Re- Advertisement/ Call for proposals Global Acceleration Instrument on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action

Since 2000 and the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1325, remarkable normative progress has been made at the global, regional, and national levels to further advance and operationalize the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. There is also increasing recognition that placing women’s agency at the centre of the transition from crisis to sustainable development offers enormous potential for leveraging transformative change. Women’s meaningful participation in peace processes increases the likelihood that peace agreements will be sustained. Women can play a critical role in conflict prevention (including for violent extremism and radicalization), and bridging divides across communities. Women’s participation increases the reach and impact of humanitarian assistance.  Research shows that women can greatly facilitate mediation efforts and peace negotiations by opening new avenues for dialogue between different factions.[1] Furthermore, women’s active participation in economic re-vitalization makes peacebuilding and recovery efforts more sustainable.

Despite the evidence base, women’s contributions continue to be undervalued, under-utilized and under-resourced. In 2012-2013 only 2 per cent of aid to the peace and security sector targeted gender equality as a principal objective.[2]  Similarly, in 2014, only 20 per cent of humanitarian projects were coded as making a significant contribution to gender equality, while 65 per cent of funding reported through UN OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS) simply did not use the gender marker introduced five years ago. Further, humanitarian, peace and security, and development assistance funds continue to operate in silos. Each have different aims, follow different principles, operate over different funding cycles, and are aligned with different budget lines and rules managed by different actors.[3]

In order to address the financing gaps, create greater synergies between different sources of finance, and break the silos between humanitarian, peace and security, and development assistance, the Global Acceleration Instrument (GAI) on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action was launched in February 2016 in New York. The GAI is a recommendation of the Global Study on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2015), of the Secretary General annual report on Women, Peace and Security (2015), and recommended by the UN Security Council in its resolution 2242 (2015).

As an instrument mainly aimed at funding local women’s organizations, including in humanitarian settings, the GAI is also a concrete response to the commitments of the World Humanitarian Summit (2016) in terms of establishing pooled funding mechanisms, localizing the humanitarian response, ensuring national ownership, as well as increasing investment in civil society organizations and in gender equality.