The annual AWP conference is a core pillar in the Republic of Korea’s “Action with Women and Peace” initiative established in 2018 to promote Women, Peace and Security (WPS). This year’s conference was opened by Kang Insun, 2nd Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, and key notes included Julie Bishop, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on Myanmar, and Ingrid Gjerde, Chief of Defense Staff, Norwegian Armed Forces.
Under the conference theme of “Approaching 25 Years of UNSCR 1325: Sharing Lessons Across UN Missions and Nations”, Dr. Olsson led the first program panel discussion, titled UN Peacekeeping Missions’ Operationalization of WPS Mandates on Promoting Women’s Meaningful Participation in Peace Processes. The panel, organized with support by the UN Department of Peace Operations (UN DPO), featured both civilian and uniformed leaders, gender advisers, and experts. Represented at the panel were Catherine Andela, Chief of Gender Unit at UN DPO, and experts coming in directly from the UN missions in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and the Golan Heights. Peacekeeping is one of the international community’s most longstanding and advanced tools for peace and security. The panel demonstrated both what it means to practically support women’s participation through these operations and why that is important – for empowerment and for successfully establishing peace – as well as discussed how we can ensure that peacekeeping support to participation leads to long-lasting effects on the ground.
This panel’s focus on how to practically realize WPS followed the overall aim where the conference further promoted the development and implementation of National Action Plans, and discussed how to support women’s agency in addressing conflicts in the Asian region with a special session on how to promote peace in Myanmar*.* Finally, the AWP conference has a continuous focus on mobilizing youth and intergenerational exchange on WPS. To that end, the final panel featured youth representatives and speakers from civil society organizations, including Hajer Sharief, Co-founder of Together We Build It.
The conference and its panels can be watch in their entirety here.
Read more about our research on gender integration and peacekeeping on these links:
- Time to Push for Next Step on Women, Peace and Security: Ensuring Positive Impact for Women in Conflict – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
- The Peace Dividends and Post-conflict Reconstruction project (Peace Dividends) – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
- Examining E10 Strategies and Decisions: Sweden and Women, Peace and Security in the UN Security Council – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
