The SMWIPM is working in partnership with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to introduce a new awareness-raising initiative for universities on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.
Introduced on 31st October 2000, this groundbreaking resolution promotes the vital role of women at the decision-making levels and their role in building peaceful societies and combating violence. It urges member states to ensure the full inclusion of women and gender perspectives in all aspects of peacemaking, peace building, conflict resolution, and post conflict reconstruction.
Since its inception, the Peace Movement has worked hard to disseminate the principles behind UNSC 1325 through the organization of various roundtables, seminars and workshops amongst women from both Africa and the Middle East.
Building on these efforts, and on its long-standing partnership with UNIFEM, the Peace Movement will be working with university students to integrate a UNSC 1325 component in existing Model United Nations (MUN) programs across Egypt by providing the MUN secretariats with a UN training on UNSC 1325 which would enable them to further discuss and work on the Resolution during their conference.
In preparation for this program, several meetings have been held over the past year with high board university student members from the American University in Cairo (Cairo International Model United Nations- CIMUN), Ain Shams University (Ain Shams Model United Nations- ASMUN) and Cairo University (Arab League Model United Nations - ALMUN) in order to develop an action plan and the implementation plan for the initiative.
On November 17th, 2009 the Peace Movement and UNIFEM visited ASMUN and CIMUN for the official launching of the initiative, meeting with Organizing Committee students and the secretariats. In this occasion each campus displayed their poster of the initiative at their Delegate’s Recruitment Booth.
“The importance of UNSC 1325 is that it is a cross-cutting resolution, which highlights the central role that women play in all the socio-economic and political challenges that we as MUN members address through our program”, says Hani Omran – Graduate Advisor, ASMUN
In the long-term, the Peace Movement hopes to organize UN training workshops on UNSC 1325 at these same universities in order to empower young people to implement the provisions of this resolution across their communities.