UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates the United Nations system’s efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts towards building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors. The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), unanimously adopted in October 2000, stressed the importance of the equal participation and full involvement of women in all efforts to maintain and promote peace and security. In the years since, seven additional resolutions on WPS have been adopted, creating a robust framework for implementing the WPS agenda and reinforcing global commitments, treaties and conventions on women’s rights, including the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. To deliver these commitments at the national level, the United Nations has encouraged Member States to adopt policies to implement the resolutions and monitor the progress of the WPS agenda, including National Action Plans on WPS (NAPs-WPS). In Sri Lanka, the Government has committed to advancing the development of a NAP WPS and the State Ministry of Women and Child Development, Pre-schools and Primary Education, School Infrastructure and Education Services is leading its formulation with the technical support of UN Women. Parallelly, UN Women also supports the implementation of the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda through the increased engagement of national and local level government authorities, civil society organisations, women leaders and the development community. Against this background and with generous support from the Government of Japan, UN Women is seeking to hire a national assistant consultant to co-facilitate multi-party dialogues (MPDs) at grassroot level to advocate for gender responsive policies and strategies on WPS, under the project “Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in Sri Lanka”. The MPDs are expected to engage local-level government officials, CSO representatives, religious bodies, media representatives and women leaders in North Central, Uva, Sabaragamuwa and Western provinces. 6 MPDs and the accompanied capacity building and follow-up programmmes are scheduled to take place in Anuradhapura, Badulla, Ratnapura, Gampaha, Kalutara and Colombo districts. Similarly, under the umbrella of WPS and with the generous support of the Multi Party Trust Fund (MPTF), UN Women is also assigning the same national assistant consultant to co-facilitate a series of multi-stakeholder dialogues, capacity building programmes for women community leaders on collective leadership and conflict resolution, as well as a series of village townhalls under the project: “Promoting Women’s Engagement in Waste Management to Prevent Conflict in Sri Lanka” The project will unfold in targeted local authorities and DS divisions within the districts of Puttalam and Mannar: 1. Puttalam District (04 local authorities and 4 DS divisions): - Puttalam Urban Council / Puttalam DS division
- Kalpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha / Kalpitiya DS division
- Chilaw Urban Council / Chilaw DS division
- Arachchikattuwa Pradeshiya Sabha / Arachchikattuwa DS division
2. Mannar District (01 local authority and 1 DS division) - Nanattan Pradeshiya Sabha / Mannar Town DS division
This MPTF funded project takes an innovative, integrated approach to peacebuilding, tackling ethno-religious tensions by bringing communities together to provide a sustainable solution for a shared environmental issue – Solid Waste Management (SWM) – with women at the forefront for conflict prevention. The nexus of Environmental Conflicts – Gender – Communal Tensions is unique, and a new area of peacebuilding not yet explored in Sri Lanka. The project focuses on women’s role within their communities to support conflict prevention Gendered division of household labour results in women being mostly responsible for waste management, hence they play critical roles in responding to environmental degradation at community level. Women’s community engagement results in greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs, often increasing cooperation and delivering more sustainable peace. Despite high involvement in communities, women remain under-represented in policy and decision-making; their experiences and skills are often overlooked. Thus, any solutions related to waste management, and communal tensions therein, require women’s meaningful participation. Women are uniquely positioned within families/communities to influence motivations that drive individuals to support intolerant ideologies or violence. Their gendered roles in shaping and informing families and communities allow women to support in countering intolerant narratives, mistrust and fear, which converge to exacerbate tensions and promote violence. The project will adopt an integrated approach to achieve its overall objective: building community resilience through women’s engagement in conflict resolution and their participation within community and local governance systems; strengthening community governance systems such as Praja Mandala to better lobby with local authorities; strengthening SWM systems within target divisions, including technical support to local authorities on better managing SWM systems; and supporting different communities to coalesce around the issue of SWM via Praja Mandala - with the goal of improving inter- and intra-community relations.
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