Women, Peace and Security Champion Profile: Emma Leslie

Author: Jocelyn Pederick

Individuals and organizations who are championing the Women, Peace and Security agenda in Asia and the Pacific are being profiled by UN Women – online and in our 2025 desktop calendar – to mark the agenda’s 25th anniversary.

For over three decades, Australian-Cambodian peacebuilder Emma Leslie, PhD has promoted stability across Asia. She is a leader of key peacebuilding organizations and has played significant roles in peace processes in the Philippines, Myanmar, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

What does the women, peace and security agenda mean to you today?

What we often saw was a pattern: we were invited to global conferences to speak about the challenges of being a woman in peace negotiations. But the deeper issue wasn’t capability. Women already had the skills and experience. What we lacked was space to step forward and lead.

The agenda opened that space. So now we’re initiating our own processes, taking leadership. If we know we can make a difference, then we should step in and do the work rather than wait to be invited into some closed-door negotiation among power brokers.

What is the role of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies that you founded in Cambodia?

The centre has become a central gathering point for people from the Asia and beyond, offering a rich learning environment for understanding the complexities of peace processes.

We also built a peace museum in Battambang called the Cambodia Peace Gallery, designed to help a new generation appreciate the fragility of peace. A peace museum helps people understand that structural violence happens over decades, not just during a three-year regime. It encourages critical thinking about root causes and what still needs to be addressed to create lasting peace.

Can you explain your work with Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators?

When we work together at our best, we expand our collective impact. That principle informs how we facilitate peace processes, teach mediation, and more.

We launched the Southeast Asia Women Ambassadors’ Forum. It provides a space where women ambassadors from across the region can come together to talk about the challenges they’re facing in preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention. They support one another, build their networks, and create pathways for other women to engage in peace and security work.

What are the biggest challenges right now to making the women, peace and security agenda a reality?

We’re entering a new era. It’s definitely more securitized and militarized, shaped by geopolitical dynamics and the diversion of resources elsewhere.

The real challenge now is constantly pivoting and responding to shifting dynamics just to keep doing the work. Funding is also changing. But we can’t disappear — we can’t afford to. We need to be realistic about what’s coming and let that push us to be more creative, frugal and collaborative.

What are your hopes for the future of peace and security in the region?

One of my mantras is moving beyond “big man mediation” and multitrack diplomacy -- that we need someone to fly out of New York to be the special envoy, the big mediator who brings the parties together.

In a feminist model of mediation, it’s systemic and networked. We can unlock power, connection and possibility if we work across systems and inject positive energy into them.

I don’t want to keep claiming that women are inherently better at this. That’s not necessarily true. But feminism is about addressing patriarchy and power. The mediation models we need now must be feminist.