The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security recently released it’s monthly action points (MAP) for the month of March. For March, in which China has the presidency of the UN Security Council, the MAP provides recommendations on Colombia, DRC, Somalia, and South Sudan.
Columbia
- The Council should ask the Government to provide a progress update on establishing and maintaining community-based and gender-responsive self-protection and early warning systems to address the presence of new armed actors and violence in territories formerly under FARC control, particularly Afro-descendant and Indigenous territories.
- The Council should call on the Government to implement fully security guarantees and protection efforts for women human rights defenders (HRDs), particularly those from Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and rural communities, as well as women and girls who are former combatants or formerly associated with FARC.
- The Council should request the Government to provide an update on how it is ensuring the necessary conditions for women, particularly Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and rural women, to be included in transitional justice and reconstruction measures, including the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).
- Finally, the Verification Mission should provide age and gender-sensitive reintegration and reincorporation support, specifically socioeconomic guarantees; women’s acquisition of land; and access to education and health services that encompass sexual and reproductive health care, and services that are inclusive of pregnant and lactating women and girls living in Territorial Training and Reincorporation Spaces (ETCR).
Democratic Republic of Congo
- As the Security Council discusses the recent report of UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), issues related to women’s meaningful participation should be discussed alongside critical protection concerns, including in the context of inquiring regarding updates on the implementation of the second NAP on Resolution 1325 (2000).
- There is an urgent need to address the lack of timely and adequate multi-sectoral assistance for survivors of SGBV, including medical and psychosocial assistance and legal support. The lack of a legal framework criminalizing intimate partner violence and marital rape has implications for addressing conflict-related SGBV as survivors/victims can face violence from perpetrators in various settings. The Council should request updates from senior leadership on MONUSCO’s efforts to address this issue, including specifically the extent to which the mission has consulted with, or plans to consult with, women’s civil society organizations in supporting the Government to pass a comprehensive reparations law that eliminates barriers to reparations for survivors/victims of SGBV, ensuring full compliance with court-ordered reparations and assisting the Government to add intimate partner violence and marital rape into its penal code.
- Further, the Council should request updates on the extent to which MONUSCO is supporting local women’s groups and the Government in providing services to address SGBV, including comprehensive medical, psychosocial, legal and socioeconomic assistance which is inclusive of persons with disabilities and LGBTIQ+ people.
Somalia
- The Security Council will be renewing the mandate for the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM). In its renewal, the Council must maintain existing preambular and operative language on women, peace and security and update the mandate to include standard language explicitly mainstreaming gender as a cross-cutting issue in UNSOM’s mandate.
- As per the recommendations from the August 2019 civil soceity briefer, Amina Arale, add language in UNSOM’s mandate that calls for the mission to establish a protection mechanism to ensure women candidates can campaign without restriction or violence, and support women’s meaningful participation in the forthcoming elections as candidates, voters, and poll workers, including by ensuring their safety.
- Add language calling on the Government to ensure its implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and related national laws, are gender-sensitive and inclusive of groups led by women and girls with disabilities.
- Add language calling on UNSOM and relevant actors to mainstream intersectional gender-sensitive analysis in its risk assessments related to preventing conflict and violence, including in those undertaken as part of addressing the link between the climate crisis and potential insecurity.
South Sudan
- In the context of ongoing efforts to restrict civil society space, and challenges facing local women’s CSOs, the Council should ensure it clearly and unambiguously expresses its support for the equal and meaningful participation of diverse women’s CSOs in all work carried out by UNMISS, as well as by the Government in the transitional process, including all peace and political processes, freely, without interference or violence and in line with required quotas for women’s representation.
- Add a provision to UNMISS’ mandate calling on the mission to ensure its support for the implementation of the Revitalized Agreement and peace process prioritizes support for mainstreaming gender throughout all discussions and ensuring the equal and meaningful participation of women in all aspects of the process.
Read the full MAP here.
