The Conciliation Resources team is proud to have completed our very first fundraising fitness challenge, Steps to Peace. It exceeded all expectations and raised over £12,000 to support our organisation’s vital peacebuilding work.
This week members of the Women Mediators across the Commonwealth (WMC) network met with representatives from Commonwealth States, Lord Ahmad and Her Royal Highness The Countess of Wessex online to celebrate the work of women mediators and peacebuilders.
Lauren is the MEL Advisor at Conciliation Resources. Prior to joining Conciliation Resources in 2018, Lauren worked on refugee and asylum issues in the UK, US, and France. In addition, as part of the Oberlin Research Group she consulted for the US State Department on Moroccan development initiatives. Lauren graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Politics and International Studies from Oberlin College, receiving the highest honours for her thesis on the securitisation of asylum. Lauren is fluent in English and French.
Ahmed Yusuf is a Project Manager working on our Ethiopia Programme, with a focus on providing support and accompaniment to the Political Parties Dialogue Forum as part of the political transition process in the Somali Region. Ahmed has over 10 years of experience working with local NGOs/INGOs in practical fieldwork with a focus on the areas of facilitating peacebuilding consultative meetings and leadership engagement.
Alicia Kuin has facilitated over 600 conflict processes, and as a 33-year old woman, she’s usually working in spaces dominated by older men. Twenty years after the landmark United Nations Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security, Alicia reflects on the challenges she experienced as a young female mediator and what she’s learning from colleagues around the world.
Angus joined Conciliation Resources in November 2020 as a Senior Finance Officer for the Southeast Asia and Pacific team. This role involves a range of finance functions and services that aim to support the delivery of the work of Conciliation Resources. Angus has more than ten years of experience working in not-for-profit and commercial sectors in Australia. He has built up his extensive experience in a range of day to day financial operations. Angus grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Melbourne permanently, and he is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese.
Women mediators are constantly finding innovative ways to bridge the peace gap in all spaces of mediation – within communities, nationally, and across borders to engage regionally and internationally. Through our work and research we know that women are there, and always have been. But 20 years on from the United Nation’s landmark resolution on women, peace and security, women for the most part remain unrecognised and invisible and are continually denied access to the peace table and decision-making spaces.
This guide is intended to support facilitators to undertake a participatory gender-sensitive conflict analysis and provides step-by-step guidance and tools to analyse gender, peace, violence and conflict for any conflict context. Gender-sensitive conflict analysis is the starting point to understanding and transforming the ways in which gender inequality causes conflict and discrimination, fuels exclusionary politics and causes violence against some groups in society.
The following documents are available to download below: 1) Full Gender-sensitive conflict analysis facilitators guide 2) Guide without annexes and 3) Annexes 1-3.
Gender inequality is a root cause of conflict. Evidence shows that high levels of unequal power relations and gender-based violence are associated with increased vulnerability to war and the use of more severe forms of violence in conflict.* Understanding these dynamics allows us to uncover, target and transform the root causes that fuel violence and conflict.
Recent survey results suggest that a significant majority (70.9%) of the Georgian public think their government could take further steps to improve relationships between Georgian and Abkhaz societies. Most of them believe direct dialogue with the de facto authorities in Abkhazia is the answer. These survey results indicate a willingness by the Georgian population to embrace change in relation to the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.
