Over the past two days, I was privileged to have been a part of the two-day hybrid town hall meeting organised by WANEP Nigeria, with support from GNWP and Global Affairs Canada. The meeting which was themed, โNational Townhall meeting with Women Political and Civil Society Leaders on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), Youth, Peace, and Security (YPS), and Sustaining Peace in Nigeriaโ brought together diverse WPS and YPS stakeholders working across various parts of Nigeria.
As someone that hates attending hybrid meeting as a virtual participant due to the tendency to be excluded from the conversation, I was really impressed with her the organisers managed to ensure that online participants were not left out of the conversation. During the two days meeting, we had conversations around the challenges affecting equitable participation of women in politics; how to integrate gender in peace and security; and how we can better advance the WPS and YPS agenda, particularly through the implementation of National Action Plans and State Action Plans.
For those who may not know, the National Action Plan on WPS was carved out of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which was adopted in October 2000 while the National Action Plan on Youth, Peace, and Security was carved out of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250, which was adopted in December 2015. Over the years, civil society organisations have been working actively alongside other stakeholders on the localisation of these agendas through the implementation of National Action Plans. In Nigeria, we have developed three National Action Plans on WPS, with the third and most recent one just launched in December 2025. We have one National Action Plan on YPS, which was launched in November 2021, with implementation currently underway. Since the launch of these NAPs, several achievements have been recorded, including greater awareness about the WPS and YPS agendas in Nigeria.
One of the points that I raised during the conversation was: how can we improve data collection on WPS and YPS to better track progress. In my years of work in the development space, I have noticed that we have many women and youth groups working on advancing these agenda but we all seem to be working in silos. I therefore asked how we can boost coordination to strengthen WPS and YPS in Nigeria. I also spoke about the fact that there is low level of awareness about WPS and YPS in the academia and the need to strengthen awareness about the WPS and YPS agenda beyond the civil society space or grassroots level and to include other groups.
Some of my key takeaways from the two-day session include the following:
- Meaning participation is key to sustainable peacebuilding. Young people cannot be protected if they are not involved in the planning. Nothing for us with us: it is not just enough to design programmes or policies for young people. There is need for partnership with young people themselves.
- When young people are not engaged in peacebuilding and decision making processes, it denies them the opportunity to develop their leadership potential and also make them vulnerable to manipulation and violent extremism.
- For sustainable peace and development, gender should be infused in every aspect of peace and security.
- In our work with WPS and YPS, we need to invest in research and be intentional in the use of data and statistics.
- For effective implementation, we must be able to align and link these agendas and priority areas with national development policies such as the current 8-point agenda of the president.
At the end of the session, we made commitments on what we can do as individuals to advance the agendas in our communities. Overall, it was a really insightful session, with lots of learnings and recommendations.