WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY
Our Women, Peace and Security (WPS) programme is in recognition of the high level of insecurity in Nigeria, which has made incidents of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) even more common. According to UNHCR, there are over 2.7 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the North East alone. There are also the ‘forgotten IDPs’, which refers to those who are not in the North East but have similarly been displaced due to insecurity, environment degradation and climate change.
IRIAD aims to localise the United Nations Security Council Resolution on women, peace and security (UNSCR1325) in six main ways:
- Research to identify and understand the issues faced by women in conflict-ridden areas and IDP camps;
- Setting up and institutionalising women community associations to address insecurity;
- Advocacy among key stakeholders to promote peace interventions and women’s rights issues in these areas;
- Trainings to build the capacity and knowledge of women in these communities;
- Strengthening knowledge and capacity with regards to gender-responsive security; and
- Developing mechanisms and guidelines to support urban and local government response to WPS.
Our programming is aimed at ensuring women’s empowerment, protection and livelihoods are centered in humanitarian action and discourse as well as in recovery processes.
In addition to our programmes, we are also engaged in collaborating, networking and providing technical support to stakeholders in the sector through sector documentation and production of best-practices, technical and policy briefs; knowledge and experience sharing for sector stakeholders; and undertaking other related initiatives to ensure that evidence-based strategies, as well as gender sensitivity and responsivity are centered in both state and non-state responses to the dynamic security challenges across the country. Our focus is particularly on women representation in the security sector, gender-responsive security sector reform, as well as local government and urban government response to WPS.