Amplifying Local Women’s Meaningful Participation And Root Cause Analysis For Sustainable Peace

By Ines Boussebaa, Research and Communications Fellow

Joy Onyesoh of WILPF addresses the Opening Session of the PGA’s High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace (Photo Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider)

On 24-25 April 2018, the President of the General Assembly (PGA) convened a High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace to assess efforts undertaken and opportunities to strengthen the United Nations’ work on peacebuilding and sustaining peace. WILPF engaged in advocacy to strengthen operational and policy coherence for peace by leveraging synergies between the Women, Peace and Security and Sustainable Peace Agendas. As the UN strives to achieve sustainable peace through an integrated approach that moves from crisis response toward conflict prevention, it must ensure women’s meaningful participation and integrate local women’s root cause analysis as central to its work.

WILPF was successful, as our our calls for action were strongly recognised and came up across the Sustaining Peace discussions. WILPF International Vice President and WILPF Nigeria President, Joy Onyesoh, addressed the opening session of the High-Level Meeting. She spoke of the need to stop top-down approaches and instead take a bottom-up approach that supports local women’s meaningful participation, prioritizes women civil society partnerships, and amplifies local women’s root cause analysis for sustainable and feminist peace. At a dialogue on national experiences around gender and sustaining peace, she also spoke about how women in Nigeria contribute to sustaining peace through Women’s Situation Room Nigeria and highlighted how overcoming barriers to gender equality, including by curbing arms, is key to conflict prevention.

Read more about the President of the General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Sustaining Peace here>>

Read the Civil Society Statement delivered by Joy Onyesoh at the Opening Segment of the High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace here>>

Read WILPF analysis of the 2017 High-Level Dialogue on Sustaining Peace here>> and the November 2017 UNSCR1325 Group of Friends Meeting on Sustaining Peace and Women, Peace and Security here>>