Bunia: A delegation from the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for the African Great Lakes region visited Bunia on 11 - 12 August 2015 to assess the impact of the activities for women’s participation to the stabilization and peace process funded through a Women Platform supportive of the Peace, Security, Cooperation Framework Agreement and the UN Resolution 1325.

The delegation, comprised of Miranda Tabifor from the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for the Great Lake regions and Annie Bukarabo, Consultant, met with the actors who benefit from the Program Amkeni wa Mama (PAMA).

With the help of the platform Women for Peace and Close Collaboration with MONUSCO, PAMA organized a capacity-building workshop on the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework as well as the UN Resolution 1325. During the workshop, PAMA trained 22 sensitizers on women’s participation to the decision-making and peace process.

The sensitizers further toured 12 districts of Bunia and handed out over 2500 copies of the UN Resolution 1325, translated into Swahili on the occasion. More than 2971 people including 2083 women and 878 men were sensitized.

For Marie Kabazaire, leader of the Protestant Women Federation in charge of the program Platform for Women’s Exchanges in Ituri, “the training and sensitization campaign brought a lot of changes to the communities. As an illustration, after the training, a woman was named deputy chief of the Lumumba district.»

Marie Kabazaire pointed out to the delegation of the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General in the African Great Lakes region the importance of MONUSCO’s support to the political participation and women’s empowerment process. “Beyond technical assistance, MONUSCO, through its Gender section, contributes psychological and moral support to women in Ituri”.

To conclude, Marie Kabazaire called for increased number of women’s associations in Ituri to partner with the Women’s platform in order to make them participate in the peace process as well as regional, national and international fora.

Anne HERRMANN