Community Empowerment for Peace and Development (CEPAD) is a national, woman-founded and women-led non-profit organisation established in 2014 and headquartered in Arua City, West Nile, Uganda. Since its inception, CEPAD has built a strong operational presence across the West Nile sub-region, working in both host and refugee communities to address complex and interrelated drivers of conflict and vulnerability.CEPAD is legally registered to operate across Uganda and functions as a membership-based civil society organisation committed to advancing sustainable peace, social justice, and inclusive development.At its core, CEPAD is a peacebuilding and conflict transformation organisation with a clear mandate to address the structural and proximate drivers of conflict, including inequality, social exclusion, gender injustice, weak governance systems, and competition over natural resources. The organisation’s programming is therefore designed to strengthen local capacities for conflict prevention, enhance social cohesion, and build resilient communities capable of managing disputes peacefully and sustainably. 

CEPAD is grounded in a feminist and rights-based approach to development and peacebuilding. This approach is informed by the recognition that conflict dynamics are deeply shaped by unequal power relations and structural inequalities, particularly those affecting women, youth, and other marginalised groups.Within this framework, CEPAD prioritises the promotion of women’s leadership and agency in peacebuilding and governance processes, alongside