Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action

The women, peace and security and humanitarian action (WPS) pillar aims to promote sustained peace, inclusive and sustainable growth and development through strengthened formal and informal institutions by providing access to effective equitable justice and security services, promoting and protecting human rights, and strengthening social cohesion and reconciliation. The WPS pillar implements programmes to help mainstream gender into national peace-building processes and key security institutions. The pillar empowers the national government, through its key line ministries, to implement key legal and policy frameworks to support ongoing peace processes. Through the WPS pillar, UN Women has been supporting community women to set up peace huts to enhance women’s participation in peacebuilding and to empower them economically.

The WPS pillar also focusses on ensuring women and girls contribute and have greater influence in building sustainable peace and resilience and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters and conflicts and from humanitarian action.

Ongoing interventions : 
1.    Elsie Initiative Fund (EIF): 
UN Women Liberia, the Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Transformation (KAI) and Cornell University are partnering with the Ministry of Defense to conduct a barrier assessment of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL). Through the barrier assessment, the AFL seeks concrete recommendations on how to reduce barriers to women’s participation in UN peace operations with the intent to address these barriers through subsequent projects under the EIF. The findings of the assessment will boost Liberia’s agenda to contribute to the United Nations’ (UN) 2028 target of 15% women serving in military contingents and 25% for military observers and staff officers.
2.    Sustaining peace and reconciliation through Strengthening land governance and Dispute resolution mechanisms:  
This is a three year joint project (2020 -2022) implemented by UN Women (Lead Agency), UNDP and WFP and funded by the Peace building fund. The project aims at supporting the government of Liberia in the implementation of the Land Rights Act (LRA) and the Local Government Act (LGA) and subsequently contributing to sustained peace. 
The project has two project  Outcomes:  i) Authorities at national and local levels manage land allocation, registration and licensing processes in a more effective, transparent, and inclusive manner reducing conflict. (ii) Existing semi-formal and informal land dispute resolution mechanisms are strengthened, more sustainable and able to reduce conflict in a more effective and gender responsive manner

3.    Women Peace and Security Strategic Note 2020 – 2024 Project: 
The project aims to strengthen the accountability, monitoring and reporting mechanisms of the National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security (NAP-WPS); Implement global normative frameworks including the Commission on the Status of Women, Convention on the elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action to support gender equality and Women empowerment; and support key justice, peacebuilding and rule of law initiatives. This initiative is supported by the Government of Sweden.

4.    Establishment of the implementation structure of the NAP WPS at national and county level
Key outputs from these interventions include ; 

•    The National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security
•    Innovative Financing Strategy for the implementation of the NAP WPS
•    Data base for Liberia National Police to track Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV) cases
•    Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) manual for the Women and Children Protection Section (WACPS) of the Police
•    Community policing training Manual
•    Training of Trainers (ToT) manual for the Justice Training Institute (JTI)
•    Gender Responsive Early warning and response monitoring tool for land conflict 
•    Training Manual on Gender, Human Rights and Creating Awareness on NAP WPS