Indonesia recognizes that a stable, just and peaceful society cannot be achieved without acknowledging and highlighting women’s important role in building peace, preventing conflict and addressing emerging security threats such as climate change and violent extremism. Within the global framework of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), Indonesia has endeavoured to localize the WPS agenda into a National Action Plan (NAP). In 2014, through a Presidential Decree (Perpres No. 18), the first NAP for the Protection and Empowerment of Women and Children during Social Conflicts, also known as NAP WPS, was launched. It included three pillars: prevention, mitigation and empowerment, and participation of women and children.

Gender equality is a precondition for achieving Sustainable Development Goals and any kind of meaningful and sustained progress, including in laying out the foundation for peaceful and resilient societies. This brief outlines how the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific will support inclusive governance processes in the region for the years to come.

In December 2020, Sustineo was engaged UN Women under the Women in Leadership in Samoa (WILS) Project to lead the design and implementation of Research on Leadership Pathways of Women in Samoa.

The Project Empowering women for sustainable peace: preventing violence and promoting social cohesion in the ASEAN aims to support ASEAN in advancing the implementation of the WPS agenda, including preventing violence against women and promoting social cohesion in the region. This report is a simplified and infographic version of the annual donor report 2021.

This book is a compendium consolidating 8 good practices from ASEAN member states, organized along the four Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 priorities of understanding disaster risk, strengthening risk governance, investing in DRR for resilience, and enhancing disaster preparedness for building back better.

This report identifies both the persistent trends and changing gender dynamics of violent extremism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on an expert survey and interview research conducted between July and November 2021. It examined how and to what extent misogyny and hostile beliefs are fuelling violent extremism in the Southeast Asian region during the pandemic, the degree to which misogyny and hostile beliefs in the ASEAN region are fuelling violent extremism, and how these manifest themselves in the offline space.

The regional project Empowering Women for Sustainable Peace: Preventing Violence and Promoting Social Cohesion in ASEAN aims to achieve the ultimate goal that ASEAN Member States will advance and strengthen the implementation of the WPS agenda, including preventing violence against women and girls and promoting social cohesion in the region.

The regional project Empowering Women for Sustainable Peace seeks to operationalize a simple but revolutionary idea first introduced in the landmark United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) – that peace is inextricably linked to equality between men and women.

UN Women is a lead technical partner for supporting gender mainstreaming in the programme. In 2021, in addition to the establishment of partnership, as a result of UN Women’s advocacy and technical support, a Gender Action Plan has been developed, with an aim for enhancing the gender responsiveness of the programme interventions, at a total cost of USD 173 million. The Gender Action Plan has been integrated into the Project Management Manual for local government partners for guiding implementation at 10 pilot counties in Hunan from 2022 to 2026.

This 10-year implementation of the National Target Programme on New Rural Development has resulted in significant improvements in the socio-economic development of rural Vietnam. By the end of 2020, 62.4 per cent of rural communes met the New Rural Development standard; the average attainment of the NRD criteria was 16.4 out of a total of 19 criteria. Despite such remarkable improvements, there are still sizable gender gaps in terms of employment, property ownership, and access to public services in rural areas, especially in poor districts and communes. The burden of unpaid care work hinders equal access for women to opportunities; gender-based violence remains high at places.

The two National Target Programs on New Rural Development and Sustainable Poverty Reduction for the period 2016-2020 have achieved important results. There have been more than 6 million people escaping poverty, approximately 2 million people escaping near poverty; 62.4 per cent of communes met the New Rural Development standard. However, there are still sizable gender gaps in terms of employment, property ownership, and access to public services in rural areas, especially in poor districts.

Women entrepreneurs have always faced multiple challenges—from lack of working capital to difficulties in coordination of their businesses due to their care and domestic responsibilities. These obstacles have only increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 70% of women entrepreneurs reported being ineligible for credit under the recently launched Government of India’s AtmaNirbhar Bharat economic stimulus package.

This brief explores key ways that the work of WHRDs has been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, and how countries can ensure the work of WHRDs is recognized and protected during this time.

The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the dire situation of overcrowded prisons and triggered discussions about alternative sanctions that effectively reduces crime rates and recidivism while ensuring health and safety of the prison population.

This alert focuses on why women’s leadership and meaningful participation is not only required from a rights-based approach, but also why it can lead to more sustainable responses to crisis that build longer term peace and stability.

The exploitation of oil and mineral deposits is becoming more intensive across Asia and the Pacific. Rapid industrialization and the development of technologies have led to new large-scale mines and discoveries of ore deposits throughout the region. These new technologies also mean that extraction can take place in sensitive, remote and unstable environments – the same environments that are often sites of recent or ongoing conflict.

Gender mainstreaming helps us to ensure that infrastructure is designed and built to maximize positive and equitable benefits – such as income- generating opportunities and access – while mitigating risks and threats. Each stage of the infrastructure project must address the safety and accessibility needs of all users, including women, elderly, children, lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, and intersex, people living with disabilities, and other socially-excluded groups. Gender...

The Training of Trainers module on Women’s Access to Justice provides guidance for judges to include a gender perspective when adjudicating cases involving women who have come into conflict with the law. The module was devel oped in full participation with the members of the Judicial Women and Children’s working group of the Indonesian Supreme Court, High Court Judges, and the trainers of the Supreme Court Training Center. The Training of Trainers module on Women’s Access to...

The Report serves a timely need to develop a comprehensive profile of rural women in the shifting landscape of Pakistan that includes the commitments to the SDGs, information technologies and environmental change, highlighting opportunities and obstacles to their development, and to provide evidence and recommendations for action and advocacy by relevant stakeholders (government, civil society and international donors) that can influence and enhance their economic and social wellbeing. A series...

This policy brief is an effort to highlight critical gender concerns in key government interventions such as Swadhar Greh, Swadhar and Short Stay Homes, and provide policy recommendations to address them. It culls out gaps in policies, implementation and budgets, and suggests how these schemes can be strengthened.