The Women and Armed Conflicts Observatory, member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (body with consultative status with UN ECOSOC, UNCTAD and UNESCO; Special consultative relations with UNICEF, FAO and ILO), is created, by the end of 2007, within the Galizan Institute for International Security and Peace Studies, a non-profit-making non-governmental organization for development, created to undertake interdisciplinary research in the areas of peace studies, security, international relations and conflict prevention and resolution, combined with actions on the field of education and cooperation for development in those regions most affected by armed conflict. 
In this sense, conscious that only appreciation of women's roles within the surrounding androcentric historiography can make possible a democratic, rightful and developed society, the Institute launched a new line of research, headed by the Women and Armed Conflicts Observatory and centred in the acknowledgment and analysis of the need for women taking active part in decision-making processes, related to conflict prevention and resolution, also reporting situations of unjustice and suffering to which this always forgotten and underestimated population group is specially subjected to in time of war.

Since its creation, the team responsible for the Observatory has been working in the elaboration of a wide programme of activities, to be developed initially during 2007 and 2008, focusing in different aspects related to women's presence in armed conflicts, and essentialy based in United Nations 1325 Resolution, approved by its Security Council on the 31st of October 2000, after several years of debates on gender issues related to the field of peace and international seurity.

With these actions, the Institute seeks to uncover and promote debates through a series of workshops, conferences, exhibitions, publications and public awareness campaigns on these issues, not only because of their controversial nature, but because they have increasingly demanded more attention from authorities and civil society as a whole.