Delphine Serumaga, UN Women Country Representative launches programme on ICTs for economic empowerment and conflict transformation

On 18 January 2016, at the Zesa Training Centre in Harare, UN Women, in partnership with the Zimbabwe Young Women’s Network for Peacebuilding (ZYWNP), an NGO, and iZone Hub, a private company that trains young people on usage of modern technologies for business entrepreneurship, launched an exciting programme on how to use modern technologies for economic empowerment and conflict transformation.

Under the rubric of the UN Women Zimbabwe Gender Peace and Security (GPS) Project, the training brought together young women from political parties, military, CSOs, private sector, grassroots entrepreneurs, community peace committees and sport. The UN Women GPS project is in partnership with the Government of Norway.

Speaking at the official opening ceremony of this training programme, Delphine Serumaga, Country Representative of UN Women, urged the young women participants to treat themselves with respect and dignity, and understanding of the space that they occupy now.

“This opportunity should not be treated as a once off workshop event, but as the beginning of an ongoing process aimed at building a critical mass of young women who are conversant with using technology for development. This is a space for experiencing knowledge, as evidenced by the diverse group which includes young women from the security sector. Your knowledge and input is what elderly women are looking up to especially on implementing 1325. Our challenge for you is to come back with something for women, considering that the workshop is coinciding with the AU Summit. ICTs are important if used wisely, but can be dangerous if used without care and wisdom. Please use ICTs wisely!”

The young women’s training in Harare coincided with the AU 27th Summit, which kicked off on 16 January and will run until the 21st of January 2016. More importantly, the training coincided with the 27th session of the Gender is my Agenda Campaign (GIMAC) Pre-Summit Consultative meeting for the AU 27th Summit, which kicked off on 17th January 2016 and will run until January 18th at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Under the supervision of the African Union Chairperson’s Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security and President of Femmes Africa Solidarite, Mme Bineta Diop, GIMAC is running under the theme “Looking towards 2020: Securing Women’s Rights through Gender Equality and Silencing the Guns in Africa.” This theme, which is in synch with the African Union’s dedication of 2016 as the “African Year of Human Rights with Particular Focus on the Rights of Women” will also address commitments to women’s human rights as enshrined in Agenda 2063 and the Declaration on 2015 Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development Towards Africa’ Agenda 2063.

The GIMAC is a leading African women’s civil society campaign dedicated to the implementation of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa/SDGEA (2004) and the respective thematic areas. The network strives to advance the implementation of commitments and goals enshrined in Agenda 2063 and the Declaration on 2015 Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063.

One of the key development areas under the AU Agenda 2063, and also linked to the post 2015 Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals is the empowerment of young women and girls as ermeging leaders towards 2063. The AU African Peace and Security Architecture, which is in line with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 encourages platforms for African young women and girls, as well as champions of youth and girls’ empowerment and development, to articulate the critical needs and priorities for young women and girls for the first 10-Year Implementation Plan of Africa’s Agenda 2063, as well as the post-2015 development agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. (SDGs) The United Nations has also recently passed Resolution 2250 on Peace and Security, which calls for full participation of young people in all governance and peacebuilding processes. Unless the youths are equipped with relevant and quality education and skills, Resolution 2250 may never be of relevance to them.

In line with this vision, UN Women has ensured the inclusion of young women under its programmes for entrepreneurial and conflict management skills development.

This project has enabled joint programming for two organisations with comparative advantage in the areas of peacebuilding and hub technologies to jointly work to equip the young women politicians named above and other young women from the constituencies with knowledge and skills on women’s economic empowerment using modern technologies, in the area of business management, financial literacy, on-line marketing, setting up business and conflict transformation websites as well as documentation for peacebuilding and conflict transformation. The two organisations are working hand in hand to facilitate and support training of these young women in the highlighted areas.

UN Women notes the need to provide programmatic interventions that will help sustain the energies of young women, using this as a part of formulating a strong intergenerational strategy for women in the peace and security sector. In future, these young women may be supported to further cascade the same trainings to other young women in various sectors, as well as to elderly women in politics, security sector and other sectors. The UN Women vision also notes the need to focus on the security sector institutions of the country, such as the military, realising the power that these institutions have both as potential unifiers of society if drawn in as allies, but also as potential sources of insecurity for women and the whole nation if there is lack of hegemon between them and the populace. This programme continues to pursue various strategies of building a peace, and of ensuring that the security sector remains intact and gender sensitive, continuously engaging the citizens for development issues. The programme though grapples with new strategies to demystify the security sector from its usual perception of ‘warlordism’ and ‘militarism’ to one where citizens can have confidence in the military as an institution that can help keep society intact, engaging, inclusive and stabilising.

The UN Women programme vision also places value on economic empowerment of women as a strategy and enabler for good governance. It advocates for parity not only in cabinet and parliament, but everywhere, including in economic leadership. Poor women have no power to influence, and have no agency to run away from violent relationships and processes. Violence against women costs 1-3% of GDP in every country. Youth participation is a good governance strategy, not only in terms of inclusivity but also in terms of creating the right perceptions amongst the youths. The youths in Zimbabwe and elsewhere regard themselves as marginalised and involving them has potential to harness their support for positive development.

At programmatic level, this programme design of UN Women says a thing about the need to move away from silos towards embracing holistic programmes. The woman is whole not a silo. The head is peace and security, the heart is business, the finger is peace committees, the chest is basket weaving and marketing, and the toe is technologies, etc. Sometimes in our programming we are so blind we fail to see the woman as a whole and we guide programming only by the head and pushing results that are not even for women but for those who control the pace. This programme aims to give power to the young women and further support them to take that power to elderly women and men from their various sectors.

The programme is also an opportunity to raise a generation of entrepreneurs that are leaders, politicians, soldiers, sports people, because entrepreneurship has no limit. All sectors have to move away from a scarcity mind-set. If a young soldier becomes a fierce entrepreneur who benefits? It is not the young woman only who benefits but her family, employer, peers and everyone around her. Bravo, and onward to Agenda 2063.