Armenia: Ensuring Women’s Voices Are Heard

IWPR partners in Armenia are helping draft the country’s third National Action Plan (NAP) to ensure the rights of women and girls are an integral part of the government’s policy-making process over the coming years.

Their collaboration marks the first time NGOs in Armenia have been directly involved in the initiative to implement the landmark 2000 UN resolution that set out an international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. More than 100 UN member states have instituted NAPs that lay out objectives and concrete steps to ensure women’s rights in conflict settings and ensure their meaningful participation in peace and security.

“Our work for developing the WPS NAP is a dynamic and inclusive process that involves the voices of women representing the diverse ethnic and social fabric of Armenian society and its diaspora,” said Gulnara Shahinian, founder and president of Democracy Today.

The human rights NGO has provided training and consultancy, particularly for the police and the ministry of defence, to raise awareness of the vital role women play in peace and security issues.

Democracy Today – which also developed a comprehensive resource book to support implementation - is one of three IWPR grantees working on Armenia’s third NAP under the Building Resilience in the Eastern Neighbourhood (BREN) project, delivered by IWPR and supported by the UK’s Integrated Security Fund (ISF).

The BREN project is empowering civil society organisations across the South Caucasus and Moldova by providing sub-grants to support security, equality, and social justice.

Another key partner, the Armavir Development Center (ADC), has been holding town halls across Armenia’s regions to gather perspectives from local government and civil society alike that will inform the NAP.

“Our goal is to make the third NAP participatory so that it effectively addresses existing needs and issues,” said ADC president Naira Arakelyan.

Initial findings have highlighted the need to address key issues including the security challenges faced by women displaced from Nagorny Karabakh as well as important concerns over both psychosocial well-being and digital security. Their previous work in the BREN project involved developing a guidebook on how to make the NAP relevant for local commnities, which will now be adapted and included as an annex in the final document.

Meanwhile, the OxYGen Foundation, an advocacy and development foundation, is focusing on the monitoring and evaluation of the NAP, a process which is being included for the first time.

Leveraging their network of women activists created under the BREN project, they are gathering insights to help ensure the NAP is both effective and actionable. The plan will be implemented over a two-year period, with the flexibility to extend into a third year as needed.

Over the past two years, BREN partners in Armenia have contributed significantly to community and policy level changes regarding gender-related issues.  

With its focus on empowering women and marginalised groups, BREN aims to create a ripple effect of change that extends beyond its immediate beneficiaries.

In Armenia, Shahinian said, work on the NAP has been a “dynamic, inclusive and highly creative process, as it involves the voices of women representing the diverse ethnic and social fabric of Armenian society in the motherland and diaspora…it widens the understanding of peace, going beyond just agreement. It invests in joint actions to build positive peace, so much needed in Armenia.”