We, the participants of the 3rd Africa Forum on Women, Peace, and Security,” whose theme is “Leveraging on Women, Peace and Security Monitoring to Enhance Women’s Participation and Leadership in Peace Processes in Africa,” convened in Addis Ababa, from 14-15 December 2022, acknowledge our diversity and common objective of advancing the women, peace and security agenda and silencing the guns in Africa towards the attainment of Agenda 2063;
APPLAUD the leadership of H.E. Sahle-Work Zewde, the President of Ethiopia, in the convening of this 3rd Annual Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Forum;
SALUTE the luminous contribution of illustrious African women who have paved the way for the WPS Agenda, including:
- H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia (the first female President in Africa, and Nobel Prize winner);
- H.E. Dr. Joyce Banda, former President of Malawi;
- H.E. Catherine Samba Panza, former President of the Central African Republic, and Co-Chair of FemWise;
- H.E. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former Vice President of South Africa and former Executive Director of UN Women, and Member of the Mediation Team for the Ethiopia conflict in Tigray;
- Madame Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, the UN Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa;
- Ambassador Liberata Mulamula, former Executive Secretary of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR);
- Madame Betty Bigombe, former Mediator in the Northern Uganda conflict, and currently the Ambassador of the Republic of Uganda to Malaysia;
- Honourable Justice Effie, Owuor, first female judge in Kenya and Member of the AU Panel of the Wise;
CONGRATULATE the Special Envoy of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) on Women, Peace, and Security for her efforts to ensure that issues related to women’s rights, peace, and security remain high on the Agenda of decision-makers at the African Union (AU);
FURTHER APPLAUD the Special Envoy for selecting the theme of this year’s Forum, which is “Leveraging on WPS Monitoring to Enhance Women’s Participation and Leadership in Peace Processes in Africa. More, importantly, we applaud the strategic timing for this WPS Forum, which was held on the margins of the FemWise General Assembly and Steering Committee Meeting;
ACKNOWLEDGE the timely nature of the 3rd African Forum on WPS, especially since we have just commemorated the 22nd Anniversary of the landmark UNSCR 1325 (2000), and the 27th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action (BPfA);
APPLAUD the commitment by African leaders, under the leadership of H.E. President Macky Sall of Senegal, Chairperson of the AU and H.E Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the AUC, towards advancing the WPS Agenda in Africa and institutionalizing the Office of the Special Envoy on WPS;
COMMEND the AU for adopting the Continental Results Framework (CRF) in 2018, and institutionalizing annual reporting on progress, opportunities, gaps, and challenges in the implementation of the WPS agenda;
APPLAUD the Regional Economic Communities/ Regional Mechanisms (RECs/RMs) and their Member States for their efforts in implementing the WPS Agenda through the adoption of National Action Plans (NAPs), which has resulted in 35 (NAPs) and six (6) Regional Action Plans (RAPs) for the African Continent, making Africa the continent with the highest number of NAPs and RAPs ;
FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE the critical and vital efforts undertaken by the Pan-African Network for Women in Conflict Prevention and Mediation (FemWise-Africa), the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) as well as other related women’s networks in advancing women’s leadership in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and peace negotiations;
APPLAUD the AU Member States for using this Annual WPS Forum as a platform for sharing experiences and drawing lessons in implementing the WPS Agenda, including processes for NAP Development, financing, implementation, monitoring and reporting;
COMMEND the efforts of African women in different contexts from Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, to Libya and South Sudan, for their efforts to promote peace and security at local and national levels, and for spotlighting the needs and perspectives of women during peace negotiations and in humanitarian contexts;
HOWEVER, NOTE WITH CONCERN the gendered and disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls, including forced displacement, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), forced displacement, amplified humanitarian situations, and the continued threats to women peacebuilders and human rights defenders;
FURTHER NOTE that efforts to silence the guns in Africa remain impeded by the underlying drivers of conflict, including challenges of governance, unemployment, economic vulnerability, poverty, inequality, and the exclusion of women in decision-making.
ALSO NOTE that the vulnerability of women and girls in Africa has been amplified by the triple threats known as 3Cs (Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and conflict situation in Ukraine;
ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED that despite the existing normative frameworks, women remain under- represented as peace negotiators, peace envoys, mediators, and peacekeepers.
