The PBF Political Stabilization and Reform through Confidence Building and Inclusive Dialogue project involving UNDP, WFP, and UNFPA, supports the operationalization of a tripartite plan of action between ECOWAS, UNIOGBIS/UNDP, and UNOWAS, as part of the UN transition and reconfiguration in Guinea-Bissau. The initiative comprises efforts to foster effective inter-party and political leaders’ dialogue via the Good Offices Group of the National People’s Assembly (ANP).

The ANP Good Offices group, created with the support of the UN in August 2020, includes representatives of all the political parties with parliamentary seats. The Group thus enables dialogue between all political parties and seeks to support high-level mediation between different and within parties. The Group builds on the recommendations from the Accra workshop of July 2019 addressed to the ANP and ECOWAS.

The Good Offices group requested, as a first activity, a refresher course on the skills and tools learned during the Accra Workshop on Mediation, Dialogue, and Negotiation to the MPs for all MPs and political party members. The UNDP engaged a mediation expert, the same one who facilitated the Accra workshop to ensure continuity, to replicate the training on dialogue, mediation, and negotiation for the 102 MPs and other political party members with a seat at the ANP, amounting to 120 people. The training sessions started from 26th to 31^st July for one of the political parties, MADEM G-15, and was used as an excellent opportunity to discuss conflict resolution methods and the root causes of conflict in Guinea- Bissau.

During the final leg of the training held on 31^st July, women MPs and political party members celebrated African’s Women Day, reaffirming the key role women play in ensuring a participatory democracy through establishing dialogue, mediation, and negotiation in line with the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.

Before the passage of this Agenda, a review of 664 peace agreements from 1990-2000 by UN Women noted that only 11% of them included any reference to women’s security and inclusion. And from 1992-2011, only 4% of signatories and less than 10% of negotiators were women.

In Guinea-Bissau, women have been instrumental in the past in mediating political tensions, engaging in electoral processes, and pushing forward the legislation of the “Parity Law” in 2018.  The commitment of Bissau-Guinean women to raise gender equality and women’s empowerment is high on the national policy agenda as is their potential as catalysts for social change, namely in the area of sustaining peace.