With support of UN Women, BNPS has been implementing a project in the title “Empowered Women Peaceful Communities” from May 2017 that has provided the space for women to undertake leadership roles in preventing violent extremism so that they can relate to the current rise in radicalism globally and observe its effect on their lives within their communities and to be agents of peace in their own communities.
BNPS facilitated to form a national women network called ‘Women for Peace, Bangladesh’ in July 2017 involving 21 women organizations from 21 districts in Bangladesh with a view to develop joint agendas and advocacy strategies so as to influence government organizations working on counter-radicalization and counter-terrorism particularly on WPS.
Heads and representatives of 21 women organizations were present in the formation meeting and shared their own experiences on these issues and put their grave concerns on rising trend of sign and symptom of fundamentalist activities and interventions in different form in their locality. At the end, all participants expressed their solidarity to work together under a network and named the network ‘শান্তি ও সম্প্রীতিতে নারীমঞ্চ’ (Women for Peace, Bangladesh). BNPS was selected as the secretariat of the network and the Executive Director of BNPS Rokeya Kabir was nominated as the Convener. The network members are the key players and catalysts of the project, involved starting from district consultations and bringing women issues and concerns related to WPS, SCR 1325 & VE from local to national level for feeding it into the WPS national action plan.
The network members met together in a workshop on 26th March 2018 at Dhaka with a view to generate ideas and formulate advocacy strategies of the Network with particular focus on National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. In the workshop they drafted thier objective, which is to pursue the policy leaders and duty bearers to formulate policies and actions on WPS and take appropriate measures for effective implementation with inclusive participation and decision-making process of women from grassroots to national level in order to build peaceful communities. They also identified four major strategies of the network: (i) Capacity Building; (ii) Community Mobilization on WPS; (iii) Policy Advocacy; and (iv) Networking and Collaboration.
As a part of their advocacy strategy, the network organized a press conference on 27th Feb 2018 at Dhaka and shared their concerns and voices in connection with the consolidated recommendations of districts, divisional and national level workshops on WPS and PVE among print and electronic media journalists.
