Enhancing Women’s Participation: GPPAC Partners with the WPHFs Rapid Response Window

We are excited to share that we have entered a one-year partnership with the Rapid Response Window (RRW) of the United Nations Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF). Together, we aim to advance women's meaningful participation in formal peace processes and the implementation of peace agreements.

What is the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) about?

The Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) mobilizes critical financing for local and grassroots civil society organizations working on women, peace and security and humanitarian action. Since its launch in 2016, WPHF has supported over 480 local women’s organizations and is present in 26 countries supporting women on the front lines to be a force for crisis response and lasting peace.

The WPHF Rapid Response Window provides financing for strategic and urgent services and initiatives that support the participation of women peacebuilders and women’s civil society organizations in national, subnational and international formal peace processes. This new funding mechanism is open to formal peace processes in al  ODA eligible countries.

Why are we entering a partnership with WPHF RRW?

We know that women are powerful agents of change for sustainable and inclusive peace. Yet, women’s meaningful participation in formal peace processes remains one of the most stalled areas in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. One of the barriers to women’s meaningful participation is that adequate, flexible, and timely financing for enhancing women peacebuilders is still lacking.

Despite some encouraging data that women’s participation is increasing the sustainability of peace agreements, participation of women and girls in formal peace processes, provisions of peace agreements and their implementation remains incredibly low.

To make further headway with our collective commitment to increase women’s participation and influence in peace processes, we have partnered with WPHF. Since November 2021, we have been acting as an implementing INGO partner of the WPHF-RRW.

As an INGO partner, we support CSOs to access funding opportunities that serve to enhance women’s representation in formal peace processes and implementation of peace agreements.  In this capacity, GPPAC will support successful applicants in carrying out their activities in a range of ways, for example, by offering technical guidance for the fulfilment of planned objectives, deploying monitoring and evaluation tools, as well as producing knowledge materials and providing grant-management.

What do we hope to achieve with the partnership?

We aim to provide urgent, strategic support to women peacebuilders and women’s civil society organizations to influence and participate at all stages of track one and track two peace processes and the implementation of peace agreements. There are many barriers to women’s participation in formal peace processes and wider political decision making. Women peacebuilders have been working hard to address the lack of political will or aggressive push back to their participation, often originating from restrictive gender norms. However, their initiatives to overcome these barriers often fail due to the lack of resources.

Without the necessary funding, women and girls will remain underrepresented in peace processes and their needs will not be addressed in the provisions of peace agreements or their implementation. Our hope is that through this partnership, we will contribute to responding to the calls of women peacebuilders for rapid and accessible funding.

How to seek support through the Rapid Response Window?

The Rapid Response Window has specifically been designed for short-term (up to six months) high impact activities to support women's participation in a track 1 or track 2 peace process or the implementation of a peace agreement. Funding is open to local or national civil society organisations in all ODA countries. This funding window has no deadline for applications to make support swiftly available when it is needed the most.

Organisations have to apply to WPHF--RRW directly through one of the two funding streams:

• Direct Support stream:  offering urgent logistical and technical support costs up to 25,000 USD (e.g., covering flights, training, translation, childcare, expert advisory support, etc).
• Short-Term Grants stream: offering funding for short-term high-impact activities, with budgets up to 100,000 USD and the duration up to six months, to address diverse barriers to women's participation in peace processes (e.g., advocacy and lobby campaign).

As an INGO partner, we work closely with the WPHF RRW unit to provide support for projects approved by the RRW Technical Committee. Find out more information about eligibility criteria and the application process on the WPHF RRW webpage.