Gender and Peacebuilding

Swiss peacebuilding activities

Since the UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, Swiss governmental and non-governmental actors have become increasingly involved in the areas of gender, development, human rights and peace-building. In the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Post-Beijing Plan of Action, Switzerland has committed itself to gender mainstream all its government activities. While state actors like SDC have a long track record of gender mainstreaming their development projects and policies, SDC's divisions like COPRET and the DFA started to gender mainstream their crisis prevention and peace-building in the last couple of years.

NGOs like the cfd and Frauen für den Frieden have focused on the topic for some decades. The 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005, initiated in 2003, had the aim to document, publicize and honor the worldwide largely hidden und unspectacular peace work by women. 

KOFF activities

KOFF engages in various national and international activities on "gender & peace-building" through information sharing, networking, training, and consultancy. KOFF has organized a wide range of activities like a gender roundtable, a gender & peace-building working group, backstopping mandate for DFA, PD IV, and gender training.