanius learned from the participants’ knowledge and the contextual background they brought to the forum, and emphasized how their direct experiences should be further amplified across transnational academic, organizing, and policymaking spaces. “They bring [the] cultural knowledge of their countries and people that you can only get from lived experience. They bring the nuances,” says Phanius. Diana Reyes says the fellowship was a unique opportunity to explore notions of peace and advocacy in a context outside of the United States, offering valuable insights into efforts for social change across Africa. Diana Reyes “Being in the same room with experts in fields such as human rights, peacebuilding, free speech, gender-based violence, and youth organizing was a remarkable experience that allowed me to listen to meaningful intergenerational conversations and learn directly from those at the forefront of this work,” says Reyes, who is a program and community-building Federman Fellow at the Immigrant Student Success Office at Brooklyn College. The student participants are each authoring original blog pieces featuring the lessons learned from expert forum participants that will be posted on IGLTP’s website. Reyes and Phanius are both looking to pursue careers in law. “My role as an IGLTP fellow was to actively listen and help document the stories and wisdom shared at the forum, primarily from Liberia and Sierra Leone,” says Reyes. “My blog focuses on law and its place in advocacy discussions. I want to amplify the voices of others and hope to continue to do so in the future.” “I’m writing about the role of emotions in activist spaces,” says Phanius. “There was singing and dancing in between the serious work. Real joy. I realize that although activist spaces aren’t usually associated with joy, joy can be an emotion used to sustain activists. It is an effective strategy.” Phanius is interested in creating similar empowering spaces for young Black women and plans to pursue an academic or research-focused role in activism before attending law school. She also wishes that the next cohort of IGLTP fellows will have the same “life-changing” experience. “Young women, especially young Black women, don’t always have these kinds of opportunities. I want others to experience what we did at least once in their lives.”
