Open Day on Women, Peace and Security stimulates meaningful discussions between beneficiaries and UN System representatives
Date:
For the fourth consecutive year, UN Women in cooperation with the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, UNDP and DPA have organized an Open Day on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
Over 50 representatives of women’s grassroots organizations, Internally Displaced (IDP) and conflicted affected women living in the villages from Samegrelo, Shida Kartli, Imereti and Kvemo Karti regions in vicinity of the dividing lines with Georgia-Abkhazia and Georgia-South Ossetia, were brought together to discuss with the UN representatives the progress and challenges of the implementation of WPS in Georgia.
Georgia is the first country in the South Caucasus, which has adopted the National Action Plan on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Yet, as the recent CSO monitoring of the NAP shows, several concerns of IDP and conflict affected women have remained unaddressed. Among them localization of WPS agenda, adequate allocation of resources for grassroots organizations working on conflict prevention, and institutionalization of a mechanism for grassroots women participation in NAP development. As Mamuka Gachechiladze from NGO Women’s Information Center, said “these are the pre-conditions making grassroots women’s participation in peacebuilding and decision-making meaningful and the impact of the NAP visible and measurable for all”.
Ambassador Antti Turunen, the Representative of the UN Secretary General to the Geneva International Discussions, emphasized the importance of women’s increased participation in decision-making and peace processes in general, as well as the centrality of gender parity for an ongoing UN System reform. He recognized that there is space for mainstreaming gender perspective in the official Geneva discussions - a multilateral mediation forum to address security and humanitarian consequences of the 2008 conflict (GID), as well as in the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms (IPRM) meetings.
While highlighting the UN system’s support and positive achievements such as financial and technical support to conflict affected population and women’s CSOs, technical support to the government to implement WPS agenda, and creation of spaces for regular dialogues between grassroots women, the government, participants of GID and IPRM, the UN Resident Coordinator Niels Scott pinpointed, that there is still work to be done: despite UN advocacy and technical assistance, the NAP failed to be budgeted, and conflict affected women’s and communities living along dividing lines request for more attention to be paid to their special needs through targeted programmes and services have not been fully met.
Open Days on Women, Peace and Security are organized annually by UN Women in cooperation with the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, UNDP and DPA. The findings and recommendations from the Open Day inform further advocacy work and technical support of UN system to national partners, especially to grassroots, IPD and conflict affected women - in line with respective UN agencies, programmes, funds and entities’ mandates and commitments under UNPSD and nationalized SDGs.