1325 PEACEWOMEN E-newsLETTER 1ST Anniversary Comments
JUNE 2003
Featured in 1325 PeaceWomen E-News Issue 25

To mark the first anniversary, PeaceWomen asked our readers, as members of the community of organizations working on women, peace and security issues, and Resolution 1325 in particular, to offer their reflections on how the newsletter has contributed to their own work and has informed their own advocacy efforts over the past year. PeaceWomen compiled some of these reflections below:


• Angela King
Assistant Secretary-General, Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women

The NGO community has played a very important and effective role in raising awareness about Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) of 31 October 2000 and keeping it high on the international agenda. The WILPF team should be congratulated for the diligent work they have done in producing the electronic Peacewomen Newsletter over the last year and being a central gathering point for information exchange and sharing. I especially appreciate the work they have done to translate the SC resolution 1325 into many different languages - now over 20 - so that women the world over can read this historic resolution.

• Noeleen Heyzer
Executive Director, UNIFEM

Congratulations PeaceWomen!!

When I spoke to the General Assembly Third Committee in 2001, I praised your website for "providing ample evidence that women offered a unique and vital vision of a way forward", toward long term solutions to terror and senseless violence.

It is now two years later, and your information services have only improved. The PeaceWomen website is looking better than ever, and the bi-weekly email news is proving extremely useful to women all over the world, including UNIFEM staff in the field and at headquarters.

By providing timely analysis, links and reports from the NGO community, you are educating a wide readership on the full range of urgently relevant issues to be found in the women, peace and security agenda - from early warning and prevention to peacekeeping to reconstruction. The information and the momentum you are providing by sharing ideas, achievements and inspiration is an enormous contribution towards the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1325. I am pleased that your skills and outreach will be added to UNIFEM's new web portal on Women, War and Peace to be launched in September 2003.

• Kate Burns
Senior Social Affairs Officer - Women Peace and Security, Office of the Special Adviser for Gender Issues and Advancement of Women

For someone who has just joined Angela King's Office in March 2003, I have found the Peacewomen newsletter very informative - a good wrap-up of the work of the many actors striving to move ahead the agenda on women, peace and security and Security Council resolution 1325. I congratulate the WILPF team on the very important information sharing work that they do.

• Isha Dyfan
Program Director, Human Rights, Human Security and Peace Building, International Women's Tribune Center

Congratulations on the first anniversary of 1325 PeaceWomen E-News. It has been useful in reminding us to send our information on the web and share it with other members on the list. Keep up the good work of maintaining the visibility and encouraging action on this important resolution.


• Anne S. Walker
Special Projects Coordinator, International Women’s Tribune Center, Australia

I find the 1325 PeaceWomen E-Newsletter an invaluable resource, especially now that I am so far from the UN and no longer able to hear first hand what is happening with peace lobbying activities there. You are all doing a fantastic job in keeping people around the world in touch with the latest news on the implementation of 1325 and I congratulate you for all your hard work. Thank you so much

• Aningina Tshefu Bibiane
Peace activist, Democratic Republic of the Congo

For me, 1325 PeaceWomen E-News is a channel for the transmission of information and the exchange of experiences between women working in peace and security. PeaceWomen’s E-News is important because it disseminates information about peacewomen initiatives in the world which are not disseminated by the traditional media. PeaceWomen’s E-news is an opportunity to increase peacewomen's visibility.

• Mikele Aboitiz
Former WILPF PeaceWomen Program Associate

I have seen PeaceWomen grow from a sketch on a piece of paper to a comprehensive program that has encouraged and strengthened women's communication around SC Resolution 1325. Women around the world now have the resolution available in over 20 languages, they can find out about what the UN and other women are doing with this resolution, they can read analysis at many levels regarding women and peace, they can contact each other through the PeaceWomen database, and most importantly for the last year, they have been informed about the progress of the implementation of this monumental resolution thanks to the PeaceWomen E-Newsletter.

The PeaceWomen team works hard every day to ensure that the sharing of information is accurate and timely, and that this information is useful for the full implementation of SC 1325. The PeaceWomen E-Newsletter has been key to performing this task, by delivering strategic information to members of NGO's, diplomats, activists and academics. WILPF was instrumental in the passing of the resolution in October 2000 and now this organization is ensuring that the words of the resolution turn into action, just like the PeaceWomen project did.