As a Graduate Worker at the University of Dayton's Human Rights Center, my daily work centers on understanding how communities define and experience safety. Through conversations, fieldwork, and observing how people define what it means to feel safe, I’ve learned that security is not simply the absence of violence or the presence of military power. Security is the extent to which people, especially women, can access resources, move freely, participate in decision-making, and live with dignity and without fear.
Approaching global security questions from this community-centered lens shapes how I interpret discussions about peace and instability. Ambassador Bonnie Denise Jenkins’ visit to UD brought these connections into sharper focus. Her leadership in diplomacy, nonproliferation, and women’s empowerment highlighted how the Women, Peace & Security (WPS) agenda must evolve to confront emerging threats that are rapidly transforming our world. These issues may appear technical or distant, but their consequences are profoundly gendered and deeply local.
Below are reflections shaped by her insights and grounded in my own experiences working at HRC.
-
Nuclear Stability Is a Human and Gendered Security Issue
Nuclear politics is often framed as a technical negotiation among states, but its consequences unfold in communities, particularly in the lives of women. Instability disrupts access to health care and social services, expands caregiving responsibilities, increases exposure to violence, and deepens economic precarity.
Through community listening, I see how fragile support systems already are. When global nuclear tensions rise, whether through the collapse of treaties or renewed weapons competition, those vulnerabilities intensify. A modern WPS approach must treat nuclear governance as a matter of human security. Women must shape not only peacebuilding efforts but also the diplomatic and policy decisions that influence global stability.
-
Emerging Technologies Are Rewriting the Rules of Conflict
Artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and biotechnology are advancing faster than our policy structures can regulate them. Ambassador Jenkins emphasized the urgent need to ensure that these technologies do not undermine humanitarian norms or human rights.
From a WPS standpoint, several concerns stand out:
- AI systems may misidentify civilians because of biased or incomplete data.
- Autonomous weapons may make life-and-death decisions without human judgment.
- Expanding surveillance can reinforce gendered forms of control and limit women’s autonomy.
Digital inequities already burden marginalized communities. Without women and underrepresented groups in positions of influence, emerging technologies risk amplifying existing inequalities rather than correcting them. A WPS lens insists that innovation must be grounded in equity, transparency, and accountability.
-
Space and Cyber Infrastructure Shape Everyday Safety
Ambassador Jenkins raised concerns rarely discussed in human rights spaces: the militarization of space and the fragility of undersea fiber-optic cables, which carry nearly all global data and communication.
These issues may seem abstract, but their impacts are immediate and gendered.
A cyberattack that disables banking systems, crisis hotlines, or communication networks is not merely technical, it becomes a crisis of mobility, safety, and survival for women. Communities already facing instability experience compounded harm.
Reliable communication infrastructure is essential to community resilience. As global cyber and space systems grow more vulnerable, the WPS agenda must recognize these domains as core pillars of human security. Protecting them is essential to women’s agency, safety, and participation in public life.
-
Climate Security and the Arctic: Expanding the Definition of Peace
Climate change is reshaping global politics, resource competition, and patterns of displacement. Ambassador Jenkins highlighted how the Arctic, once largely inaccessible, is emerging as a zone of geopolitical tension as melting ice reveals minerals, shipping routes, and land.
These pressures produce deeply gendered consequences, especially for Indigenous and rural women, who face:
- threats to land, culture, and livelihood,
- environmental and extractive-industry harms, and
- increased caregiving and mobility burdens during climate shocks.
Community partners often describe environmental precarity, housing instability, food insecurity, and transportation disruptions. These local stories echo a global truth: climate insecurity deepens gender inequality, and gender inequality intensifies vulnerability to environmental harm.
A modern WPS agenda must integrate climate justice, Indigenous rights, and environmental governance as central, not peripheral, security issues.
-
Inclusive Leadership Is Essential to Global Stability
One of the most explicit messages from Ambassador Jenkins’ visit is the need for inclusive leadership across all areas of global security. Women, especially women of color, remain underrepresented in nuclear diplomacy, cybersecurity, climate negotiations, and technology governance.
Strengthening the WPS agenda requires:
- building leadership pathways for women in emerging security fields,
- integrating gender analysis into all levels of policy,
- elevating women most affected by insecurity, and
- ensuring women help define, not merely respond to, the future of global security.
This aligns deeply with HRC’s mission as well. In my work, I witness daily how diverse leadership transforms dialogue and how inclusive decision-making produces more grounded, humane, and sustainable solutions.
Conclusion: A WPS Agenda for a Changing World
What stayed with me after Ambassador Jenkins’ visit was not just the scope of the issues she described, but the clarity with which she connected them back to human dignity. It made me think about the women I meet through my work, women navigating uncertainty, making impossible choices, and building community in places where systems fall short.
Her insights helped me recognize that the work we do at the HRC, though rooted in Dayton, is part of a global story. Every dataset we examine, every conversation we hold, every relationship we build contributes to a broader vision of peace, one where women are not just included, but centered.
The future of WPS depends on leaders who are willing to listen deeply and act boldly. I hope to carry that into my own journey: learning from communities, lifting up their voices, and remembering that security is not something delivered from above, but something created together.
Romeha Rafay Mufti is an MBA student at the University of Dayton and a Graduate Fellow in Peace, Justice, and Dialogue at the Human Rights Center. Guided by curiosity and a belief in the power of people’s stories, she works to understand how communities navigate challenge, hope, and possibility. Her graduate journey reflects her broader commitment: building a world where dignity and connection shape the way we lead and solve problems.