On 12 June, the joint report by the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will be launched in Cameroon with an evening lecture: “The Invisible Women of Violent Extremism” hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat in Douala, Cameroon. The report, Invisible Women: Gendered Dimensions of Return, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration from Violent Extremism, draws on the expertise of members of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL).
The event will explore how to advance a holistic and gendered approach to return, rehabilitation and reintegration from violent extremism through policies and programming. Fostering awareness of the issues surrounding this, it will highlight potential solutions pioneered by women peacebuilders, as presented in the Invisible Women report. Based on the knowledge about the necessity of integrated, multi-stakeholder approaches that enable state and civil society to work in tandem, the event will also focus on the potential for collaboration between international, national and civil society actors on gender – and human rights – sensitive disengagement, rehabilitation and reintegration through the development and implementation of national PVE strategies and action plans.
Invisible Women lays out a gendered analysis of disengagement, rehabilitation and reintegration across the sectors that play an important role in responding to those who return. The key findings and good practices elaborated throughout the report are also distilled into programming guidance with specific recommendations and questions to ask when designing, monitoring and evaluating rehabilitation and reintegration programs for women and girls.
Ms. Hamsatu Allamin, founder of the Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development in Nigeria and a founding member of WASL, and Mr. Jean Luc Stalon, Resident Representative of UNDP Cameroon Country Office, will provide front-line perspectives on the key issues related to return, rehabilitation and reintegration. They will share strategies, lessons learnt and recommendations for critical and practical steps that the UN and member states can take in the development of policy and programming in regards to this topic.
The 90-minute event will be structured as a facilitated dialogue between the speakers and the moderator, Melinda Holmes, Program Director at ICAN and co-author of Invisible Women, followed by audience questions and comments.
ICAN and WASL are also in Cameroon to deliver an interactive 3-day training seminar for women civil society actors on gender and PVE from the 11th-14th of June on behalf of the Commonwealth CVE Unit. The ICAN “Gendered Preventing & Countering Violent Extremism” training will show how meaningful engagement of diverse sector–from media and religion to education and economics–is key to effective P/CVE programming.
Click here to register for the event.