Empower Women Seeking Justice & Peace

Thanks to your generous support, WFM-IGP has been able to strengthen and expand its initiatives promoting gender justice and women’s leadership over the past three months. The following report details two major campaign successes, which your donations have helped us achieve.

Providing Legal Aid and Raising Awareness of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Uganda

In commemoration of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (a program of WFM-IGP)  partnered with its member Platform for Social Justice in Uganda  in organizing a two-day workshop to fight conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence in Northern Uganda. Working with local partners enables WFM-IGP and its programs to ensure that initiatives reflect a deep understanding of the local context and champion locally-owned solutions.

The workshop in Uganda brought together members of the Justice, Law and Order sector, civil society, and police to identify methods of preventing gender-based violence in families and communities. The project provided free legal advice, as well as confidential HIV/AIDs testing, to invitees from the grassroots communities of Northern Uganda, including community leaders, local councils representatives, community counselors, youth leaders and women leaders. Attendees numbered over 600, more than 400 of which were women and children.

The event was successful in raising awareness of the pervasive problem of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence in Uganda, providing advice and legal services to vulnerable persons and expanding the network of community activists and leaders in Uganda fighting to end violence against women and children.

Gender-Equal Leadership in the International Criminal Court

One important goal of this campaign was to campaign for the best qualified female candidates to be elected as International Criminal Court judges by the Assembly of States Parties. Women’s leadership in the international justice system is a crucial component in the fight to end impunity for sexual and gender-based crimes.

Throughout the past three months, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court incorporated a gender lens in its Campaign for Fair and Merit-Based Elections of the ICC Officials, calling on States Parties to nominate the best candidates for the posts of judges for election in 2017 during the 16th Session of the ASP. As five of the six outgoing ICC judges were women, the Coalition campaigned to ensure that female candidates were nominated by states in order to maintain fair gender representation on the ICC bench. We urged states to seek out the very best and most qualified female candidates to uphold this fundamental standard.

This week, at the 15th Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, five new women and one man were elected to fill the six vacant ICC judgeships.

For more information on the newly elected judges and the Coalition’s campaign you can read the full article on the CICC website: http://www.coalitionfortheicc.org/icc-judicial-elections

Our Sincere Thanks

Your support has not only helped us see great progress so far in our fight for gender justice and women's leadership but also continues to motivate us to work towards our goals. We hope you will continue to support this cause by sharing our campaign with friends and family.

Wishing you a warm and wonderful holiday season!