The year 2020 represents a milestone in efforts to promote and protect women's rights, both globally and continentally. It marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, the twentieth anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325; the seventeenth anniversary of the Maputo Protocol, and the sixteenth anniversary of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SDGEA).
The anniversary of UNSCR 1325, in particular, provides a useful platform for a clarion call to accelerate efforts to achieve the goals of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda. UNSCR 1325 also provides a powerful normative framework to galvanise multi-faceted and multi-level action to ensure that women's needs, voices and perspectives in preventing, resolving and recovering from conflict and building sustainable peace are effectively represented.
There is no doubt that some progress has been made in advancing the women, peace and security agenda on the continent. However, more needs to be done, particularly to reduce the gender gap in interventions related to peace and security. Structural barriers still inhibit women's participation, while the absence and non-use of gender-disaggregated data results in disorganised analyses and masks the impact of plans, programmes and actions to improve gender equality. Similarly, the lack of gender-disaggregated data renders invisible women's real contribution to progress in all spheres of life.
It is in this context that the Gender Peace and Security Programme (GPSP), in collaboration with the Training for Peace Programme (TfP) Africa, as well as the Gender and Peace and Security Clusters of the Economic Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC), are launching a campaign on the 20th anniversary of UNSCR 1325. The campaign will take stock of the progress made in implementing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda on the continent, the challenges faced and the way forward to address these challenges. The campaign, entitled "My Voice, My Action", is proposed to have three main components:
- To identify useful lessons in the efforts of the African Union and its member states to promote women's rights and gender equality, in order to build on the progress made;
- Recognise and document the role and contributions of civil society organisations (CSOs), in particular those working on women's issues, in implementing the MP agenda; and
- Call for improved efforts to promote and protect women's rights through more gender-responsive decision-making, guided by gender-sensitive reporting.
In view of this, we are launching a call for applications for all African CSOs interested in being part of the campaign and actively involved in the WPS agenda.
CRITERIA
ELIGIBILITY CSOs seeking to present their
applications must meet the following eligibility requirements: 1. be a national, regional or continental CSO engaged in the areas of women, peace and security;
2. Have objectives and principles that are consistent with the principles and objectives of the African Union, as set out in Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitutive Act;
3. Be registered in a member state of the African Union;
4. CSOs who discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, tribe, ethnicity, race or political basis will be barred from participating in the campaign;
5. Adherence to the Code of Ethics and Conduct for CSOs affiliated to or working with the African Union.
REGISTRATION
All CSOs interested in taking part in the campaign are asked to send the following:
1. A short introduction to the organisation and its mandate;
2. 2-3 main achievements or success stories of the organisation in relation to one of the four pillars of UNSCR 1325 (participation, prevention, protection, relief and recovery). Be specific about the impact the work has had in the area of the selected pillar, and how an intervention has resulted in real impact on women's lived experiences;
3. 2-3 recommendations on how to ensure sustained progress in implementing the women, peace and security agenda. This component can draw on lessons learnt from interventions that have been tried but not succeeded, and aims to take productive stock of the challenges and even failures encountered in the context of women, peace and security, as a basis for designing more successful interventions;
4. Media representation (images or videos) of the selected organisations working on the selected pillar.
Both achievements and recommendations should draw on and represent accounts of lived experiences in the field of women, peace and security. Candidates are strongly encouraged to reflect the "My Voice, My Action" theme of the campaign by narrating their success stories, lessons learnt and recommendations through the voices and experiences of the women whose lives they seek to impact and improve in relation to UNSCR 1325. Applicants are encouraged to "tell the story" of these women through real-life narratives that can be captured in writing or in other visual media, such as photography. In making the selection, the principles of geographical parity will be applied.
All submissions must be included in a single document (word/PDF) and sent to the following e-mail address myvoicemyaction@africa-union.org under the subject line "MY VOICE MY ACTION- CSO APPLICATION"
The closing date for submitting applications with all supporting documents is 30 September 2020. Applications received after this deadline will not be considered.
More info at:
https://au.int/en/announcements/20200905/call-application-my-voice-my-action-cso-application
