The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) is calling for increased involvement of women in conflict and peace mediation processes.
This is noted as a strategy to ensure that peaceful coexistence is realized in counties with perennial conflicts.
Part of the roles women can actively participate in to pitch their voices are the local peace and security committees where women especially those from pastoralist communities have been sidelined previously.
According to Richard Nderitu, a senior programs officer working with NCIC, a program to train women on peace and conflict mediation has been formulated, targeting women groups from the counties of Isiolo, Marsabit, Garissa, Kisumu, Nairobi, and parts of the western region.
In Isiolo county, Isiolo Peace link Organisation was selected to work with over seventy women from the County’s three sub-counties of Merti, Garbatula and Isiolo, equipping them with mediation skills to help them take up an active role in conflict resolution processes within their respective regions.
Nderitu said that the program which has been supported through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is being implemented by independent community based organizations that work with women at grassroots level in the targeted counties.
Joyce Nairisiae, who is the first woman to be elected as a chairperson of the Samburu community council of elders in Burat ward of Isiolo County held that despite her highly ranked position, men were still not giving her room to be heard and to make decisions because of the patriarchal orders presented by cultural norms.
Joyce explained that women are not involved because cultural norms forbid women to make decisions on behalf of men.
She noted that for ages, men from the pastoralist communities have been unable to coexist peacefully whenever they graze together during dry seasons, therefore it was time for women to also take up roles perceived to be originally for men such as herding cattle, arguing that women would never fight in the grazing fields like the men do.
The women called upon the county government administration to come on board to amplify the roles of women in peacebuilding, noting that they were saddened by frequent cases of insecurity that continue to rob communities of many lives through unnecessary killings.
Isiolo Peacelink Executive Director Abdia Mohamud said that the selected women have been recruited from the indigenous women of the United Nations Security Resolution 1325 action groups that have been promoting women’s voices in leadership. She appealed to all state and non-state actors to support the initiative to enable women take up an active role in mediation processes in a bid to resolve conflicts and consequently ensure that peace prevails in their respective regions.
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