Date: 27-10-2022Time: 8:30am - 10:00am ESTLocation: Hybrid
Concept Note
Hybrid Informal Expert-Level Roundtable
Background
Insufficient quality financing for women-led peacebuilding continues to be one of the major challenges to the impactful implementation of peacebuilding and sustaining peace. Without adequate, flexible, predictable and sustainable financial mechanisms, local women peacebuilders cannot realise their full potential to prevent conflicts and build sustainable peace. Continued reliance on cumbersome project funding, where the expectations are set for and not with women peacebuilders, prevents them from exercising full ownership over their work to advance inclusive and sustainable peace. This is compounded by the many structural barriers faced by diverse women peacebuilders in accessing funds to support their peacebuilding efforts.
The UN General Assembly resolution on Financing for Peacebuilding (A/RES/76/305), adopted on 12 September 2022, recognises the gap in the meaningful inclusion of women in decision-making. Subsequently, the resolution "urges efforts to fund initiatives that integrate women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in the planning, implementation and reporting of peacebuilding and sustaining peace at all levels” (OP6). The consensus-based adoption of this resolution presents an opportunity to shift the current funding infrastructure in a way that places diverse women peacebuilders at the centre of peacebuilding action, including by supporting their meaningful participation in peacebuilding and sustaining peace from the design of funding mechanisms to the implementation of programming.
To develop financing mechanisms that can lead to sustainable peace, donors should work directly with women peacebuilders themselves to better understand their needs, limitations and opportunities. Examples of existing good practices include inviting civil society to join their boards and selection committees by the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) and the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF). Several bilateral donors, such as Canada, have also been re-assessing their programming to ensure that it meets the needs of women peacebuilders and builds on their local knowledge and skills. The Global Network of Women Peacebuilders’ (GNWP) participatory methodology for costing and budgeting of National Action Plans (NAPs) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) allows civil society’s local and national women peacebuilders to directly influence funding priorities and the budgets of NAPs. Such practices enable more effective peacebuilding action and provide a good basis for consideration towards a systematic shift in the current financing for peacebuilding systems.
About the Discussion:
For the first time since the adoption of the new Financing for Peacebuilding resolution, we invite colleagues engaged in financing for peacebuilding and those on WPS for an informal discussion to
assess the impact of the resolution on existing funding frameworks and identify concrete avenues to improve financing for women-led peacebuilding organizations. This conversation will build on the work of the Feminist Peacebuilding Financing Group, including the Feminist Solutions Paper (1) and Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues Series on Innovative Solutions for Feminist Financing for Peacebuilding.(2) Its objective is to inform future dialogues around implementation of the resolution in order to increase impact and benefit of its implementation for women peacebuilders. (need help end of this sentence) Specifically, the discussion will provide a space for Member States, UN partners, civil society members, and other stakeholders to identify areas to work together to strengthen the meaningful inclusion of women peacebuilders in decision-making around financing priorities and, subsequently, improve the impact of women-led peacebuilding programming on the ground.
The discussion will be guided by the following questions:
- What can the newly-adopted UN resolution on financing for peacebuilding support improving the quality of financing for women-led peacebuilding? What concrete actions can be inspired by the resolution?
- What concrete approaches and methodologies can and do support meaningful inclusion of women peacebuilders in decision-making about financing priorities? What are the opportunities and limitations for the donor community presented by these methodologies? What is required to operationalise such methodologies?
- What roles do different stakeholders play in supporting the meaningful inclusion of women peacebuilders in decision-making about financing priorities? How can civil society at the global and national level support diverse stakeholders in developing innovative methodologies?
1 The Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), Kvinna till Kvinna, MADRE, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 2021, Fund Us Like You Want Us To Win: Feminist Solutions for more Impactful Financing for Peacebuilding Background Paper for the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Peacebuilding, accessible at: https://gnwp.org/fund-us-like-you-want-us-to-win/.
2 The Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), Kvinna till Kvinna, MADRE, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 2022, Outcome Document from the Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues Series on Innovative Solutions for Feminist Financing for Peacebuilding, accessible at: https://www.gppac.net/resources/outcome-document-multi-stakeholder-dialogues-series-innovative-solutions-feminist
