Small Grants in Support of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Objectives (U.S. Department of 
State)

The Bureau of African Affairs and the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues commissioned Dexis Consulting Group to evaluate small grants awarded under the Africa—Women, Peace, and Security and the Global Women, Peace, and Security initiatives. Each of these grants were implemented between 2011 and 2015 in countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Each of these small grants were awarded to NGOs and primarily funded projects between. The value of these grants range between $200,000 and $400,000 and their objectives include:

• women’s participation in peace processes and decision-making; 

• protection from violence; and 

• conflict prevention.

 

Regional and National Frameworks and Policies (AFIDEP, 2017)

• 2010 to 2020 was declared the African Women’s Decade in 2008 to advance gender equality by accelerating the implementation of Dakar, Beijing, and African Union Assembly Decisions on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment; and

• At the sub-regional level, the Southern African Development Community adopted a Protocol on Gender Equality, while the Economic Community of West African States has created a gender policy focused on empowering women particularly in areas of policy design and implementation 

The effectiveness of national and regional frameworks can be observed in the 2015 Millennium Development Goals report, which found that women in Sub-saharan Africa are gaining more power in the realm of politics and civil life. The proportion of seats held by women in single or lower houses of national parliament increased from 13 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2015, which is rather close to the developed regions, most of which have 25 percent of their seats held by women. In particular, Rwanda made the largest progress with an increase of 60 percent over the last two decades (The Millennium Development Goals Report, 2015).

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WPS Agenda

The Women, Peace and Security agenda is an integral part of the Joint EU-Africa Strategy.

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Figure 1: Pillars of UNSCR (Desmidt and Davis, 2019)

The WPS agenda is a central to both the peace and security policies in the EU as well as in Africa and it focuses on participation, protection, prevention, and relief and recovery.