The West Africa Network for Peace building, WANEP, has urged various stakeholders in Gombe State to own the Local Action Plan of the United Nations Resolution, UNSCR 1325.
The plan focuses on women involved in peace and security.
The officials of WANEP said this in Gombe during the workshop for various stakeholders from Balanga and Kwami, deliberated and drafted the peculiarities of each local government area in the involvement of women in peace and security.
The Local Action Plan is drafted from the UNSCR 1325, which the UN was adopted in October 2000, reaffirming the important roles of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and post-conflict reconstruction.
Nigeria had launched its National Action Plan in 2004, later adopted it in 2013 and implemented it for the period 2013-2017.
This was subsequently reviewed after several gaps were observed to incorporate emerging issues in Nigeria.
Following this development, states in Nigeria were encouraged to adopt and implement their action plans in their states and local government areas, taking into account their peculiarities.
Subsequently, the Gombe State Government launched its action plan in December 2017, tagged He-for-She Campaign and Peace Architecture.
The focus of the UNSCR 1325 is to minimise the hardship, difficulties and atrocities committed against women during conflicts and disasters.
Subsequently, two LGAs in Gombe, Kaltungo and Yamaltu Deba, drafted and launched their Local Action Plan in 2018, with specific documents and the peculiarities of the areas.
Now, a similar document has been prepared for Balanga and Kwami Local Government Areas by various stakeholders, organised by WANEP. It urged the two local governments not to leave the documents on their shelves but localise them for the attainment of the set objectives of the plan.
The Communications Coordinator and Policy Analyst, Youth, Peace and Security, Global Network for Peacebuilders, GNWP, Katrina Leclerc, spoke on Localisation as a Strategy in implementing the Women in Peace and Security.
Leclerc said; “the role of GNWP was to produce laws and policies, with applicable outputs to produce one or a mixture of local action plans from laws and policies, which are either changed or adopted to include women peace and security principles and commitments in pre-existing framework available in the area.”
“There is ensuring and implantation and sustainability, ensuring that it does not go to waste and that we only implement women, peace and security. So, we train localisation experts, through our partnership with local partners, WANEP Nigeria, for example and produce localization guidelines, which we will be doing in Nigeria in the coming months. We also monitor and evaluate progress at local levels in partnership with you and WANEP,” Leclerc explained.
She said there was the need to adopt key localisation principles, such as the inclusion of all local actors like civil society, local authorities, government, media, traditional and religious leaders and the security sector.
Mrs. Halima Mahdi is a Lead Women Mentor in Gombe State and one of the stakeholders who drafted the Local Action Plan for Kaltungo, Yamaltu Deba and now Balanga and Kwami Local.
She said after the launch of the Local Action for the first two LGAs, not much had been achieved from it. She thereby called for deliberate and decisive measures for their implementation in all the four LGAs.
“I will say Balanga and Kwami are lucky because they are doing it at a time that the same leaders at the local level are being involved and they are with them now. So, I am sure that they will make sure that things work out better than that of Kaltungo.
“That of kaltungo and Yamaltu Deba was done during the previous regime and the local government chairmen that were used for that purpose are no more there. So, these people are not ready to accept what is on the ground,” Mrs. Mahdi said.
Other stakeholders who spoke with Voice of Nigeria on how best to implement the local action plans in Gombe State are the Director Legal Drafting at the Gombe State Ministry of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Isma’il Hina and Mrs. Moli Naomi Abdu from the International Federation Women Lawyers, FIDA, in Gombe State.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
