Peace Award: CSOs Competition on Good Practices in Women, Peace and Security

Deadline: 20-Dec-2024

To raise awareness and elevate the efforts of CSOs, UN Women is launching the CSOs Peace Award Competition entitled “CSOs PEACE Award: CSOs Competition on Good Practices in Women Peace and Security in Southeast Asia”.

The competition targets CSOs actively working on WPS in the ASEAN region and Timor-Leste. The aim is to highlight innovative, replicable, and impactful initiatives that empower women and promote their participation in peace and traditional and non-traditional security initiatives. By sharing these narratives, they not only celebrate the achievements of these organizations but also create a platform for learning collaboration, and increased awareness of the WPS agenda.

This initiative falls under the ASEAN Regional project “Empowering Women for Sustainable Peace: Preventing Violence and Promoting Social Cohesion in ASEAN,” generously funded by the Governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Korea.

Objectives 

• Awareness raising of WPS Agenda: Enhance awareness in the ASEAN region about the importance of implementing existing regional and national policy frameworks on WPS by sharing concrete examples and success stories of grassroots initiatives.
• Compile a catalogue of Good Practices in WPS: Identify and document innovative and impactful initiatives by civil society organizations that effectively empower women in peace and security. This will create a comprehensive resource for sharing successful strategies.
• Facilitate Knowledge Exchange: Provide a structured platform for participating CSOs to share their experiences lessons learned, and good practices. This will foster collaboration and enable the replication of successful WPS initiatives in diverse contexts.
• Acknowledging the efforts of CSOs: Recognize and celebrate the contributions of CSOs in advancing the WPS agenda in the region. This recognition will highlight their critical role in promoting women’s participation in peace and security.

Focus Areas

• Submissions should reflect initiatives that enhance women’s participation, empower women, and integrate gender perspectives to contribute to sustainable peace and security, emphasizing local context. Concrete results should be showcased. Key topics include:
  • Support for WPS normative development/National Action Plans
  • Women’s participation in peace processes and conflict prevention
  • Gender perspectives and women’s participation in peacekeeping/gender responsive security sector
  • Women’s participation in preventing violent extremism.
  • Women participation and gender perspective integration into conflict prevention and early warning systems
  • Women’s participation in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR)
  • Women’s participation in disaster risk reduction, protection in crisis and disaster response
  • Women’s participation in social cohesion and promotion of community resilience
  • Women’s participation in cybersecurity
  • Access to justice
  • Gender-responsive planning, budgeting, data and statistics
  • Preventing and combating trafficking in persons
  • Women’s political participation

Prize Information

• One winner will be selected from each participating country and announced on the 28thFebruary 2025. Winners will receive support to attend the ASEAN WPS Summit in Malaysia in 2025.

Eligibility Criteria

• Open to civil society organizations (CSOs) operating in the ASEAN Region and Timor-Leste.
• Submissions must document initiatives from these countries.
• Written narratives should be between 800 and 1500 words and should include at least a photo of the initiative. The information should be submitted in English. If English is not feasible, a local language submission must include an English translation.

For more information, visit ASEAN.