Nairobi, 30 September 2016 - The Gender Unit of the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for the Great Lakes region is undertaking an assessment mission in the region.  The tour started on 26 September 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda, where the team met with partners including senior officials from UN Women, representatives of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and the Regional Women forum (RWF), as well as grantees of the Women’s Platform, and the donor community.

The consultative meetings revealed a lack of knowledge on the Peace, Security and Cooperation (PSC) Framework agreement, the overall mandate and activities of the Office of the Special Envoy, and in particular the Women’s Platform.

The team also met with the donor community on 27 September at the Kigali-based Dutch Embassy. The meeting was attended by the staff and Heads of Cooperation of Switzerland and the Netherlands in Rwanda. The Dutch delegation welcomed the regional consultative tour, which they deemed as “timely’’ given a request by their headquarters to provide input on the 2^nd phase of funding for the Office of the Special Envoy. They also acknowledged the lack of women’s presence in the political and peace processes, particularly at the national dialogue processes in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi.

The Swiss Head of Cooperation highlighted the need to promote initiatives focusing on lessons learned and best practices with regard to the situation in eastern DRC when designing new intervention programmes, and to focus on reconciliation processes and building good relationships between communities.