A ceasefire is only the start, because peace lasts through grassroots movements rooted in local culture, with women in leading roles. Ordinary women can be trained for this with simple exercises that teach them about conflict and why they belong in resolving it. What organisers do by instinct can later be named as a discipline: strategic peacebuilding.
In a long war the worst harms land on women and girls: forced marriage, rape, assault and forced pregnancy, along with watching their daughters and mothers raped and their children kill and be killed. Seeing that they suffer most is what can turn private bitterness into organised action.
A peace movement can stand on plain tiredness, not ideology: tired of running, of begging for food aid, of children being raped. Stating that shared fatigue aloud, for the sake of the children's future, gives people from opposing camps a claim nobody can easily argue with.
Christian and Muslim women joined in one nonviolent movement by putting what they suffered in common ahead of their different faiths. They protested publicly, confronted both the president and the rebel warlords, and even held a sex strike. Faith itself stayed a source of daily strength, since lasting change needs someone people can call on every day, whatever that figure's name.
When the guns stop, what is left is a broken society: young men who don't know who they are without a gun, neighbours who turned on each other, and a whole population traumatised. Moving fast from innocence into fear strips a person down, piece by piece, until only bone is left. Healing needs a place far from those who expect you to be strong, where crying is not thought strange.