The Regional Women’s Lobby for Peace, Security and Justice in South East Europe (RWLSEE), chaired by Ms. Edita Tahiri, jointly with UN and UN Women launched a new project on Capacity Building for Women in Mediation, considered essential to peacebuilding efforts in the region with the role of women at the center.

Today’s conceptual design workshop adopted a bottom-up approach and a regional perspective to peacebuilding, building on the extensive experience in conflict resolution in the region. 

Key leaders of RWLSEE, namely the Steering Committee Members from the Western Balkan region, women representatives from local levels from different communities and experts from the UN Mediation Support Unit, gathered to discuss the needs and expectations for mediation training and to agree on a methodology for rolling out such training, which aims at developing negotiation / mediation skills to advance trust building and peacebuilding.

The geographical focus of the project in the long term will be the entire western Balkan region. 

RWL SEE is a regional women’s organization that has continuously highlighted the need for women’s participation in all political and peace dialogue processes, also have played critical role in bringing forward priority issues related to post conflict, reconstruction, peace and trust building and reconciliation.

Participants of the meeting included: 

Edita Tahiri, RWLSEE Chair/ Former Minister for Dialogue and Chief Negotiator, Kosovo; Gordana Sobol, RWL SEE Steering Committee Member/ Former MP and Chairwoman of the Mandate and Immunity Committee, Croatia; Sonja Biserko, RWLSEE Steering Committee Member/Director of Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Serbia; Eglantina Gjermeni, RWL SEE Steering Committee Member /Member of Parliament (MP), former Minister of Urban Development, Albania; Nada Drobnjak, RWL SEE Steering Committee Member; MP, Head of the Parliamentary Commission for Gender Equality, Montenegro; Irina Pockova, RWL SEE Steering Committee  Member/ Chairperson of Women’s Chapter of SDA political party, Macedonia; Memnuna Zvizdić, RWLSEE Steering Committee Member, Executive Director “Žene Ženama”, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Prof Miriam Coronel Ferrer, United Nations Standby Team of Expert Mediators, Philippines; Ms. Vilma Kyyrönen, Policy and Mediation Division, Gender, Peace and Security Unit, Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs; Jo-Anne Bishop, UN Representative; Vlora Tuzi-Nushi, Acting Head, UN Women, Kosovo; Diana Çekaj-Berisha, RWLSEE Coordinator, Arbresha Dedinja, RWLSEE Project Assistant and women representatives at local levels from different communities in Kosovo.  

RWLSEE is a unique regional women peacebuilding organization founded in 2006 with the support of UN Women. Its mission is to empower women in peace processes and decision making in efforts of promoting peace, stability and European and EuroAtlantic integration of the Western Balkans. It holds that more women represented in the relevant peace and political processes brings better and more sustainable results. Its members are high level women from politics, parliaments, governments and civil society from Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia.