An international workshop to strengthen the capacities of female officers in leadership positions was held today in this city in Ha Nam province for 40 senior policewomen from northern provinces and Hanoi. The Department of Foreign Relations, Ministry of Public Security, hosted the workshop in partnership with UN Women.

Palu, Indonesia – Supported by UN Women and its project partner, The Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN Indonesia), activists and government authorities who believe that women can play important roles in the effort are devising gender-responsive ways to tackle the risks of violent extremism in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province.

[Press release] The Elsie Initiative Fund for Uniformed Women in Peace Operations (EIF) announced today that Cambodia will receive funding to undertake a study to identify barriers to the deployment of women in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), to United Nations peace operations. Cambodia, the 25th highest troop contributing country to United Nations peacekeeping, currently deploys 766 military personnel, among which 14 per cent are women.

Andhika Chrisnayudhanto is Deputy for International Cooperation of the National Counter Terrorism Agency (BNPT) of Indonesia. He is the chair of the Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime (SOMTC), Working Group on Counter Terrorism, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Working Group on Counter Terrorism led in developing the ASEAN Bali Work Plan 2019-2025 on countering extremism. BNPT partnered with UN Women on the report, Gender Analysis of Violent Extremism and the Impact of COVID-19 on Peace and Security in ASEAN.

Dewi Rana is director of  Lingkar Belajar Untuk (Libu Perempuan), or Learning Circle Association for Women, a non-governmental organization that promotes women’s rights in Central Sulawesi province, Indonesia. The organization gathered members of civil society and government officials to draft the province’s action plan on preventing and countering violent extremism. That work has been supported by UN Women and its partner Aliansi Masyarat Adat Nusantara, or The Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago. Rana was interviewed by Xinyue Gu of UN Women.

The Philippines Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front signed an agreement in 2014 to end the protracted conflict in the Bangsamoro region of the southern Philippines. But while the agreement included provisions on empowering women, women and other groups including indigenous peoples, people living in conflict-affected areas and former combatants are at risk of being pushed to the margins.

Alexandra Phelan is the deputy director of the Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She recently led the research report, Gender Analysis on Violent Extremism and the Impact of COVID-19 on Peace and Security in ASEAN: Evidence-based Research for Policy. The report was done for the UN Women project, Empowering Women for Sustainable Peace: Preventing Violence and Promoting Social Cohesion in ASEAN.

UN Women joins the United Nations Secretary-General and the UN family in Afghanistan in strongly condemning the horrific attack near a school in Dasht-i-Barchi, Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed and injured scores of civilians, including many girls. Attacks such as this constitute a grave violation of the rights of children and human rights more broadly.

Community-based justice plays a pivotal role in resolving disputes, especially in many developing countries where an estimated 80 percent of cases are resolved through grass-roots justice mechanisms. For women these mechanisms are often the first step on the pathway to justice seeking.

As a demonstration of commitment to place gender at the core of collaborative security action in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the Philippines, representatives from the Government and from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, security actors and representatives from women’s organizations came together for a three-day workshop (3–5 February 2021) to discuss how to strengthen cooperation on a range of issues related to gender and security in BARMM.

[Press release] Report highlights the essential role played by women police officers in addressing criminal offences and urges ASEAN authorities to create the conditions for their professional advancement Bangkok (Thailand), 26 August 2020 – A new report by INTERPOL, UNODC and UN Women entitled “Women in Law Enforcement in the ASEAN Region”, has found that while women contribute to more effective law enforcement, they still face many hurdles in their involvement across...

Lt. Colonel Ratih Pusparini is one of the first Indonesian women to have been dispatched in a peacekeeping mission. From 2008–2013, she served as a military observer and in various positions on UN peacekeeping missions in the Congo, Lebanon and Syria.