By: Rachel Kakraba
Executive Director, Foundation for Security Development in Africa, a Civil Society Organization in Peace building, Theodora Williams-Anti, is calling for deliberate action from state and non state actors for the country to attain targets set in the Ghana National Action Plan Two project.
The Plan which focuses on building inclusive, secured and peaceful societies for women and girls, she said has so far achieved some 20 percent of implementation.
“So far we have interviewed about five institutions and from our findings a lot is being done, but we are not doing so well with the implementation we are around 20 percent of the implementation of the National Action Plan on 1325, that tells us there is a long way to go, the Plan expires in 2025 and so if we don’t leapfrog, if we don’t make extra efforts to implement the plan we are very likely to sing the same song we sang for the GHANAP one.
“We call on government, security agencies to be more intentional about women peace and security and implementation of the Ghana National Action Plan on 1325, it is a very practical Plan that if we implement it deliberately we will achieve a lot for women” She added.
Madam Williams-Anti was speaking at a day’s stakeholders validation workshop, on GHANAP TWO in Accra.
She said drawing lessons from GHANAP ONE, which was not implemented well, FOSDA in partnership with other stakeholders would continue to monitor progress of GHANAP TWO, to ensure effective implementation.
“GHANAP ONE was so poorly implemented it was just the life as usual, we come together do a plan and we dump it somewhere and then it expires and we do a new one. But this time as FOSDA and as CSOs interested in Women and Security, we have decided we will not let that happen again and so we have taken it upon ourselves to monitor the implementation of this new NAP to make sure it is implemented to the latter based on the pillars of 1325”
She challenged relevant institutions to know their role and work towards achieving goals set for them. She said GHANAP TWO, when implemented well, will project more women into leadership positions, especially within the security services.
About GHANA National Action Plan
The United Nations Security Council, in October, 2000 adopted resolution 1325, to reaffirm the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiation and peace-building. It also calls on all parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict. Ghana consequently developed the Ghana National Action Plan, to implement the principles designed in the resolution. Phase one, otherwise known as GHANAP ONE, covered 2012 to 2014, and is said to have been poorly implemented with minimal impact. It against this backdrop that, Foundation for Security and Development in Africa, FOSDA, with funding from Plan International through Global Affairs Canada, is implementing “Monitoring GHANAP 2 Project, under the second phase of the Plan which spans from 2020 to 2025.
Project Officer, Women Peace and Security, Dorothy Barnes, speaking about the importance of monitoring and evaluation of the project, said it is fundamental to interrogating gains made with the implementation of the Plan. She encouraged all stakeholders to be interested in GHANAP TWO to ensure all objectives and activities are carried out.
“our project is basically a monitoring project, we are trying to draw a picture of how far we’ve come and so this project is looking at the four main pillars of the Action Plan.
“We have pillar one that speaks about participation of women, pillar two that speaks about protection and promotion of rights of women, we have pillar three that speaks about prevention against sexual and gender Based Violence and Pillar four that speaks about Relief and Recovery. In each pillar there are objectives that the Action plan captures and under each objective there are activities that are supposed to be done”
She said the monitoring component is specific and can easily be measured to ascertain the successes made with the implementation.
“FOSDA is speaking specifically to the activities written in the Action Plan. We realized in our engagement there were many other activities that people were doing that contributed indirectly to the expected outcomes, but we want to find out specifically what are the activities saying?
An objective to increase women’s participation in decision making we are asking ourselves, we said we were going to develop a database, have we developed the database, we said we were going to train women, have we trained the women, train 32 women from two regions have we done that? Those are the things we want to find out. This is for us to interrogate all of us as a country to know what exactly we are doing towards the implementation of the Plan.
A Sub Grant Management Specialist, Plan Ghana, Theodora Asare, said there are policy gaps in the role women play in peace building processes. This she said GHANAP TWO seeks to address. She commended FOSDA for leading the initiative.
“All through history women have contributed significantly to peace and security and some have even been at the forefront of wars, speak about our own Nana Yaa Asantewaa. However, the female gender have been ignored and continue to be ignored where communities gather to deliberate on matters of war and peace. It was of no surprise that the UNCR 1325 affirms that peace and security efforts are more sustainable when women are equal partners in the prevention of violent conflict, the delivery of relief and recovery efforts and in the forging of lasting peace”
Senior Programme Officer, Department of Gender, Evelyn Borlabi, noted women are major stakeholders in conflict prevention. She called for collaboration of all stakeholders for effective implementation of GHANAP TWO.
“Women are the major stakeholders in conflict prevention, peace-making and peacekeeping. They are often the first to notice the rising tensions that can escalate into violence, they are also the first responders in the aftermath of conflict including caring for families and its attending consequences. Unfortunately women around the world continue to be excluded from peace and political processes, because of discrimination”
She said “The key difference between the first and second editions of Ghana’s National Action on UN Security Resolution is the introduction of the pillar of the relief and recovery.
Madam Borlabi, said the Ministry has sensitized key stakeholders at regional and district levels on the GHANAP TWO and the need to include activities of GHANAP TWO, into their institutional specific Action Plan.
