© 2020. PHOTO BY PEACE DIALOGUE NGO. AUTHOR: MARIANNA KHAZHAKYAN
Since 2019, in collaboration with a Berlin-based NGO CRISP, Peace Dialogue NGO has been implementing the project Developing Capacities for Women Focused Networks in the Southern Caucasus which is aimed at the empowerment and capacity building of women from the rural areas of the South Caucasus in the field of human rights education.
The main directions of the 2020 project are women’s rights issues as well as women’s awareness-raising on the provisions of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. To achieve this aim, capacity-building trainings were conducted in parallel in August 2020 for the participants of the project teams from Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.
On 27-31 August, Peace Dialogue NGO implemented a-five-day training in Gyumri for the Armenian team involving women and girls from the Armenian regions of Lori and Tavush.
During the training, the participants discussed manifold women’s rights issues existing in their regions as well as addressed the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on women and girls in the South Caucasus. Besides, the participants were introduced to a number of effective methods and tools for identifying women’s issues and carrying out a root cause analysis in the respective regions.
Taking into consideration the fact that after returning to their communities, the participants involved in the project will come up with their own initiatives aimed at raising women’s issues and finding solutions at the local level, PD experts presented to the participants one of the main elements of the training – the 2019-2021 National Action Plan for the implementation of the provisions of the UN SC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, adopted on 28 February 2019 by the Decree N197-L of the RA Government. With this, Peace Dialogue strived to ensure connection between the project initiatives and the actions envisaged by the RA Government.
The project is implemented by CRISP NGO with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office and Civil Society Cooperation program of the German Government.
