Outcome PAK_D_6.3

Legal frameworks and policies to advance women’s leadership and participation in decision making and in humanitarian action and economic empowerment

A wide array of stakeholders, including women peacebuilders, CSOs and peace networks like Af-Pak Women Association has been engaged to establish and strengthen partnership. The strategic partnership has established with National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) to pave the way for advocacy to promote women's leadership in peacebuilding by prioritizing government’s focus on the role of women in peace and security, and potential development of WPS National Action Plan. UN Women PCO aligned the workplan with NACTA’s Outreach Policy to address national priorities. The strategic partnership also allowed UN Women PCO to share lessons learned and pathways to promote women's leadership in peacebuilding. This will act as an important step towards advancing legal frameworks and policies that promote women's leadership and participation in decision-making and in humanitarian action and economic empowerment. At a local level, for the first time, 25 female faith leaders in Karachi were engaged to strengthen their concepts of peace and inter-faith and intra-faith harmony. As a result of this endeavor, these diverse faith leaders took leads in organizing 04 community engagement sessions reaching 105 women, to promote peaceful co-existence and emerge as local female faith leaders. Engaging female faith leaders has paved the way to increased opportunity for women to voice their issues and empower them to take lead and participate in decision-making. At a regional level, Afghan and Pakistani women peacebuilders had increased opportunities and platforms to strengthen women's leadership role and highlight their voices, concerns and experiences of conflict and promote regional peace and stability through UN Women’s supported bilateral and regional dialogues (16 events), capacity building sessions (7 sessions) and community engagement events (37 events). To increase women's role in political and electoral processes, PCO initiated a participatory gender audit of the Election Commission of Pakistan. The gender audit aims to ascertain the extent to which the commission has embraced gender mainstreaming in its work, organizational structure and in its processes. The gender audit will enhance the collective capacity of the ECP to examine its activities form a gender perspective, and identify strengths and weaknesses in promoting gender equality issues. For 2023, PCO plans on initating a gender audit of the federal parliament, that will pave the way for increasing women's role in leadership positions and help build a pipeline of women leaders.