As COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe and throughout the Arab States. The coronavirus pandemic is challenging hard-earned progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment, and further exposing the detrimental effect gender inequality has on individuals, society, and the economy.

Domestic violence in Iraq is by no means a contemporary issue but a phenomenon with deep-rooted historical implications associated with life pressures and commitment to the values and traditions based on the masculinity of all life aspects of the society.

Iraq has been experiencing over the past decades a series of armed conflicts and violence causing several waves of displacements, the most recent as a result of the occupation of large areas of the country by ISIL. Women and girls who have been living in areas under ISIL control have been exposed to rights violations, kidnappings, sexual slavery, rape and abuse. Iraq was the first country in the MENA Region to develop a National Action Plan (INAP) on the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 for Women, Peace and Security during the period 2014-2018.

Since the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1325, remarkable normative progress has been made at the global, regional, and national levels to further advance the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. There is increasing recognition of the need to place women agencies at the center of the transition from crisis to sustainable development in order to offer enormous potential for leveraging transformative change. Women’s meaningful participation in peace...

The conflict in Syria has entered its eighth year, with devastating consequences. Inside Syria over 13.1 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. Outside Syria, 5.6 million registered refugees remain displaced from their homes, across. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Of these, women and girls constitute 47.5 percent¹. While the Syrian refugee population has to deal with loss of lives, extreme poverty and unprecedented forced migration, the crisis has also adversely...

The one-year programme, “Women’s Leadership, Empowerment, Access and Protection (LEAP) – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Regional Component (in partnership with the Arab Women Organization and the League of Arab States) aims to provide essential services to women affected by conflict. It works through a multi-dimensional strategy that enables women’s resilience and empowerment through addressing issues of economic vulnerability and violence. This is done by increasing access to recovery and livelihood opportunities, paired with comprehensive protection services and support to national justice structures to promote accountability for violence against women.

This analysis of the existing NAPs-WPS of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen was undertaken to assess and demonstrate the direct relevance of the plans to each country’s COVID-19 response. While NAPs-WPS are relevant in every crisis, the analysis highlights particular areas of overlap with specific global responses to COVID-19, thus providing critical evidence of the value of implementing nation action plans on women, peace and security in the current crisis.

The in-depth analysis generated under this programme with FAO will allow UN Women to better design programmes, ensuring that they are mainly based on needs and vulnerabilities of the population of concern.

Thanks to the support of the European Union (EU), and the Government of Japan and other donors, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) implemented the ‘Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey’ programme. Building on the programme implementation experience, UN Women set up a no-cost collaboration with FAO to conceptualize a gender-sensitive resilience index based on FAO’s Resilience Measurement Analysis (RIMA) Model (FAO, 2016). The analysis builds upon data collected through the Madad programme monitoring and sought to provide evidence around key resilience issues.

Feminist activists and women’s rights organisations in Lebanon, signatories to this Charter, are concerned with the human toll

Developed jointly by REACH and UN Women, this report identifies, discusses, and analyses the range of enabling factors and challenges faced by working Jordanian and Syrian refugee women. Generously supported by the European Union, through the EU Regional Trust Fund in response to the Syria Crisis, the EU MADAD Fund, as well as the Governments of France and Japan.

UN Women Regional Office for the Arab States partnered with RIWI corp. to conduct a web-survey in 9 countries in the region, (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen) to document the gendered impact of COVID-19 on men and women in the region, with a focus on gender roles and attitudes and practices related to gender equality and violence against women. This policy brief highlights the key findings from the regional study.

In Iraq, the UN system is committed to supporting the government to overcome these unparalleled crises, through the 2020-2024 United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) designed to support the State and Iraqi people to achieve their National Development Plan targets, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. This includes supporting a diversified economy, preceded by reforms to encourage private sector investment, to make the country more resilient to oil shocks and to boost employment in highly productive sectors.

As Iraq enters a new recovery phase in 2019, the country now faces the challenge of addressing the short- and long-term consequences of conflict and mass population displacement. Conflict-affected women, specifically, face numerous challenges in accessing employment, including limited economic opportunities, individual- and community-level barriers, legal restrictions, and exacerbated vulnerability, particularly for displaced people and female-headed households. In the Iraqi context, the nature...

UN Women’s Regional Office for the Arab States, in collaboration with UN Women Country Offices in Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, organized a two-day meeting Women and Young People in Peace Processes: Synergies and Cross-learning, funded by the Government of Germany. The meeting was held in Beirut, Lebanon and sought to provide a space for inter-generational dialogue between women and young people from countries affected by the conflict in the MENA region, to exchange strategies that have been utilized to mitigate conflict, to broker dialogue and influence track 1 peace processes in the region. Through this exchange and dialogue, the meeting sought to identify opportunities for strategic alliances and to define common demands.

The two-year programme “Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities in Iraq,  Jordan  and  Turkey ” aims to strengthen the resilience of women affected by the Syria crisis. This fact sheet presents the key data and objectives of the programme in Jordan.

The Madad Newsletter highlights stories of the programme beneficiaries as well as partners supporting the efforts to build resilience in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey. The newsletter includes some of the latest updates on the implementation of the programme.

Displacement and shifting gender roles have aggravated the situation of Syrian female refugees in the region, putting them at critical risk of violence and exploitation.

UN Women has analysed the text of approved NAPs-WPS from Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, to highlight good practices and draw lessons from them. As other countries in the region are set to develop their own action plans, and NAP-WPS countries begin to develop a second generation of NAPs, this paper seeks to guide and inform the future NAPs-WPS in the region - to provide good practice on action oriented text to address the range of conflict related issues that affect women and girls.

This brief provides an overview of the regional programme “Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey”. The Programme is implemented by UN Women with the financial support of the European Union through the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis.