{"id":46426,"date":"2019-03-25T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T01:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=46426"},"modified":"2019-03-25T12:22:41","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T01:22:41","slug":"what-makes-for-an-effective-wps-national-action-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/what-makes-for-an-effective-wps-national-action-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes for an effective WPS national action plan?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article is part of a series on women, peace and security that\u00a0<\/em>The Strategist\u00a0is publishing in recognition of International Women\u2019s Day 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

For the past 20\u00a0years, I\u2019ve worked on turning the promise of UN Security Council resolution\u00a01325<\/a> on women, peace and security (WPS) into reality. In my experience, developing WPS national action plans (NAPs) is one way in which we can translate policy commitments that matter into actions that make a difference. Since the first NAP in 2006, 80\u00a0countries have adopted NAPs with specific national and local objectives. Over the past decade, I\u2019ve helped close to 40\u00a0nations create, implement and evaluate their NAPs. While it\u2019s hard to establish a causal link, 90% of countries with a NAP have decreased their gender gaps and 60% have grown more peaceful according to data from the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n

While this data is important, I can testify to the benefits of the process<\/em> of developing a plan in different contexts. First, creating a NAP forces an unusual set of government actors to work together\u2014it isn\u2019t often that interior and defence ministry officials gather in the same room with social development or women\u2019s affairs officials.<\/p>\n

Second, in most countries, civil society drives the agenda and plays a critical role in its implementation; for example, an NGO leader from Erbil currently coordinates the cross-sectoral taskforce that oversees the Iraqi NAP.<\/p>\n

Third, by pushing implementation to the local level, NAPs facilitate the recruitment of more women into local police forces and other government institutions. Currently, more than 100\u00a0local action plans are bringing municipal and district governments together with local security and justice providers to mainstream gender into their operations.<\/p>\n

Finally, NAPs are vehicles to engage government actors at various levels with ordinary people to build trust and communication about stability and security issues. As my friend Precious Dennis said in Liberia, \u2018We want to use this NAP to teach people that we can now turn to the police to provide us with protection, not to run away from their past abuses.\u2019<\/p>\n

Still, some challenges remain as we move towards improvements. Inaugural plans focus heavily, sometimes exclusively, on intragovernmental processes that promise little meaningful change outside bureaucracy; many include vague pledges, without clarity about intended results.<\/p>\n

For some governments, creating a NAP becomes a check-the-box exercise without any real commitment to implementation. And even when there\u2019s a commitment, the action is often impaired by operational challenges\u2014lack of staff capacity, lack of effective mechanisms to engage civil society and, most often, lack of resources to implement proposed activities. Many NAPs don\u2019t build in the capacity to monitor implementation or explain change in the lives of ordinary people, and so don\u2019t achieve a high impact.<\/p>\n

Through my practical experience, in the UN global study to implement resolution 1325<\/a>, we identified four elements that create a high-impact NAP: an inclusive design process and an established coordination system for implementation, strong and sustained political will, identified and allocated implementation resources, and a results-based monitoring and evaluation plan.<\/p>\n

An inclusive design process ensures that the various government ministries and agencies responsible for the NAP are represented in both its creation and its implementation. This includes every ministry involved, as well as civil society. In my own native Bosnia and Herzegovina, one member nominated from each ministry involved was given explicit roles and responsibilities.<\/p>\n

The political will of the institutions involved determines whether the NAP will be more than a check-the-box exercise. The commitment of high-level government officials is important, but it\u2019s often mid-level civil servants who determine the success of a NAP\u2019s implementation. In countries affected by conflict, buy-in and ownership shouldn\u2019t be limited to the federal level; provincial and local governments must also be committed. From Sierra Leone to Kenya, from Farah Province in Afghanistan to Mindanao in the Philippines, I\u2019ve seen scores of such committed men and women work hard to apply a NAP for change.<\/p>\n

Results-based monitoring and evaluation takes implementation-focused monitoring and evaluation a step further. It includes a framework or matrix linking one step to the next, assigning responsibilities to lead and supporting agencies for implementing actions, and reporting on measurable qualitative and quantitative indicators.<\/p>\n

Developing indicators in the design phase can make implementation much easier. In several countries I\u2019ve worked in, government officials and civil-society representatives often report that using SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) indicators allows them to translate intended results into concrete actions with specified results.<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, I\u2019ve intensified advocacy to move away from the default format for most NAPs, which reflects the \u2018four Ps\u2019 of resolution 1325 (participation, protection, prevention, and post-conflict relief and recovery). One core lesson is that, to translate the resolution\u2019s (and its seven enforcing ones\u2019) transformative potential, we can\u2019t plan simply according to the pillars, as many activities overlap and intersect. It\u2019s much more effective to focus on strategic areas of substantive change\u2014for example, to reform the security sector, to prevent violent extremism or to increase gender perspectives in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Several recent NAPs, notably those of the UK, Canada, Finland and Bosnia, use this format.<\/p>\n

Several other important lessons:<\/p>\n