ARE ALSO CONCERNED about the challenges faced by women peacebuilders and women human rights defenders; including the restrictive environments from which they operate, coupled with persistent underfunding of women’s organizations;
REMAIN GUIDED BY the various normative instruments and decisions that advance the WPS Agenda in Africa, including the following:
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000);
- Article 4(l), of the AU Constitutive Act;
- The Maputo Protocol on Women’s Rights (2003);
- The Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004),
- Aspiration 6 of the Agenda 2063; and
- The AU Strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (2018-2028);
CALL UPON the African Union, the Peace, and Security Council (PSC) and AU Member States to redouble their commitment to fully implement and advance the WPS Agenda by undertaking the following measures:
- AU Peace and Security Council should adopt a Strategy for Systematic Incorporation of the WPS Agenda into all AU conflict response efforts, including conflict prevention, managing peace processes, peace support operations, post-conflict reconstruction and development and humanitarian responses;
- The Peace and Security Council should pronounce a policy imperative for a minimum 30 percent quota system to ensure women’s representation, meaningful involvement, and inclusion in all interventions undertaken by the AU, conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy missions, peace negotiations, peace support operations and humanitarian missions;
- The AU PSC should task the AUC to enforce gender- parity principle in all its deployments, including fact-finding missions, Election observation missions and PCRD Assessment Missions: Furthermore, women should participate as Head of these Missions;
- AU Member States must accelerate the implementation of gender reforms of national defense and security forces to ensure women’s meaningful participation, leadership and deployment to peacekeeping missions;
- RECs/ RMs, working with AU Member States, should develop Roadmaps for the Roll-Out of the AU Continental Results Framework on WPS (AU CRF) to promote monitoring, progress tracking and advance accountability to the WPS Agenda;
- AU Member States should allocate sufficient budgetary resources for implementation and reporting on the WPS Agenda: African Parliaments should ensure ownership of the WPS Agenda and implementation of NAPS on UNSCR 1325 (2000), by calling for budgetary allocations towards the implementation, monitoring and reporting efforts;
- Strengthen efforts for data collection for monitoring progress on the WPS Agenda, which involve working with national data collection architecture, including National Bureaus of Statistics;
- AU Member States should amplify efforts to support the capacity enhancement of their various gender and peace machineries to respond to and accelerate the implementation of the WPS Agenda;
- Amplify efforts to establish national chapters of the African Women’s Leadership Network and AWLN and FemWise, as a strategy of localizing the WPS Agenda. This should be accompanied by enhanced investment in capacity building support to local women peacebuilders;
- Support local peace processes: The AU, in collaboration with RECs/ RMs and Development Partners, as well as Civil Society Organizations must provide technical and political support towards strengthening the capacity of women’s civil society organizations to play a greater role in national and community peacebuilding. This includes creating flexible funding mechanisms to support women’s peacebuilding initiatives;
- Strengthen the implementation of peace agreements, including addressing communal violence, supporting local peacebuilding and dialogues processes, intentionally ensuring male engagement and collaboration with male gender champions;
- Invest in long-term and structural conflict prevention, including re-doubling efforts to promote women’s economic empowerment and provide adequate financing to women’s businesses, as part of the peacebuilding and humanitarian agenda;
- Defend the legitimacy of women peacebuilders and human rights activists, and support their role in promoting peace and security, and ensure that they are protected from attacks.
- Undertake capacity building, solidarity missions with women peacebuilders working in conflict situations, and amplify their voices. In particular, and of urgency is the need for a solidarity mission to be undertaken in DRC, to support the local and national peacebuilders on the ground, and spotlight the areas of concern;
- Take decisive steps to protect and empower women in vulnerable situations, including refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) as well as women with physical disability, including actively engaging them in conflict prevention efforts, peacebuilding and decision-making in humanitarian operations;
- Protect and promote the rights of women and girls in humanitarian situations, including ensuring their access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services;
- Enhance the visibility and meaningful participation of women in relief and recovery processes, including humanitarian processes: Women must be included in the governance and leadership structures for humanitarian support, to ensure that such interventions adequately address the complexity and diversity of humanitarian crises.
- Mainstream the WPS Agenda into the revised AU Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development Policy and Transitional Justice Policy, ensuring that these processes actively and meaningfully engage women and girls, refugees, and internally displaced persons;
- Promote victim and survivor-centred transitional justice processes, including providing psycho-social and legal support to survivors of sexual violence;
- Collaborate with men and men’s organizations in advancing the WPS Agenda, including organizing an Annual Conference focusing on Advancing Positive Masculinity to enhance the Implementation of the WPS Agenda, as well as pushing for the adoption of an AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls;
- Collaborate with Centres of Excellence in generating gender and age-disaggregated data on WPS Agenda in Africa, and foster sustained partnerships on advancing the WPS Agenda, including collaborating with United Nations Agencies, Development Partners, Private Sector, women peace builders, and CSOs.
We would like to thank our partners who have made the 3rd Annual African Forum on WPS possible.