Women’s Month provided South Africa the opportunity to take stock of its achievements and challenges in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. South Africa has been at the forefront of promoting the Women Peace and Security agenda from its inception, and has domesticated it through the adoption of a National Action Plan (NAP) on Women Peace and Security in 2020. South Africa was instrumental in the adoption of UNSCR 1820 (2008) and UNSCR 2493 (2019), the former dealing with the need to address conflict-related sexual violence and the latter requesting more context-specific approaches to women’s participation in peace processes. Although there is widespread recognition of the need for women’s meaningful participation in peace processes, their actual participation has increased only marginally over the last two decades.
The latest event in the series within the policy dialogue “Gateways for Peace” – organised by C&M, as a member of the Consortium led by Frankfurt School of Finance & Management – took place at online at the end of August 2023. The webinar “Promoting the Women Peace and Security Agenda: Challenges and Prospects for South Africa” brought together representatives of government, the diplomatic community, researchers, and scholars, in order to discuss the need for increasing the participation of women in peace processes (conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping and peacebuilding) both within the country and in peace missions that it is engaged with.
C&M ensured the organisation of the online conference and arranged all the required services for the event.