Outcome MYM_D_1.2

By 2023, the participation and leadership of women in decision-making and political processes across the humanitarian, peace and development nexus is increased

During the reporting period, UN Women Myanmar Country Office (MCO) has made considerable progress under Outcome 2—contributing measurably to the enhanced leadership and participation of women-led and women's rights CSOs (W-CSOs). Through the Government of Finland and Norway-funded projects, UN Women provided critical support to the institutional capacity building of W-CSOs, while also working with UN and other development partners to meaningfully include W-CSOs in various human rights and humanitarian mechanisms. Most notably, at the end of 2022, UN Women MCO achieved the target for one of its Outcome indicators, wherein 100 per cent (or 27 out of 27) of the women-led and women's rights CSO supported by UN Women were still operational. Through its partners—Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Oxfam, and AIT—UN Women MCO supported 27 W-CSOs in Kachin, Kayin, Rakhine states, and Yangon region to strengthen their institutional capacities. The W-CSOs receiving small grants will provide protection, humanitarian, relief, and recovery services to 1,000 women. Another key achievement under this outcome is the demonstrable progress in increasing the capacity and skills of women-led and women's rights organizations to participate in, lead and influence formal and informal decision-making and political processes and claim accountability across the nexus—exceeding all the targets in this regard. This outcome was achieved through key results such as 48 W-CSOs being supported by UN Women to engage in advocacy on GEWE/GIHA/WPS, 220 have strengthened capacities to exercise their leadership role towards the achievement of gender equality and women's empowerment in WPS and humanitarian processes, and 24 reported increased technical or organizational capacities to deliver services, resources, and goods for women in humanitarian and development settings as a result of UN Women support. To effectively implement its CSO capacity development work, UN Women rolled out a whole office CSO capacity development strategy developed, informed by a W-CSO needs assessment and mapping of existing training providers needed for the W-CSO capacity development. Through another partnership, 'Gender and Federalism' trainings (one national and nine sub-national level trainings) was conducted to 225 participants from 92 Women CSOs across Myanmar. Moreover, UN Women MCO initiated capacity strengthening for W-CSOs in Rakhine and Southeastern Myanmar, focusing on technical and organizational development. Additionally, a significant outcome of UN Women MCO's work is the inclusion of advocacy messages written by supported W-CSOs in the written report and speech of the UN Special Rapporteur at the UN Human Rights Council in New York in September. Further, through the advocacy of UN Women partners, Myanmar's Women, Peace, and Security issues were raised with representatives of the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Council on Human Rights, who promised to include Myanmar women's WPS concerns in their reports. These have come about as UN Women is supporting W-CSOs to lead and participate in international advocacy to raise the profile of the issues and challenges to women's rights in Myanmar. For example, the UN Women's partner liaised with Member States of United Nations in NYC to gain their support in hosting a side event at CSW 67 for Myanmar W-CSOs. The W-CSO also developed a draft concept note, finalized and circulated to Canada, Norway, Spain and Sweden in December 2022. Further, through this partnership, UN Women and the W-CSO have started drafting (in 2022) an NGO CEDAW report, which will be finalized in 2023. UN Women MCO has also been supporting humanitarian, peace, and development coordination bodies to engage women's CSOs for development planning, policies, and programming and involve them in decision-making. As a co-lead of the GIHA Community of Practice, UN Women MCO has successfully advocated for 2 WCOs to be included in the Humanitarian country team, 1 in the Inter Cluster Coordination Group, and 2 in the Myanmar Humanitarian Funds Advisory Board; further, 10 Women CSOs were members of the GIHA Community of Practice. However, for the related outcome indicator, the percentage of coordination bodies that have engaged W-CSOs, progress is yet to be known after the endline is conducted in February 2023. Further, UN Women MCO has contributed significantly to the capacities of W-CSO in leading and influencing formal and informal decision-making and political processes and claiming accountability across the humanitarian-peace-development nexus. This was done through 13 trainings on Gender in Humanitarian Action, Gender and Age Marker, WPS, Gender Mainstreaming in data management, cross-cutting thematic themes on Gender, AAP, GBV, and PSEA, as well as basic Gender training. Alongside the achievements under this outcome in 2022, it is also important to highlight that a key challenge to achieving continued progress in 2023 arose last October (28th) when the Myanmar de facto authorities issued a new Organization Registration law. The law requires all local and international NGOs to register, which has adverse implications for local civil society organizations because unregistered organizations will be subjected to administrative actions and criminal penalties. This new law will also have significant operational implications for UN efforts to enhance localization and partnerships and for the possibility of engaging more W-CSOs. Thus, this underlines the lesson learned for UN Women MCO that adaptive capacities, adaptive management, and timely risk management are critically important in a protracted crisis setting in Myanmar. UN Women MCO would need to adapt and explore new implementation modalities, effectively implement comprehensive and timely risk analysis and mitigation, and pivot to implement new strategies for us to continue to our main constituencies while being aligned with the UNCT common guidelines.

By 2023, the participation and leadership of women in decision-making and political processes across the humanitarian, peace and development nexus is increased

Despite considerable challenges, during the reporting period, the MCO has made considerable progress under SN Outcome 2—contributing measurably to the enhanced leadership and participation of women-led and women's rights CSOs (W-CSOs). Through the Government of Finland and Norway-funded projects, UN Women provided critical support to the institutional capacity building of W-CSOs, while also working with UN and other development partners to meaningfully include W-CSOs in various human rights and humanitarian mechanisms. Most notably, at the end of 2023, UN Women MCO achieved the target for one of its Outcome indicators, wherein 100 per cent (or 26 out of 26) of the W-CSO supported by UN Women were still operational. Through its partners, the MCO supported W-CSOs in Kachin, Kayin, Rakhine states, and Yangon region to strengthen their institutional capacities. W-CSOs received small grants and provided protection, relief and recovery services to 12,748 direct beneficiaries and 7,785 indirect beneficiaries. UN Women supported international and regional advocacy for women’s rights and included a mission to Indonesia to share updates on the situation in Myanmar from a Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) perspective with Indonesian representatives of ASEAN Sectoral Bodies and special Human Rights Commission. The trip aimed to foster stronger and closer network relationships between Myanmar CSOs and ASEAN women peacebuilders and Indonesian CSOs. UN Women also supported this WCSO to participate in various advocacy opportunities in Geneva, New York, and Thailand. A key outcome from CSO advocacy in Geneva was the understanding that the formal channel for submitting official CSO written statements to the CEDAW committee about Myanmar involves UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews. The Vice Chairperson of the CEDAW committee committed to exploring ways to officially address Myanmar's issues in upcoming CEDAW sessions, potentially collaborating with Tom Andrews. In March 2023, UN Women supported a delegation of WCSOs to participate in a side event at CSW 67. Their global advocacy at CSW 67 led to extensive coverage of gender equality and women's empowerment (GEWE) issues in global news publications such as the Associated Press and the Diplomatic Insight and a press conference organised by the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations. The trip also supported the WCSO delegation in strengthening their relationships with Member State delegations in New York. UN Women MCO has also been supporting humanitarian, peace, and development coordination bodies to engage women's CSOs for development planning, policies, and programming and involve them in decision-making. UN Women, through various partners, provided capacity building to 17 W-CSOs on WPS to support their advocacy efforts. In the humanitarian sector , training on Rapid Gender Analysis were provided to 124 individuals (105 female; 19 male) directly through UN Women and through a responsible party small grants and trainings to 17 WCSOs (166 female; 70 male) were provided. Training included organisational policies, community level protection and humanitarian response to enhance W-CSO’s ability to contribute to WPS and humanitarian processes.