UN Women, Generations For Peace unveil partnership for gender equality through sports

AMMAN — The UN Women and Generations For Peace on Sunday unveiled a new partnership to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment through sports as “an effective driver of social cohesion and civic engagement”.

According to a UN Women statement sent to The Jordan Times, more than 600,000 vulnerable Jordanian and Syrian refugee youth will be engaged in sport-based activities designed to promote a greater understanding of resilience and empowerment from a gender-sensitive perspective. 

Running till 2019, the initiative will target 300 public schools and 200 youth centres nationwide, according to the statement.

 “UN Women is committed to ensuring that Syrian refugees and vulnerable Jordanian women and girls are better served by humanitarian and resilience building initiatives taking place in host communities.” Ziad Sheikh, UN Women Jordan country representative was quoted in the statement as saying.

 “UN Women and Generations For Peace have partnered to improve the participation, leadership and engagement of vulnerable girls in these social cohesion youth initiatives, as well as ensure that such initiatives are gender responsive and address issues of gender-based violence, gender equality and girls empowerment.” he added.

UN Women globally has implemented several programmes which proved that sport can empower, when combined with safe-spaces and holistic life-skills learning opportunities that boost youth development, according to the statement.

In collaboration with UNICEF, the ministries of education and youth and, Generations For Peace have developed the “Sport for Peace” model in Jordan aiming at engaging children, youth and adults in integrated education and sustained behavioural change initiatives, the statement said.

“By investing in the development of competencies and capacities of Jordanian communities to support and incorporate gender-sensitive programming and activities, this partnership with UN Women will help us press forward in our efforts to build resilience and lasting peace.” said Mohanned Arabiyat, the president of Generations For Peace.

This partnership is framed under the UN Women’s programme “Expand self-reliance and social cohesion opportunities for Jordanian women in Mafraq Governorate and camp-based Syrian refugee women and promote meaningful engagement in community life [Eid bi Eid]”, which is generously funded by the governments of Finland, France, Iceland and Italy.

Through “Eid bi Eid”, UN Women promotes a resilience framework for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment goals and aims to strengthen individual and community ability to absorb shock, while fostering social cohesion between groups, according to the statement.