UN Women Indonesia
At A Glance
UN Women is the global champion for gender equality, working to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her full potential. UN Women supports UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality and works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to ensure that the standards are effectively implemented and truly benefit women and girls worldwide. It works globally to make the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals a reality for women and girls and stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on
four strategic priorities:
All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence
Women and girls contribute to and have greater influence in building sustainable peace and resilience, and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters and conflicts and humanitarian action
UN Women also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s work in advancing gender equality, and in all deliberations and agreements linked to the 2030 Agenda. The entity works to position gender equality as fundamental to the Sustainable Development Goals, and a more inclusive world.
IN THIS PAGE
PEACE VILLAGES
In 2017, in partnership with Wahid Foundation, a program entitled “Women Participation for Inclusive Society” or abbreviated as WISE was launched to emphasize women’s role in promoting peaceful and resilient communities to cultivate peace. The program developed the concept of “Peace Villages” as an approach to engage main stakeholders in the village as a whole.
Peace Village initiative aims to tackle the threat of radicalism by empowering communities, one village at a time, through cultivating social cohesion, community resilience, as well as promoting societal equality and respect for diversity with women at the centre. This initiative puts Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) strategic vision into very concrete actions.
Through the initiative, several women’s groups take on the role of agents for peace were established. Next to economic empowerment component, women peace agents received regular training on conflict resolution and how to locally prevent, detect and address early signs of violence. Women’s groups approached their village leadership to explore ways to promote tolerance and sustain peace within their communities. As a result, in its initial two years of implementation between 2017 to 2019, with the support from UN Women, ten village leaders committed to pilot the Peace Village concept. A Peace Village Declaration signed by involved partners, is based on specific commitments, captured in nine indicators that measure progress in efforts to prevent violence, promote tolerance and advance social justice.
Peace Village initiative purposefully places women as the main actors in building peace within the family, community, and local governance. Women are engaged to foster their abilities to become economically independent, to actively participate in communal decision making and to creatively develop peace narratives. At the same time, the village government is encouraged to integrate peace values into its policy. These concerted efforts are strengthened further by connecting significant stakeholders from grassroots leaders, local government, regional and national governments as well as international agencies.
HIGH-QUALITY RESEARCH
on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) with human security approach
UN Women supports Indonesia to promote women’s human rights, gender responsive laws, policies and development plans. Among other initiatives, this work has involved collaboration with civil society organizations to facilitate small business workshops and loans to economically empower women, and to enhance women’s capacity to address community-based conflicts and support peaceful solutions to growing intolerance and violent extremism. This took place at the village level in West Java, Central East Java, and East Java. From this work, ten villages have declared themselves ‘Peace Villages’, meaning that the village stakeholders, with active influence from women’s groups, are committed to achieve pre-developed indicators of a peaceful village. The Peace Villages concept was developed under UN Women programme called Empowered Women, Peaceful Communities.
The four peace villages established in East Java provide an ideal foundation for the human security programme because they apply key principles of the human security approach. The design of the peace village concept recognizes the interlinkages between peace, development and human rights, while focusing on generating resilience at the grass-roots level, among communities. The Peace Villages are also well positioned to function as pilot villages to develop a community-based and gender responsive approach to the implementation of Indonesia’s National Action Plan to Counter and Prevent Violent Extremism.
UN Women has also helped to mainstream gender considerations in national development policies and priorities, including the response to violent extremism leading to terrorism. With the support from UN Women and civil society organizations the Government of Indonesia was able to pass the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security through a Ministry Regulation from Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Cultural Affairs (Permenko PMK) in 2014. UN Women is also supporting of the drafting of the next National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security, as well as the National Action Plan on Preventing Violent Extremism.
Photo courtesy of Wahid Foundation
