Full-Cycle Implementation of Women, Peace and Security

National Action Plans (NAPs) are a key instrument for the implementation on Women, Peace and Security. They translate global commitments into concrete actions that are relevant to the specific country, thus contributing to building sustainable peace.

GNWP supports national and local civil society, governments and other key stakeholders in research and mapping of local peacebuilding needs and challenges. This information becomes a useful tool for the civil society as they advocate for the adoption of the NAP. The research and mapping also allows GNWP and its local partners to provide concrete, substantive inputs to the NAP drafting. We have done this, for example, in Armenia, Bangladesh, Chad, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

This initial step is critical in ensuring that the NAPs are relevant and adequately reflect local context and priorities.

For example, in Ukraine, advocacy by GNWP and its national partners, based on the jointly conducted mapping, led to the inclusion of new groups that emerged due to conflict – including internally displaced women, women veterans and war widows – in the revised NAP. Similarly, in Georgia, thanks to the advocacy by civil society organizations – including GNWP and its partners – the latest NAP includes a stronger focus on human security, participation of vulnerable groups, such as internally displaced women, and conflict prevention, including through using early warning systems.

In addition to the substantive inputs based on context-specific research, GNWP also provides technical support and capacity-building to national and local stakeholders to develop strong and impactful NAPs. We trained actors in Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, the Philippines and Ukraine, among other places, to formulate NAP objectives and activities that are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-bound (“SMART”). We also support stakeholders in countries that are undergoing a NAP review, to ensure that the updated objectives, activities and indicators are “SMART” and locally-informed. This is critical, because it builds a foundation for effective implementation and accountability. Without “SMART” objectives and indicators, NAPs often remain documents on the shelf, and it is more difficult for the civil society to track progress and hold the government accountable.