The 3-day ‘Women Peace Forum”, convened by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) in Abuja Nigeria’s capital has ended with a call on the government to declare “a state of emergency on the need to support the education of women and girls to equip and position them for diverse roles in society including participating in high-level negotiations.”
The women drawn from the north-central, northeast, and southwest states of Nigeria were joined by civil society actors, policymakers’ security institutions, and representatives of the diplomatic community, to discuss the theme “Strengthening Women’s Strategic Engagement in Climate-Focused Peacemaking in Nigeria”.
The forum through different presentations in panel discussions had identified the need for a mentorship programme for young girls as well as “mentoring women for strategic positions and opportunities, through women mentoring women and men mentoring women approaches,” to deepen conversations around promoting women as resourceful contributors to peace and security; as well as nation building.
It focused on the need to engage “relevant stakeholders including women in dialogue processes towards jointly addressing natural resource conflicts”, as it identified that climate change was aggravating farmer-herders crises; cattle rustling; communal clashes; as well as land and boundary disputes/.
The forum tasked the National Orientation Agency, (NOA), to “embark on massive awareness campaigns” on the need for the “implementation of existing legal provisions addressing gender issues in the country.”
Other recommendations:
- It is important to engage men as allies,as men promoting women’s political participation is a boost that will help to create an enabling environment that values gender equality and women’s leadership in Nigeria’s political sphere.
- Providing platforms for knowledge sharing and communicating agricultural practices that can withstand the adverse effects of climate change.
- Educating herders on modern herder practices to adopt amid the climate change-induced challenges impacting the availability of resources.
- Exploring strategies towards transitioning to renewable sources of energy.
- Providing budgetaryallocations to be deliberately set aside and released for implementation of gender reforms and women empowerment.
- Establishing women’s coalitions and strengthening the capacity of the local actors and structures to thrive amid conflicts.
- Encouraging increasing civic engagement.
Affirmation:
The forum said it affirmed “In line with the UNSCR1325 and the discourse from this Women’s Peace Forum,” that;
The drive towards peace and security in any society is more sustainable when women are equal partners in the efforts targeted at conflict prevention, humanitarian, and recovery efforts in forging the path towards lasting peace.
ABOUT HD
The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) a Swiss-based private diplomacy organization founded on the principles of humanity, impartiality, and independence, has been working in Nigeria since 2013. Its mission is to help prevent, mitigate, and resolve armed conflict through dialogue and mediation.
HD has been working in Nigeria since 2013 when it facilitated peace dialogues in Jos during the heat of the crises that engulfed the city. The peace process brought together different ethnic community groups domiciled in Jos under one umbrella to discuss their grievances and jointly forge a way forward toward peaceful coexistence in the city. The process culminated in the signing of a peace agreement: https://www.peaceagreements.org/viewmasterdocument/1536 (the Declaration of Commitment to Peace by the HD Jos Forum). In to this, on the recommendation of the Governor of Plateau State at the time, HD was requested by the Governor of Kaduna State to replicate the peace process in Southern Kaduna and was again invited to carry out the same process in Southern Plateau. These processes resulted in the stakeholders’ jointly signed commitments to peace in 2016. HD also works in Benue state where it facilitates dialogues over natural resource conflicts and secured natural resource peace agreements between the communities in Agatu (2022) and very recently, Konshisha-Oju (2023) https://lnkd.in/e44scZPY.
Dominica Nwabufo
