By 
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.
UN Women’s goal in Liberia is to promote women’s human rights and gender equality which are key in sustaining and furthering achievements in stability and development. In this regard, its programming in the Country is connected to five corporate priority areas: women’s leadership and political participation (WPP); enhancing women’s economic empowerment (WEE); engaging women in all aspects of peace and security processes (WPS), advancing women’s rights to live free from violence (EVAW) and Gender Responsive Governance. In addition, UN Women also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s joint work in advancing gender equality.
As part of its WPS programming in Liberia, UN Women has been providing support to Peace Huts. The Peace Huts are structures created by women to provide counseling for those that had experienced grief and trauma as well as supporting ex-child soldiers after the civil war. UN Women has supported the peace huts since 2009 in different areas, including construction and capacity building to support women in Peace Huts to become recognized brokers of peace, mediation and negotiation in communities. With our partners, UN Women has supported the Peace Hut women to strengthen their capacities in a comprehensive set of skills including peace building, leadership, conflict mitigation, SGBV prevention and response, gender, women’s rights, natural resource management, and HIV/AIDS prevention.
In 2017, The UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), UN Women, and The World Bank (WB) embarked on a joint comparative study to explore the cost-benefit utilities and effectiveness of Liberia’s Peace Huts in preventing conflict, violence and strengthening peace. The study concluded that development and peace building related interventions around the Peace Hut Women of Liberia will need to focus on building their capacity to become an integrated center for knowledge acquisition and empowerment on key women, peace and security commitments; to develop their long term project priorities and strategies; and enhance their skills for leadership and coordination with various stakeholders including government institutions; broker networking opportunities between peace huts and other key stakeholders for greater collaboration as well as support in the documentation and visibility of their contributions.
UN Women’s leadership and political participation pillar has incorporated this recommendation into the “Supporting Community Engagement on Women’s Political Participation” project, which will strengthen coordination, capacity building, and support to Peace Huts and other local women’s associations so that they can become more actively involved in peacebuilding and conflict resolution and exercise their voice and agency from clan to town, district, county, to national governance. It will also strengthen the capacities of community women to contribute meaningfully to prevention and response to Violence Against Women in Elections and Politics (VAWIE/P). AWP Output 1.1.3 requires coordination mechanisms for women in peacebuilding and political participation established and/or strengthened. One of the activities delivering on this output is to hire a consultant to develop a political engagement and coordination strategy for CSOs working on women’s political participation with peace hut women.
Comments