West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP-Nigeria), a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) has embarked on the mentoring of young women in peace processes in the country.
WANEP National Network Coordinator Bridget Osakwe, while speaking during the opening ceremony of the 3-day workshop it organised tagged “Training the Trainers” for young women on leadership, peace building and advocacy ,said the young women were being groomed to bridge intergenerational gap of women in peace building.
According to Osakwe, the resources of young people especially the women are not being well utilised in community engagements as the nation grapple with insecurity and peace building processes.
She noted that 35 out of the 36 states are experiencing violent conflicts and the remaining one is not totally violent free, stressing that this means there is serious insecurity situation in the country that everyone needs to be involved to address it.
“If the insecurity situation must be addressed it means we cannot leave this responsibility to the government alone who are using hardcore military approach. We need to ensure the approaches are multi sectoral and multi dimensional,” she stressed.
“We selected young women between ages 15 and 35 and all we wanted is to have young women who are building peace contribute their quota to nation building, and while we the older generation are gradually sitting back their would be a crop of young women with skills in peace building that would be able to take up from where we stopped.
“This training will provide the platform for mentoring young women to take the space and effectively involve in civic processes and advocacy to hold political decision-makers accountable to their obligations and participate in peace processes,” she added.
Delivering a paper titled “Importance of Mentorship for Young Women: Role of Mentor and Mentee”, the National Coordinator of Gender Equality, Peace and Development Center (GEPaDC), Prof. Patricia Donli, stated that it was important to have young women in peace building especially in detecting early warning of violence in the community.
“Early warning prevents violence to occur and this training the trainers workshop is commendable because it will have a multiplier effect on the communites as we would have many young women as early warning monitors who in turn train others and thereby many are involved in peace processes in the community and the country.
“Early warning is critical to the issues of violence so if we can prevent it will go a long way to reducing the issues of violence in the country,” she said.
Giving an overview of the project, the Head of Programmes, WANEP-NIGERIA, Patience Ikpe Obaulo, said the training was aimed at raising awareness and consolidate knowledge on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda among young women.
“The workshop is to enhance the leadership and pea building capacities of young women to advocate for the implementation of the WPS and YPS agenda, and to also establish a network of young women and gender equality allies that will meaningfully participate in, influence and lead community-based peace building particularly in implementation of the WPS and YPS resolutions, serve as conflict monitors; advocacy for gender equality, women’s rights , human rights and gender-responsive humanitarian response”.
One of the participants Chioma Eluwa, said the training has broaden her knowledge on the WPS of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, as well as created a huge impact in her to do more and be an agent of Social change in her community.
Similarly, another participant Vivien Tawiyah , said she has been enlightened on various effective ways to fast track peace building, mediation and security resolution processes, through the five pillars which are wrapped around active participation, protection, prevention, partnerships, disengagement and reintegration.
