By Abbas Bamalli
An NGO, Gender Awareness Trust (GAT), has mobilised stakeholders in Katsina to push for the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) policy in the state.
A representative of the group, Halima Abba-Ibrahim, disclosed this in Katsina on Friday, during a meeting for the Building Inclusive Peace (BIP) project in the state.
She said that the meeting was organised by GAT, in collaboration with Tetra Spring Tech, to look at how to implement the WPS Action Plan.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the WPS Agenda is a global initiative focused on integrating women’s perspectives and participation in peace and security efforts.
She added that a policy document called State Action Plan (SAP) was recently approved by Gov. Dikko Radda, hence the reason for the meeting to identify the WPS mechanism.
She explained that “the mechanism can be a group, it can be an organisation or an association working on peace and WPS.
“So, after identifying the action plan, we can look at how we will collaborate to ensure successful implementation in Katsina State.
“The policy document contains a lot of pillars that women can look up to and have, like a bit of relief.”
Abba-Ibrahim noted that the goal is to foster inclusive and sustainable peace in Kaduna and Katsina states by strengthening community resilience and enhancing gender-responsive prevention.
According to her, sustainable peace can be achieved through coordinated action among key stakeholders.
She, therefore, listed objectives of the meeting to include bringing together key stakeholders to identify and document existing peace and WPS mechanisms.
Others, she said, are to map out actors involved and highlight current priorities and opportunities for strengthening coordination, collaboration, and effective implementation of the state action plan on UNSCR 1325.
Some of the expected outcomes are to have clear list of state agencies, security actors, traditional and religious leaders, CSOs, women/youth groups and development partners working on peace and WPS.
Other expected outcomes she mentioned are the documentation of peace structures at state, local and community levels, especially peace committees, SAP coordination platforms, gender desks in security agencies and mediation groups.
NAN