ECOWAS has completed its in-country training sessions on monitoring and reporting for the Women, Peace and Security agenda, closing with a Cabo Verde workshop to equip national stakeholders to track UN Security Council Resolution 1325 implementation.
The session was organised by the ECOWAS Commission’s Directorate of Humanitarian and Social Affairs together with Cabo Verde’s Ministry of Family, Inclusion, Social Development and Labour, according to a report from the Economic Community of West African States.
It centred on the Continental Results Framework, the tool participants were trained to use for monitoring and reporting at national level.
The workshop was held under the ECOWAS Peace, Security and Governance Project, which is co-financed by the European Union, the German Government (BMZ) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by GIZ.
More than 30 participants took part, drawn from government ministries, security institutions, women and youth organisations, the media and civil society.
Speaking on behalf of the Resident Representative of Cape Verde, Ms. Kelly Lopes said Cape Verdean women play a role in social cohesion and that the training would allow their commitments to be documented at national and regional level.
She acknowledged the Commission’s work on building the capacity of women, citing the development of the Women, Peace and Security Mentorship Academy and efforts to simplify the Continental Results Framework.
For the ECOWAS Commission, Mme Ilemobola Olubukola Ademola-Adelehin, delivering remarks on behalf of the Acting Director of Humanitarian and Social Affairs, emphasised the importance of women in leadership and decision-making spaces, describing them as being at the centre of vulnerabilities.
She pointed to the directorate’s intervention on women’s participation, protection and resilience building, and to its adaptation of the African Union’s Continental Results Framework into a simplified regional framework for monitoring and reporting on WPS across West Africa.
Mrs. Valerie Arikpo-Ettah, Technical Adviser to the GIZ EPSG Project, reaffirmed GIZ’s commitment to supporting ECOWAS in strengthening regional capacity and advancing implementation of the WPS agenda.
Cabo Verde’s Minister for Family, Inclusion, Social Development and Labour, Dr. Adelsia de Jesus Mendes Almeida, thanked ECOWAS and its partners for strengthening national stakeholders’ capacity to monitor implementation of the WPS agenda using the CRF tool.
She said the workshop was timely because Cabo Verde is working towards developing its first National Action Plan for implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and related resolutions, and reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to gender parity and increased women’s representation in leadership and the military.
At the close of the workshop, participants called on ECOWAS and its partners for technical and financial support in developing that first National Action Plan, for continued capacity-building initiatives to support quality and effective implementation of the WPS agenda and use of the CRF tool, and for WPS knowledge materials at national and institutional level to support sustainable implementation, monitoring and reporting.
The Cabo Verde session marked the completion of ECOWAS’s planned series of in-country capacity-building training on the Continental Results Framework, intended to strengthen Member States’ capacity to monitor and report on implementation of the WPS agenda at national level.
The Commission and its partners said they remain committed to strengthening national capacities, enhancing accountability and advancing implementation of the agenda across the community.
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